Today's decision by the European Central Bank to leave its key policy interest rates unchanged was universally expected. That is not to say that the policy outlook is completely clear cut. Today's sur...

As expected, the ECB left interest rates unchanged in July at 1.00% and provided very few changes to their outlook for inflation and the Eurozone economy. The only notable change in language was the d...

As expected, ECB keeps its main refinancing rate unchanged at 1% for the second month as policymakers believed current rates are 'appropriate. At the same time, no news measures of any other kinds wer...

At the ECB press conference, held after the announcement to hold the minimum bid rate at 1%, as expected, Mr. Trichet re-iterated on Thursday the same messages as in the last few press conferences. Th...

The refinancing rate was unchanged at 1.0% as expected. Trichet did not signal that further rate cuts are in the pipeline, although he did again say that the governing council had not decided that 1% ...

The ECB will hold their next monetary policy meeting on Thursday, July 2. The ECB elected to hold rate policy unchanged in June. Since the financial crisis started last September the ECB has cut inter...

Japan's quarterly Tankan survey showed improved, but lower than expected, sentiment in large corporations while small firms continued to struggle in June. The brightest spots were the decline in 'inve...

We are reasonably sure that the ECB will keep the refinancing rate unchanged at 1% at its meeting on Thursday. The flash inflation for June released today showed that inflation is now in negative terr...

Following the drastic easing in monetary conditions since October last year, the ECB governing council has entered a wait-and-see stance. As such, we expect no new monetary policy initiatives at the J...

The Federal Reserve issued a press release yesterday evening announcing extensions and some modifications to a number of its liquidity facilities. In general, the interest for taking out liquidity thr...

The FOMC decided to leave the fed funds rate at the current target range of 0.00-0.25% and maintain existing targets for purchases of MBS, GSE and Treasuries. There was only a very vague hint concerni...

The June FOMC meeting ended largely inline with our forecasts though the Fed’s outlook on inflation seemed to be more hawkish than what we anticipated. On the whole, the Fed kept the target range for ...

As widely expected by the markets, the FOMC kept the fed funds rate steady and renewed its commitment to keep rate low for an extended period of time. The tone and text of the communiqués was virtuall...

The FOMC elected to hold rates unchanged as expected, to maintain the current level of bond purchases and said deflation is no longer a concern. The FOMC said interest rates would remain low for an ex...

The FOMC's statement offered a slightly more upbeat assessment of the economy. While their comments still echoed their April assessment that the outlook for economy has improved, today's statement add...

The Federal Open Market Committee left the benchmark interest rates steady at the current target range between 0% and 0.25% in a unanimous decision inline with markets expectations, as the ongoing rec...

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will meet on June 23rd and 24th. The FOMC is expected to hold rate policy steady and its target range for interest rates unchanged at 0.00-0.25%.The FOMC is al...

On Wednesday, the market expects the Fed to maintain the Federal Funds Rate at 0.25%, but this time the two-day meeting will probably raise more questions than the previous ones. By a huge percentage,...

We expect the FOMC to talk down the aggressive pricing of rate hikes and reiterate that rates will be held at exceptionally low levels for an extended period. The statement could stress that even thou...

At the accompanying statement, SNB stated although there have been signs of improvements in economy, global environment remains 'unfavorable and further economic deterioration cannot be ruled out'. Co...

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) will hold its monetary policy meeting on Thursday June 18th.The SNB is expected to hold rate policy steady at 0.00%-0.75%.Recent Swiss economic data confirms deterioratin...

At the minutes, the MPC members stated that 'the risk of a continued sharp contraction in output in the near-term had receded somewhat' while 'The news over the month had been mostly encouraging. Cond...

Bank of Japan as expected left its leading O/N target rate unchanged at 0.1% in a unanimous decision. No new non-conventional easing measures were announced and the target for the purchase of treasury...

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) today starts its two-day monetary meeting. The bank is expected to announce its decision at around 06:00 CET tomorrow morning. We expect BoJ to leave its leading O/N target rat...

The RBNZ decided to keep interest rate unchanged, for the first time in a year, at 2.5% after June's meeting as 'there are signs that international economic activity is stabilizing, and international ...

The Fed's Beige Book prepared based on data reported prior to June 2 reported that economic conditions remained weak or worsened through May. However five of the Fed districts saw the downward trend i...

ECB kept the refinancing rate unchanged at 1.0%. We expect the interest rate to be kept on hold for at least a year. Staff projections for growth were revised downwards - in particular for 2009. The E...

The build up to today's monthly policy meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank was considerably quieter than has been the norm of late. In part, this reflects the fact that the E...

In its scheduled announcement, the Bank of Canada maintained the overnight target at 0.25%, consistent with its conditional commitment to maintain the rate at its current effective lower bound until a...

Both the European Central Bank and Bank of England decided to leave interest rates and monetary policy generally unchanged at their meetings this morning. The ECB also provided additional information ...

As expected, the Bank of Canada left the target for the overnight rate at 25 basis points, the effective lower bound for the policy rate, and did not implement a quantitative easing program. Economic ...

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BOE) are expected to keep rates on hold, after reducing the monetary policy stance at a record pace over the past year. Both central banks have...

At their policy meeting last month, the ECB governing council announced both conventional and unconventional decisions. In line with expectations, the governing council decided to cut the main policy ...

We expect the ECB to keep the refinancing rate unchanged at 1% at its next meeting on Thursday. Inflation is now at 0% and will fall to well below zero in the coming months before returning to positiv...

Since the last Bank of Canada FAD, two major themes have emerged. First, some economic data has been not as bad as feared. Second, the currency is on a tear. But given the surprisingly transparent com...

The ECB policy board meets on Thursday June 4th. At the May ECB policy meeting the ECB lowered interest rates to a historic low of 1% from 1.25%, announced a plan to buy 60 bln EUR in covered bonds an...

As widely anticipated by the market, RBA announced to keep interest rate unchanged at 3% for the second month. The most stunning comment by the central bank is that moderation in inflation pressure ma...

RBA Governor Stevens has stated that the world economy appears to still be very weak even though the credit markets have improved over the last few months. Demand has not weakened as much as in other ...

In line with expectations, at today's monetary meeting the BoJ decided to leave its leading O/N target rate unchanged at 0.1% in a unanimous decision. In addition, the bank decided to expand the range...

The Bank of Japan decided by a unanimous vote to maintain the Overnight Call Rate at 0.10%. 'Having the lowest rate amid industrialized countries, economists argued that the low interest rate will not...

The minutes of the FOMC meeting on April 28-29 confirm that committee members remain focused on improving financial market conditions and combating deflation risks. They contained almost no discussion...

The Federal Reserve Minutes of FOMC meeting was released showing projections of the Federal Reserve governors along with Banks presidents about the future outlook for this year and the upcoming year. ...

The minutes of the April 28-29 FOMC meeting presented a modestly more upbeat assessment on the current state of the economy. Consumer spending activity was noted to have picked up and the housing mark...

Financial market sentiment had generally improved during the month. The three-month LIBOR rate had continued to fall, and spreads over risk-free rates had continued to decline. That might have in part...

Changes in rates affect interest rates in consumer loans, mortgages, and bond rates. Since short term interest rates essentially reflect the return on holding a currency, rate decisions usually affect...

The ECB releases the data that backs the bank's decision to cut the interest rate to 1.00%, one week ago. Usually, the market has a weak response to this release, since the data that makes up the bull...

GBP traded lower Wednesday after the release of the Bank of England's Quarterly Inflation Report. The BOE Inflation Report forecasts that UK inflation will fall to 0.5% before rising to 1.2% by 2012 a...

According to the latest Inflation Report, there has been a strong deterioration in the outlook for domestic and global economies. This had a strong affect on domestic demand in the United Kingdom. How...

Trichet announced after the Governing Council meeting that it had decided in principle that the Eurosystem (ECB and the European central banks) will purchase euro-denominated covered bonds issued in t...

The release of the RBA monetary policy statement has had no effect on the aussie, so far. The pair is virtually unchanged since the start of the Asian session, trading near the 0.7530 level...