The BOE minutes unveiled that MPC members voted unanimously on March 4 to keep the policy rate unchanged at 0.5% and to maintain the asset purchase program at 200B pound. While growth outlook remained...

While today's easing move by BoJ was only a small move, it underlines that, unlike most other countries, Japan is far from starting to exit is non-conventional easing measures and might even ease furt...

Under the pressure from the government and dismal inflation outlook, the Bank of Japan announced to double the size of the fixed-rate funds-supplying operation against pooled collateral (the fixed-rat...

The money and fixed income market reacted on the more dovish statement as one would expect. Expectations for higher Interest rate, which had increased ahead of the meeting, were priced out. In the T-N...

As we and the market anticipated, the FOMC left its policy rate unchanged at 0-0.25% and retained the pledge to keep interest rates at current low level for an 'extended period'. Economic assessment c...

The assessment of activity was slightly more upbeat than in the previous statement. As expected the FOMC turned more optimistic on the labour market while on the other hand noting recent very weak hou...

As was widely expected by us (and to a lesser extent by the markets) the Fed kept the wording and tone of its interest rate decision statement largely unchanged, and maintained its commitment to keepi...

The two critical phrases in the FOMC statement, about keeping rates "exceptionally low" for a "critical period" were kept in the statement, and this conformed with consensus expectations for little ch...

The statement issued by the Fed at the conclusion of today’s policy-setting FOMC meeting was very much in line with expectations and flags no imminent shift in policy. It suggested a very modest upgra...

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will complete a two day policy meeting on March 17th. The BOJ has been under significant pressure from the Japanese government to take action to combat deflation and boost the ...

The Fed kept its language regarding keeping interest rates at their low levels for an "extended period" of time. That means rates should remain at their current levels for at least 6 months. Economic ...

The Bank of Japan will likely extend the duration and expand the size of the new lending facility (launched in December) so as to fight against deflation. This is likely the only change the central ba...

We see increasing signs of a self-sustained recovery with relatively solid progress in consumer spending and more developed indications of an imminent turnaround in the labour market. Still, recent si...

The FOMC will hold a one-day policy meeting on Tuesday, March 16th. This will be the first scheduled single day policy meeting for the Federal Reserve since the start of the financial crisis in Septem...

At the March FOMC meeting, the Fed will leave the policy rate unchanged at 0-0.25%. With economic development being largely consistent with expectations since January's meeting, the central bank will ...

As widely expected the Swiss National Bank (SNB) held its target for the three-month Libor unchanged at 0.00-0.75% and reiterated its intention to keep it within the lower end of the range - i.e. arou...

As expected, the SNB left the 3-month LIBOR target range unchanged at 0.00-0.75% and intended to keep the lower part of the target range at around 0.25%. The SNB also reiterated the stance to act 'dec...

As we and the market expected, the RBNZ left the OCR unchanged at 2.5% and reiterated the stance to 'removing policy stimulus around the middle of 2010'. The quarterly MPS also revealed modest upgrade...

Despite recent positive economic data, the SNB will continue to leave the target range for 3-month LIBOR at 0-0.75, targeting to keep the rate at 0.25%, in March. The Monetary Policy Announcement will...

The RBNZ will likely leave the OCR at 2.5%, for the 11th month, at the March meeting. Therefore, the market will focus on the Monetary Policy Statement as well as how the central bank describe economi...

Primed by comments from ECB president Jean Claude Trichet that this month's ECB Governing Council meeting would be 'an important rendezvous', markets awaited today's press conference with greater than...

The ECB is in the middle of a tough balancing act as it is attempting to lay the groundwork for mopping up extra liquidity in the banking system while still maintaining favorable lending conditions an...

The 3-month auctions will be with fixed allotment from now on. The ECB's weekly main refinancing operations and the one-month auctions will continue to be with full allotment at least until 12 October...

The Governing Council decided to leave the key ECB interest rates unchanged. The Euro-system continues to provide liquidity support to the banking system of the euro area at very favorable conditions,...

ECB's monetary decisions in March are broadly inline with expectations. The central bank left the main refinancing rate unchanged at 1% while fine-tuning the funding operation frameworks. The ECB staf...

During Bernanke's semi-annual testimony to Congress, he reiterated that rates could remain low for an "extended period", thus signalling that the recent hike in the discount rate did not indicate that...

With data prepared and collected on or before February 22, The Fed’s Beige Book indicated that economic conditions have improved, but “in most cases, the increases were modest”. Of the 12 Federal Rese...

Last month's ECB press conference was largely uneventful and it surely was meant to be so. The ECB had “surprised” the markets in December by setting out its exit strategy and implementing initial mea...

Since the last Governing Council meeting, macroeconomic data has been soft and concerns about Greece remain high on the agenda. The tiny GDP growth in Q4 09 brings forward concerns about whether the e...

The upcoming ECB meeting is the focus of the week as the President Trichet has mentioned several times that more detailed money market measures will be announced at the March meeting. Given the negati...

The BOE is expected to continue its 'wait-and-see' stance in monetary policy. At Thursday's meeting, the central bank should unanimously vote for keeping the official Bank Rate paid on commercial bank...

As was widely expected, the Bank of Canada today has maintained its commitment to hold interest rates at their historically low levels until the end of the second quarter of 2010 and so left the overn...

As expected, the Bank of Canada left the overnight rate target at 0.25%. Moreover, the central bank reiterated 'conditional on the outlook for inflation, the target overnight rate can be expected to r...

The Bank of Canada left the overnight rate at 0.25% this morning and maintained its assessment of risks to the outlook as being balanced based on macro considerations. The Bank removed the statement a...

After pausing in February, the RBA resumed its tightening cycle in March by announcing to raise its cash rate by +25 bps to 4%. In the accompanying statement, the central bank stated that interest rat...

There has been much to digest since the last Bank of Canada decision, though little to motivate a major change to the monetary policy outlook. Central bank speakers have filled the calendar like never...

Both market expectations and economic development evolved recently point to an unchanged monetary policy stance at BoC's March meeting. The central bank will most likely announce to keep its policy ra...

While RBA' tightening cycle , which began late last year, will continue in 2010, more rate hikes will be delivered in 2H10 as policymakers need to gauge how previous hikes feed through to the economy....

The Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony was inline with market expectation. While the Chairman acknowledged improvement in economic condition, he noted the job market remains quite weak while inflat...

The Fed's exit strategy has begun to capture the market's imagination over the past few weeks, and is starting to wrest away control of the bond market from simmering European fiscal woes. There have ...

For the Fed, the initial step in a return to normalcy is increasing the spread between the funds rate and the discount rate to reestablish the discount rate as a penalty rate. Moreover, we would expec...

Overnight the Federal Reserve Board announced an increase in the spread between the discount and the Fed funds rate spread from 25bp to 50bp effective from today. This leaves the discount rate at 0.75...

In the minutes of the January FOMC meeting, the Fed showed slightly more hawkish tone on the economic outlook. It revised up its forecast on 2010 GDP growth to 2.8%-3.5% from 2.5% to 3.5% projected in...

The minutes of the January 26-27 meeting suggested that most members saw recent economic data as indicating that conditions have improved with economic activity continuing to ‘strengthen’ and the labo...

The ECB is expected to deliver a first hike of the refinancing rate to 1.25% in November 2010. This is somewhat later than the hawkish August 2010 hike we had previously communicated. The implementati...

This week a testimony by Chairman Bernanke to the House revealed the Fed has progressed further in its move towards the exit. During the crisis the Federal Reserve System implemented several alternati...

In his published remarks today, Chairman Bernanke laid out some of the possible approaches the Fed could take to extricate the U.S. economy from the current significant monetary policy accommodation b...

At the February Inflation Report, the BOE unveiled downside risks to economic recovery. The MPC members believed that growth in the United Kingdom has been and will continue to be driven by the consid...

As of 1 January 2010, Philipp Hildebrand replaced Jean-Pierre Roth as chairman of the governing board at the Swiss National Bank (SNB). Not a major event, given that Hildebrand has expressed no indica...

As expected, today's ECB press conference was largely uneventful in terms of major market- moving developments. Both the ECB and financial markets approached it with the understanding that it would be...