The new year has officially started because it wasn’t even a day in and Mario Draghi was once again out and about, jawboning the Euro to a lower level than where it was when he said back in 2012 he would do “whatever it takes” to push it higher. The reason, as Reuters reports, why the Euro sank to a nearly 5 year low against the USD, was “clear indications that the European Central Bank will soon embark on outright money-printing.” Actually, it was on just more hollow rhetoric by Draghi, who told German Handelsblatt that “the risk that we don’t fulfill our mandate of price stability is higher than it was six months ago.” He also added that “it’s difficult to say†how much the institution will have to spend on government-bond purchases.
Confirming yet again, that when it comes to QE the ECB is all about talk and precisely zero action, Draghi continued: “We are in technical preparations to alter the size, speed and composition of our measures at the beginning of 2015, should this become necessary, to react to a too-long period of low inflation. There’s unanimity in the ECB council on that.”
On the topic of deflation he said that “the risk cannot be entirely excluded, but it is limited,†still “we have to act against such risk. A look into history shows that falling prices can endanger the prosperity and stability of our community just as much as high inflation.“
“Interest rates have been very, very low for a long time – and that will continue for another while.”Â
Draghi then tried to debunk recent swirling rumors that he would quit the ECB and become Italy’s next president when he said that “I don’t want to be a politician,†when asked about resignation of Italian President Napolitano; says his ECB mandate lasts until 2019. In other words, he lied. Just as a politician would.
And speaking of lying, Draghi concluded with just that when asked about the likelihood of a break-up of the euro zone. “A break-up of the euro zone? That will not happen. That’s why there is no plan B,” he said. Which, as Zero Hedge readers now know, is what Draghi told Zero Hedge back in April 2014, and as they further know, is a bold-faced lie as explained in “When The Head Of The European Central Bank Lies To Zero Hedge On The Record: Presenting Europe’s “Plan Z.” Recall, via the FT:
Unbeknown to almost the entire Greek political establishment, a small group of EU and International Monetary Fund officials had been working clandestinely for months preparing for a collapse of Greece’s banks. Their secret blueprint, known as “Plan Zâ€, was a detailed script of how to reconstruct Greece’s economic and financial infrastructure if it were to leave the euro. The plan was drawn up by about two dozen officials in small teams at the European Commission in Brussels, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and the IMF in Washington. Officials who worked on the previously undisclosed plan insisted it was not a road map to force Greece out of the euro – quite the opposite. “Grexitâ€, they feared, would wreak havoc in European financial markets, causing bank runs in other teetering eurozone economies and raising questions of which country would be forced out next.  But by early 2012, many of those same officials believed it was irresponsible not to prepare for a Greek exit. “We always said: it’s our aim to keep them inside,†said one participant. “Is the probability zero that they leave? No. If you are on the board of a company and you only have a 10 per cent probability for such an event, you prepare yourself.â€
