The Jackson Hole schedule still isn't out but when it is, two ECB appearances are expected. Isabel Schnabel and Francois Villeroy will appear on a panel on the "outlook for policy post-pandemic."
I'm more interested in what they will have to say than Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The communciation strategy from the Fed is clear right now. They're telling the market that rates will stay high for longer but they don't know if 50 or 25 bps is coming in September. They also don't know if rates will be near 3% at year end or closer to 4%. It will all depend on the data.
Europe is facing a different set of problems. The economy is begining to stumble badly and inflation is accelerating on skyrocketing energy and natural gas prices. That's given me my new favorite meme:
The labor market in Europe is also far less tight than in the US.
That leaves the ECB with a difficult question? Do they hike rates to fight energy inflation? How high?
The derivatives market sees a high chance of 50 bps at the October ECB meeting and rates hitting 1.7% next March.
Arguably that's still stimulative but it won't feel that way in Europe, which has had low rates since the eurozone debt crisis.
In a Figaro interview, ECB President Christine Lagarde hinted at the difficulty of setting policy. "We can no longer rely exclusively on the projections provided by our models -- they have repeatedly had to be revised upwards of these past two years," she said.
That begs the question: Were the relying on the models exclusively before? But -- more importantly -- it shows that the ECB is trying to think through the energy crisis creatively. I don't rule out a dovish pivot. It's too soon for that now but Schnabel and Villeroy could start planting the seeds.
