Draghi Announces Further E.C.B. Stimulus Measures, but Investors Are Unimpressed
By JACK EWING

FRANKFURT — Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, has been regarded as a master of the dark art of managing market expectations.

But the reaction to stimulus measures the central bank announced on Thursday — steps more timid than had been widely expected — suggested that Mr. Draghi somehow miscommunicated with the traders, pundits and prognosticators who set the course of financial markets.

Around Europe, stock prices fell on Thursday after the central bank said it would extend its program of buying bonds and other assets by six months but would not raise the amount of monthly purchases. The central bank also changed a key interest rate to encourage banks to lend more, but did not cut key borrowing rates.

Based on recent statements by Mr. Draghi and other top officials at the European Central Bank, investors had thought there would be much, much more.

“He typically has underpromised and overdelivered,” said Mujtaba Rahman, practice head for Europe at the consultancy firm Eurasia Group. “That is not the case this time around. What we’ve got is the bare minimum of what people were expecting.”

It was either a rare case of Mr. Draghi failing to send clear enough signals, or a sign that his proposals had met unexpected resistance among the 25 members of European Central Bank’s Governing Council, which met in Frankfurt on Thursday morning. At a news conference explaining the new steps, Mr. Draghi would say only that the moves had been approved by a “very large majority’’ of the Governing Council.

The central bank is trying to give the lumbering eurozone economy a shove at the same time the Federal Reserve is getting ready to risk slowing down the United States economy by raising interest rates.

The eurozone economy grew at an annual rate of 1.2 percent in the third quarter — compared with a 2.1 percent rate in the United States. And unemployment across the 19-country euro currency union is 10.7 percent — more than double the United States’s jobless figure.

Mr. Draghi rebutted reporters’ questions about why the new measures seemed more limited than what the economy might need. He described the steps as a recalibration of the central bank’s stimulus program, which he said had been a success since it began in March.

“We are doing more because it works, not because it fails,” he said. “We want to consolidate something that has been a success.”

But some analysts said that Mr. Draghi had probably been unable to win over members of the Governing Council who think more stimulus is unnecessary, or who want to keep some monetary weapons in reserve in case the economic situation gets worse. Mr. Draghi acknowledged that terrorist attacks in Paris, along with the European influx of migrants from Syria, presented risks to the eurozone economy that are not yet possible to gauge.

“Draghi is now evidently coming up against more opposition,” Jörg Krämer, chief economist at Commerzbank, said in a note to clients. Mr. Draghi “does not have sufficient support within the E.C.B. Council to act on a grand scale,” Mr. Krämer said.

The Governing Council did decide to extend monthly purchases of government bonds and other assets, a way of pumping money into the economy, at least through March 2017.

The bank also said it would increase the penalty it charges banks to keep money in its vaults as a way of pressuring them to lend more. Banks will pay interest of 0.3 percent to keep money at the central bank, compared with the previous rate of 0.2 percent.

And the central bank expanded its purchases of bonds to include debt issued by regional and local governments.

But the central bank did not announce an outright increase in its monthly spending on bonds beyond the current level of 60 billion euros, or about $63.6 billion, as many analysts had expected. And though it said it would be spending more as it reinvests repayments of principal from the bonds and other assets it acquires, the central bank provided no estimate of how big those receipts might be.

Nor did it take other steps on interest rates that might encourage commercial banks to increase lending that might help revive the nearly dormant eurozone economy. Some analysts had expected a cut in the rate that banks pay to borrow short-term funds from the central bank. Their hope had been that the rate would drop to zero from its current 0.05 percent.

The bond-buying program was originally planned to run at least through September 2016. Mr. Draghi said on Thursday that it could be extended beyond March 2017, “if necessary.”

The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone equities, a key indicator, began falling even as Mr. Draghi was still speaking and ended the day off 3.6 percent. The euro rose more than 2 percent against the dollar, to $1.09, as investors raised their expectations of the returns they are likely to receive on money kept in European assets.

A stronger euro is generally negative for the eurozone economy because it makes exports from the region more expensive for foreign customers. In addition, the central bank is trying to make market interest rates go down. A stronger euro means investors expect the rates to go up.

Mr. Draghi had signaled in recent months that he was dissatisfied with the performance of the eurozone economy and that the central bank would intensify its already significant efforts to energize the economy and raise the region’s worrisomely low inflation to a healthier level. Whether the measures announced on Thursday will make a difference remains to be seen.

Eurozone inflation, at an annual rate of only 0.1 percent in November, is far below the European Central Bank’s official target of just below 2 percent. Mr. Draghi and other members of the bank’s governing council had all but promised that more stimulus measures would be coming on Thursday unless there was a substantial improvement in economic data.

To skeptical questions from reporters on why the central bank was not doing more, in light of the recent data, Mr. Draghi defended the measures and the effects of the stimulus program so far.

He said that eurozone government bond yields, a measure of governments’ borrowing costs, had fallen since the stimulus program began, and that commercial bank lending rates were also lower.

Economists are skeptical that the bank’s stimulus measures so far have had a substantial effect on increasing the availability of credit in the eurozone, which is one of the program’s goals. Many banks have other problems, like large numbers of troubled loans, that are keeping them from lending, no matter how cheaply they can borrow from the central bank.

But on Thursday, Mr. Draghi could only urge the skeptics to wait and see.

“All these measures have had an effect on the economy,” Mr. Draghi said. “I don’t think our communication was wrong,” he said. “These measures need time to be fully appreciated.”

ECB再降息 擴大QE規模

歐洲央行（ECB）3日進一步壓低負存款利率到歷史新低水準，總裁德拉基更宣布將量化寬鬆措施（QE）實施期限延長六個月至2017年3月，購債範圍擴及地方政府債，以拉抬疲弱的通膨率與經濟復甦。他並強調，必要時不排除動用其他政策工具。

ECB管理委員會在例行貨幣政策會議中，宣布將隔夜存款利率調降0.1個百分點，從負0.2%降到負0.3%，創歷史新低，意味商業銀行必須付出更多代價，才能把一部分準備金存在央行，藉此迫使銀行積極放貸。基準的再融資利率則維持在0.05%不變。

歐洲央行（ECB）同時下修明、後兩年通膨率預測，但小幅調高今年經濟成長率預測，預期寬鬆政策可望支持歐元區經濟持續復甦。2015年歐元區通膨率將為0.1%、2016年升至1%、2017年為1.6%，相較於原先預估的0.1%、1.1%和1.7%。預期今年歐元區經濟成長率為1.5%、明年1.7%、後年1.9%，相較於原估的1.4%、1.7%和1.8%。

德拉基並在記者會上宣布，擴大今年3月開始實施的1.1兆歐元（1.2兆美元）QE購債計畫，包括延長實施的期限，從原訂截止日期2016年9月，至少延長到2017年3月底。每月購債規模則維持在600億歐元（650億美元）不變。依此推算，ECB祭的QE規模將增加至少3,600億歐元（3,905億美元），由原訂的1.1兆歐元增至逾1.5兆歐元。

此外，可收購資產的範圍也擴大，從目前只收購政府公債和重新包裝的資產擔保證券（ABS）或擔保債券（Covered Bonds），擴大到歐元區境內各地區和地方政府所發行的債券。

德拉基表示，ECB「既有意願，也有能力」，在必要時採取進一步的行動。他說：「今天所做的決定，是為了確保通膨率回歸到略低於2%的目標水準，進而穩定中期的通膨預期…新措施將確定寬鬆的貨幣條件。」

分析師認為，綜合觀之，ECB 3日宣布的措施遠不如市場預期。市場原先期待ECB存款利率至少再降0.2個百分點，而且QE購債金額也未如預期提高。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/business/international/ecb-draghi-stimulus-europe.html

Video：The European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, said stimulus measures were to strengthen the eurozone’s resilience to “global economic shocks.”
http://www.nytimes.com/video/business/economy/100000004072361/european-central-bank-cut-interest-rates.html

2015-12-04．經濟日報．A1．要聞．編譯湯淑君