{"id":47551,"date":"2014-02-16T18:40:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-16T23:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=47551"},"modified":"2014-02-16T18:40:52","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T23:40:52","slug":"monetary-policy-week-in-review-feb-10-14-2014-guidance-evolves-as-armenia-cuts-georgia-raises-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2014\/02\/16\/monetary-policy-week-in-review-feb-10-14-2014-guidance-evolves-as-armenia-cuts-georgia-raises-rates\/","title":{"rendered":"Monetary Policy Week in Review \u2013 Feb 10-14, 2014: Guidance evolves as Armenia cuts, Georgia raises rates"},"content":{"rendered":"

By CentralBankNews.info<\/u><\/a>
\n    The evolution of forward guidance was the main focus of global monetary policy last week as only two central banks changed their policy rates: Armenia, which cut its rate, and Georgia, which raised its rate.
    Eight other central banks (Iceland, Mozambique, Indonesia, Sweden, Serbia, South Korea, Peru and Russia) maintained their rates so the Global Monetary Policy Rate (GMPR) \u2013 the average rate by the 90 central banks followed by Central Bank News \u2013 remained at 5.58 percent, up from 5.41 percent at the end of December.
    Last week\u2019s policy decisions came against a backdrop of improving sentiment in global financial markets, with Janet Yellen, the new chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Sweden\u2019s central bank essentially declaring that January\u2019s volatility – which triggered concern that contagion would engulf emerging markets and drag down advanced economies – will have limited impact on the global economic recovery.
    In her first public appearance since taking over from Ben Bernanke at the start of this month, Yellen said the recent volatility in global financial markets did \u201cnot pose a substantial risk to the U.S. economic outlook,\u201d while Sweden\u2019s Riksbank said the “recent financial market turbulence has had limited contagion effects and is not expected to prevent a recovery in the global economy.”
    Although it\u2019s too early to conclude that the prospects for 2014 are bright and rosy, both South Korea and Indonesia\u2019s central banks were cautiously optimistic about the outlook despite the obvious risk that the Fed\u2019s continued reduction in asset purchases will trigger further volatility as financial markets adjust to reduced global liquidity.
    The forward guidance used by both the Fed and the Bank of England (BOE) to keep long-term interest rates low was the subject of much public debate last week, with some commentators criticizing the central banks for moving the goal posts, almost irritated that the two central banks were not planning to tighten monetary policy.
    Both the Fed and BOE had set out certain unemployment rates as thresholds for reconsidering their policy stance and in both cases reality has now caught up with these thresholds.
    Looking back, it was obvious that monetary policy decisions could not be put on auto pilot and in retrospect the Fed and BOE may have gone too far in their attempts to make complex and far-reaching decisions transparent and easy to grasp.<\/p>\n

    <\/span>Through the first seven weeks of this year<\/b>, six central banks have raised rates, or 9.3 percent of this year\u2019s 64 policy decisions, marginally down from the previous week\u2019s 9.4 percent. Seven central banks have cut rates, or 10.9 percent of this year\u2019s policy decisions, down from 11.3 percent the previous week.<\/div>\n
   <\/span>Four of the six rate rises have come from the large emerging market central banks (Brazil, Turkey, India and South Africa) along with rate rises by Georgia and Ghana.<\/div>\n
    <\/span>The seven rate cuts have mainly come from central banks in frontier markets (two cuts by Romania and one by Jordan) and central banks in other markets (Armenia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and just one by a central bank in an emerging market, namely Hungary.<\/div>\n
  <\/span><\/div>\n
LIST OF LAST WEEK\u2019S CENTRAL BANK DECISIONS<\/span><\/b>:<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
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