Draghi: Trillions In QE Have Made Economies “More Resilient”
When last night we previewed this week’s annual Jackson Hole symposium at which Mario Draghi is scheduled to speak just before the market close on Friday, we said that the ECB head is warming up for the trip by speaking at the Lindau economics symposium in Germany this morning “and as such he could front run himself.” Unfortunately for many who were expecting some advance highlights, Draghi disappointed those who hoped he would preview his Jackson Hole appearance.
So what did Draghi talk about? Instead of previewing the ECB’s inevitable taper (especially as the central bank will soon run out of Bunds to buy at the current pace of monetization), the central banker defended growing criticism of his unorthodox monetary policy, and said the ECB’s policies such as QE and NIRP, saying they have been a success on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the purchase of some $15 trillion in assets has somehow made economies “more resilient.”
Speaking to the Lindau audience of 17 Nobel laureates and 350 young German economists, a nation which has been one of the stiffest critics of ECB policies such as quantitative easing, Draghi’s speech avoided any specific hints on current ECB deliberations, and instead said officials must be “unencumbered by the defense of previously held paradigms that have lost any explanatory power.”
He then launched into a vocal defense of QE, saying that “when the world changes as it did ten years ago, policies, especially monetary policy, need to be adjusted. Such an adjustment, never easy, requires unprejudiced, honest assessment of the new realities with clear eyes, unencumbered by the defense of previously held paradigms that have lost any explanatory power”
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