Fed Says Tomayto, ECB Says Tomahto

ECB Governing Council member Christian Noyer made the clearest public case to date for why the ECB isn’t following the Fed with interest-rate cuts.Mr. Noyer — a noted moderate who heads of France’s central bank — commended the Fed’s proactive response in a Prague speech, saying governor “Mishkin’s case for a risk-management approach to U.S. monetary policy in the present juncture obviously provides a sound rationale for the last three rate cuts by the FOMC.” Further, Chairman Ben Bernanke’s “in-depth knowledge of the credit crunch of the 1930s in the U.S… probably also helped shape this view that there is a non-zero probability in the current juncture of an ‘ugly equilibrium’ of the debt-deflation type that must be addressed by prompt and vigorous policy action.”So why isn’t the ECB — which has kept euro-zone money markets flush with funds since August but left its key rate on hold at 4% — following suit?First: “European banks are not of course immune from losses due to their exposure to the U.S. subprime market … but this exposure is, on average, significantly lower than that of their U.S. counterparts and their model of universal banking allows them to mitigate the consequences of a crisis in one segment of their activity.” Second, low household debt levels and a “weak transmission of financial shocks to household consumption via the wealth channel” mean “the macroeconomic consequences of protracted financial distress should be relatively less disruptive in the euro area.” Finally, “the short-term economic outlook is more encouraging in the euro area than in the U.S. — even if our economies are slowing down, no recession lies on the horizon.”Like many of his Governing Council colleagues, Mr. Noyer stressed the primacy of inflation and inflation expectations in the ECB’s decisions. Still, he became the first ECB polic maker to refer directly to the conditions in which a rate cut might be plausible, saying, “a solid anchoring of inflation expectations remains a prerequisite for rate cuts.” After euro-zone inflation hit a record 3.5% in March, most analysts pushed back their expectations of the ECB’s first cut to September from June.Stressing a bit of common ground, Mr. Noyer did ask that central banks on both sides of the Atlantic be cut some slack: “We should keep in mind that central banks cannot and should not be held responsible for everything. … Indeed, regulatory lapses seem to me to lie at the heart of the subprime crisis.” –Joellen Perry

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