{"id":37296,"date":"2013-04-04T08:20:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T12:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=37296"},"modified":"2013-04-04T08:20:30","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T12:20:30","slug":"ecb-holds-rate-steady-as-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/04\/04\/ecb-holds-rate-steady-as-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"ECB holds rate steady, as expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\"><u>www.CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a> <br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The European Central Bank (ECB) kept its benchmark refinancing rate steady at 0.75 percent, as expected, and said it&#8217;s president, Mario Draghi, would comment on the governing council&#8217;s decision at a press conference later today.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The inflation rate in the 17-nation euro zone fell to 1.7 percent in March from February&#8217;s 1.8 percent, further under the ECB&#8217;s target of inflation that is below, but close to 2 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Although most economists had expected the ECB to keep rates steady, a growing number are expecting the bank to signal that it may ease policy later this year if the economy remains weak.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The euro zone&#8217;s Gross Domestic Product contracted by 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, the fifth quarterly contraction in a row, for an annual drop of 0.9 percent, wider than the 0.6 percent decline in the third quarter.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; The jobless rate in the 17 nation area was unchanged at 12.0 percent in February with rates in Greece and Spain above 50 percent.<br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; Last month the OECD said there was a strong case for the ECB to ease its policy given weak demand and inflation that is below its objective.<br \/><a name='more'><\/a><br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &#8220;The risk of undue inflationary pressure associated with monetary easing is small, as the transmission mechanism is impaired, especially in the periphery countries where banks face high funding costs,&#8221; the OECD said in its interim economic report.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;font-size: 15px\">&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.centralbanknews.info\/\">www.CentralBankNews.info<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By www.CentralBankNews.info &nbsp; &nbsp; The European Central Bank (ECB) kept its benchmark refinancing rate steady at 0.75 percent, as expected, and said it&#8217;s president, Mario Draghi, would comment on the governing council&#8217;s decision at a press conference later today.&nbsp; &nbsp; The inflation rate in the 17-nation euro zone fell to 1.7 percent in March from &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2013\/04\/04\/ecb-holds-rate-steady-as-expected\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;ECB holds rate steady, as expected&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}