Who's making the ECB decisions today?
There's some chatter doing the rounds about the fact that Germany's Jens Weidmann is a non-voter today due to the ECB rotation policy. Being the biggest hawk there some suggestion that because he can't vote that gives the doves greater power.
As usual that talk is largely misplaced. The ECB only enacts a voting scenario is there's no consensus and that very rarely happens.
Here's a summary of how it all works;
There's 25 members of the governing council. Of that, 6 are on the executive board and 19 are the central bank heads from the Eurozone. All 25 members are present at the meetings. The executive board always has a vote and a rotation is in place for the other 19, so only 15/19 have an actual vote each meeting.
The important part: Council meetings rarely get to the point of having to vote. In concert with Draghi, Peter Praet will effectively table a proposal for action which all 25 members will give a view on. Draghi will look to take the consensus view. If that view is for a formal vote then that will happen, otherwise he can just run with the balance of views in deciding what action to take. It's really up to Draghi, through Praet, to decide how strong they want to go and therefore what may or may not swing support their way
For the record, here's the voters today
The 6 Governing council members get a permanent vote
- Draghi
- Constancio
- Lautenschaeger
- Coeure
- Mersch
- Praet
The rest
- Linde
- Galhau
- Visco
- Knot
- Smets
- Georghadi
- Vasiliaukus
- Rimsevics
- Reinesch
- Bonnici
- Nowotny
- Costa
- Jazbec
- Makuch
- Liikanen
Not voting
- Weidmann
- Stournaras
- Lane
- Hanson
If you want some reference, I published a list of the ECB members and which way they lean before the Dec meeting (the only person missing is Ireland's Lane who replaced Honohan).
ECB's Weidmann: Not voting but still ready to fight the fight
