Closing post
Time to wrap up.
The head of the European Central Bank has declared that the process of ‘breaking the neck of inflation’ is underway.
Christine Lagarde said that the process of crushing inflation was not yet complete, even though the eurozone CPI fell to just 1.7% in September.
She told reporters:
“Have we broken the neck of inflation. Not yet.
Are we in the process of breaking that neck? Yes.”
Lagarde was speaking after the European Central Bank cut its headline interest rate by a quarter of a point to 3.25%.
The cut is the ECB’s first back-to-back interest rate cut in 13 years and its third of 2024. That puts it two ahead of the Bank of England, which is widely forecast to cut the cost of borrowing in the UK by 0.25 percentage points from the current level of 5% when its monetary policy committee meets again next month.
And in other news…
Meanwhile over in the US, retail sales rose more rapidly than expected last month, new data shwows.
U.S. retail sales rose 0.4% last month after an unrevised 0.1% gain in August, ahead of forecasts of a 0.3% rise.
U.S. Retail Sales Climb 0.4% In September, Slightly More Than Expected https://t.co/yVvUAHzeqi pic.twitter.com/9zX96gSA4t
— RTTNews Top Stories (@RTTNews) October 17, 2024
Brad Bechtel, global head of FX at Jefferies in New York, says:
“At the margin, it confirms the U.S. economy remains relatively resilient still.”
