From the WSJ

  • Perhaps announcing a decision after its July 26 policy meeting
  • investors might be right to have recently pushed back their forecast for when the ECB might increase interest rates for the 1st time
  • ECB officialsremain confident in the economic outlook
  • The latest data remain pretty consistent with the story of economic expansion continuing at a robust piece
  • The bond purchases like that would be gradually reduced to 0 after the latest extension of the program ends in September
  • called the recent slowdown in data a normalization after recent strong growth and temporary factors such as strikes and cold weather
  • in the June and July meetings we will perhaps have a better understanding of the meaning of recent soft indicators
  • nevertheless recent economic slowdown might delay the ECB from increasing its interest rate currently at -0.4%.
  • ECB interest rate policy is still data dependent

The ECB currently purchases EU30 billion in the QE programme.