Mario Draghi has been grumbling about the deleterious side effects of trade tensions and other geopolitical worries for months, but the European Central Bank’s surprise policy moves in the face of a slowing global economy appeared to bring the danger home to investors.
While analysts had expected the ECB president to strike a dovish tone, policy makers went much further than anticipated.
First, the ECB extended its so-called forward guidance on ultralow interest rates, saying it doesn’t expect to begin lifting them until at least early 2020. That’s compared to its earlier plan to leave them on hold at least through the end of this summer. Second, the ECB launched its third iteration of a program of cheap loans — known as targeted long-term refinancing operations, or TLTROs — to eurozone banks.
See: Beware the ‘Japanification’ of Europe, warn ING economists
It all came as ECB staff slashed their macroeconomic forecasts, including reducing the outlook for 2019 gross domestic product growth to 1.1% from a previous 1.7% and signaling that inflation will take even longer to reach the central bank’s target of near but just below 2%. Price stability is the ECB’s sole policy mandate.
Draghi’s comments on the economy were getting the blame from analysts and investors for a decline in European and, in part, U.S. stocks, which remained down but off sessin lows at midday. The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -0.43% index ended 0.4% lower, while on Wall Street, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.64% shed 0.7% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.80% gave up around 220 points, or 0.9%. European government bonds rallied and the euro EURUSD, -0.8401% extended a decline versus the U.S. dollar.
Of course, investors knew the eurozone economic outlook was nothing to write home about. Data began deteriorating last year. And while the most recent figures have shown some early signs of stabilization, economic figures have been lackluster so far in 2019. Draghi, in January, acknowledged that risks to the eurozone’s economic outlook had moved from “broadly balanced” to tilted to the downside.
But what might be concerning for investors now is that despite Thursday’s policy actions, the ECB continues to see risks tilted to the downside. Draghi himself noted that this was somewhat out of the ordinary. Typically, when the ECB takes concrete steps to shore up the economy, it announces that risks to the outlook have become balanced, he said in his news conference.
So why not this time? Blame the world, at least in part, Draghi said in his opening statement, citing “the persistence of uncertainties related to geopolitical factors, the threat of protectionism and vulnerabilities in emerging markets.”
While there are homegrown factors behind the eurozone economy’s slowdown, including the woeful performance of Germany’s auto sector, the external factors are mostly down to a slowdown in world trade thanks to China’s own slowdown and other concerns, including the potential for a slowdown in the United States. Draghi also cited “generally lower confidence produced by the trade discussions, let’s call them this way. This sort of diminished confidence filtering through countries and sectors is one major factor for the slowdown” in the eurozone economy.
Uncertainty around Brexit and concerns surrounding emerging markets have also been factors, Draghi said.
While risks may still be tilted to the downside, Draghi said the ECB’s assessment sees the probability of recession as “very low.” And economists don’t all agree on how to divide the blame for the eurozone slowdown between external and internal factors.
But the overall tone may serve to further reinforce global growth fears that were underlined a day earlier by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which cut its global growth after revising down forecasts for almost every Group of 20 country.
Opinion: The OECD shows in its latest downgrade how interwoven the global economy is
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