ECB’s Trichet rejects view of Weber on bond buying
EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet has taken issue with recent comments on ECB policy by Bundesbank chief Axel Weber, saying they did not represent the views of the central bank’s governing council.
In an interview with an Italian newspaper yesterday, Trichet said the governing council as a whole did not agree with Weber’s remark last week that the ECB’s government bond-buying programme had not worked and should be scrapped.
“No! This is not the position of the Governing Council, with an overwhelming majority,” he said, according to an English transcript of the interview published on the ECB’s website. “This non-standard measure, like all other such measures, was designed to help restore a more normal functioning of our monetary policy transmission mechanism. And we are withdrawing all the liquidity, euro for euro, that is supplied through this programme,” he said.
He also struck a less hawkish note on interest rate policy than Weber, an influential member of the governing council and one of the top candidates to take over when Trichet’s own ECB term expires next year.