The language of central banking is convoluted at the best of times. In the past few months, several central banks have overcome this with actions that have spoken much louder than words – particularly those that said they were buying bonds to push down rates or even, in the case of the Swiss National Bank, explicitly trying to push down their own currency.
But yesterday's moves by the European Central Bank forced investors to return to the central banking phrasebook. They cut their headline refi rate by a quarter point to 1 per cent, refused to rule out cutting further while suggesting that the current rate was growing appropriately, and announced plans to buy covered bonds – but only in the relatively small amount of $60bn.
This was a move to an “unconventional” policy, but only a minor step into “credit easing”, rather than a wholesale attempt to push down the price of money by buying government bonds (“quantitative easing”).