Weekend comments from a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council and Governor of the Banca d'Italia Ignazio Visco. He spoke in a Bloomberg TV interview.

Visco said the ECB will increase interest rates as much as required to get inflation back down to 2% and that its not possible to predict what the terminal rate will be:

  • “I don’t think that we can indicate now what the terminal rate will be, not even if it’ll be 3.5%, 3.25% or 3.75%, because really it is data-dependent”
  • “Our objective is to go back to an inflation rate of 2% in the medium term. If we need to be more restrictive, we’ll be more restrictive.”

Visco was at a conference of the Group of 20 finance ministry heads and central bankers in Bengaluru, India.

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Reasonable comments, its hard to argue with a central banker looking to the data to decide. They get into more trouble when they rely on flawed forecasts and not data.

The ECB deposit rate is 2.5%.

EUR/USD is little changed from its late Friday level

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Visco