ECB Expected to Extend QE beyond March 2017

The European Central Bank is expected to extend its trillion-euro bond-buying program beyond March 2017 and announce to expand the universe of eligibile bonds as part of its seemingly never-ending struggle to kickstart the euro zone’s economy.

The central bank and its President Mario Draghi has been trying to push inflation back to its goal of below but close to 2 percent with a plethora of measures and instruments ranging from negative deposit rates to spur lending, a quantitative easing (QE) program that has been buying 80 billion euro ($89 billion) in bonds every month and interest rates close to zero – but without a breakthrough success.

Analysts believe the ECB’s governing council has its work cut out when it meets to decide on monetary policy Thursday. The headline rate of inflation remained unchanged at 0.2 percent in August. Core, or underlying inflation, which excludes energy, goods, alcohol and tobacco, fell from 0.9% in July to 0.8%, according to Eurostat.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza