President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde has stated that the new symmetric inflation target of 2% is not a ceiling. In its last strategy review, the ECB abandoned its “below, but close to 2 percent” aim.
The ECB President went on to say that the effective lower bound is a symmetry constraint, and that missing the inflation objective on both the upside and downside is equally bad. She argued that incorporating housing prices would only result in a minor increase in inflation.
In the next press conference, Lagarde remarked, a new “narrative-based” statement will replace the traditional introductory lines. The next ECB meeting is scheduled on July 22. The revisions were unanimously agreed by the Governing Council, she added.
The EUR/USD currency pair is currently trading at about 1.1850, pushing higher.
Weekly unemployment claims in the United States came in at 373,000, slightly more than predicted and on top of an upward revision to the prior week’s figures./n
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