ECB, Lagarde: “Rates have reached their peak. Inflation below 2% in 2025”
“I think i rates, barring further shocks or unexpected data, they will not continue to rise. And if we win the fight against inflationand if we are confident that inflation will actually be at 2%, then rates will start to fall,” he continued Lagarde. Asked if 2024 will be the year rates fall, Lagarde replied: “As president of the European Central BankI can’t give you a date.”
The ECB predicts that inflation will hover between 2.5% and 3% for much of this year and bankers have said that any talk of a rate cut before first-quarter payrolls data, expected in May, would be premature. Investors have priced in at least five rate cuts in 2024, with the first move expected in March or April, a time frame that several ECB policymakers have called excessive in light of persistent price pressures.
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Inflation in the euro area it rose to 2.9% in December from 2.4% in November. Lagarde said she expects eurozone inflation to fall to 1.9% in 2025. Lagarde downplayed concerns that transportation problems in the Suez and Panama canals could lead to a price increase, explaining to France 2 TV that the situation is “more or less under control”.
A re-election of Donald Trump he president of the United States would represent a “threat” to Europe. The president of the ECB said it Christine Lagarde on France 2 TV. “If we take lessons from history, and by that I mean the way (Trump) carried out the first four years of his term, he is clearly a threat,” he stressed. “Just look at the commercial ratesits commitment to the Natohis attitude regarding the battle against the climate change“, he added Lagarde.
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