ECB Keeps All Three Interest Rates Unchanged

Nothing material was expected to be announced by the ECB ahead of today’s Mario Draghi conference, and sure enough, nothing was, with the ECB reporting that all three key rates remained unchanged. From the release:

At today’s meeting, which was held in Malta, the Governing Council of the ECB decided that the interest rate on the main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.05%, 0.30% and -0.20% respectively.

The President of the ECB will comment on the considerations underlying these decisions at a press conference starting at 14:30 CET today.

Perhaps notable is that at the same time, the ECB announced that it had cut the ELA ceiling for Greek banks from €87.9 billion to €86.9 billion, showing that after one month, Greek banks had managed to add about a billion in liquidity. At this rate the ECB’s ELA may be removed entirely some time in 2020.