ECB Vice President Constancio lays out the plan to expand the balance sheet by 1 trillion euros the central bank could buy 600 billion euros in covered bonds and 400 billion euros on ABS. These steps ¨mark a new phase in monetary policy†says the Portuguese VP of the ECB.
Constancio is speaking in at the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, in a workshop about non conventional measures. He also says that this period of low inflation is a serious concern.
The euro is unmoved by this talk.
MNI also quotes Constancio:
With these new measures, the Governing Council demonstrates that we are ready to actively steer the size of our balance sheet towards significantly larger levels, so as to further ease the chance of monetary policy in a situation in which policy rates have reached their lower bound
So far, his boss Mario Draghi refrained from giving numbers but only said it would be “sizable†and that it would steer towards the balance sheet the ECB had in 2012.
For more, see the EURUSD forecast.