Link: what’s at stake.

This meeting sounds a lot like every meeting that has happened recently (see here for a list of how frequently the ECB governing council meets – about once every two weeks).

Each one is hyped as “the one where they come up with a plan to save the euro”. And in the press conference that follows, it turns out to be “one of the ones where several important steps were taken and many key indicators were expressed and some reservations were noted and the Bundesbank was disgusted by it all”.

That said, Mr Draghi has been fairly vocal of late to people like the Press and the EU parliament. And his “blueprint” that was circulated to council members a few days ago proposed the monetary equivalent of a carte blanche.

It’s phrased* as “freedom to buy government debt unlimitedly with maturities of up to three years” which actually means “freedom” and/or “we want to do what we want when we want to without having to check with y’all first”.

There’s also talk of cutting the benchmark interest rate**.

Who’s excited for the press conference?

*Okay – it’s not really “phrased” so much as “slightly paraphrased”.

**To WHAT? The lending rate is already at 0.75%! Too much lower, and you’re at zero. And then you’re properly stuck – because hitting zero percent interest as a Central Bank is like handing your wife a credit card and saying “I give up. I’m just can’t fight anymore”. That is: you can no longer use the credit card to buy time. Or, more colloquially, it’s playing the last card***.

***To say nothing of the fact that the deposit rate is already at 0%. If the ECB wants to maintain the 75 bps spread between the saving and lending rates, the saving rate would be negative – which means that the banks would have to pay the ECB to lodge cash with it.