Central Bank Divergence Not Here But Near

After the Federal Reserve maintained its path towards raising U.S. interest rates next year, other major central banks will jostle for space on a crowded stage this week.

The European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and the central banks of India and Australia all hold meetings. While imminent action is unlikely, the time when policy settings start pointing in different directions is nearing.

U.S. growth rebounded in the second quarter and the Fed upgraded its assessment of the economy last week. It is on course to stop creating money in October but the expectation is that there will be no interest rate rise before mid-2015.

 
That puts the Bank of England in pole position to be the first major central bank to push rates up from their record low 0.5 percent, perhaps before the year is out.

Although the UK economy is expanding at an annualized clip in excess of 3 percent and unemployment is tumbling, the absence of wage pressure means there is no immediate reason to act.

The consensus is that rates will not rise until early 2015 but polling by Reuters last week found economists expect a first voice or two on the nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee to call for a rate rise this week.

via Reuters

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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