Central Banks

Turmoil Means ECB Finally Sets Rates One Meeting at a Time

  • ‘Meeting-by-meeting’ approach is now implicit mantra
  • Tensions over such messaging had recently burst into the open

Christine Lagarde 

Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg
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It took an outbreak of global financial turmoil for the European Central Bank to finally embrace the “meeting-by-meeting” approach it has claimed to have been following for months.

Officials conspicuously dropped those words from their statement on Thursday, after delivering a half-point increase in interest rates that they flagged at their last gathering six weeks ago and hinted at even before that.