Thread by @ecb

Probably the most important thing to say about the eurozone economy is that there is a high degree of uncertainty, Executive Board member Philip R. Lane tells The Wall Street Journal (1/7) ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/da…

Lane: The single biggest risk is that the pandemic is not controlled and/or it takes longer than is currently expected to find good treatments and a vaccine. That outranks any other risk by some distance (2/7)

Lane: Whether we need to add stimulus depends on incoming data. The uncertainty will diminish in the autumn because we’ll know more about the pandemic, 2021 budget plans, exchange rate developments and oil prices (3/7)

Lane: Evidence shows that we’ve been very symmetric, that we’ve done a lot since 2014 to respond to low inflation. In terms of our monetary policy strategy review, it’s important that our medium term orientation is to get inflation back to where we think it should be (4/7)

Lane: Current inflation level remains far away from our goal, we don’t think that is a satisfactory inflation outlook. We will not tighten policy without inflation solidly appearing in the data. (5/7)

Lane: Asset purchases have a bigger impact on the yield curve now than interest rate cuts. But the option of cutting interest rates remains part of our policy guidance (6/7)

Lane: Under current conditions it's important that fiscal policy is active and responds to the needs of the economy. It’s important to have a lot of fiscal support this year and next. When the times are good, we want to see debt ratios come down (7/7) ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/da…