It is not surprising to hear Mario Draghi making noises about the economy not being as strong as he would prefer to see it.
His wild buying spree of garbage assets has resulted in markets propped up by…his wild buying spree of garbage assets. Were he to stop, well…he can’t stop. Nobody would buy the toxic trash he was buying then, and they certainly won’t buy it now, so he needs to position markets for perpetual QE.
In the past few weeks we have reported on the economic weakness in Europe[1]. The Citi Economic Surprise index for Europe is extremely negative[2] showing reports are missing economists’ expectations.
The ECB’s Mario Draghi responded to this recent weakness by stating[3] growth may have peaked for the cycle. This is a reasonable assessment, but it’s more than an economic forecast. Every statement by central bankers has monetary policy implications.
This could mean more dovish policy. This is an interesting predicament because the ECB has interest rates in the negatives and QE hasn’t even ended yet. The ECB will wait until July[4] to decide the fate of QE.
Policy is still extremely dovish with the goal of normalization in the next few years. Peak growth at the beginning of this process is a disaster. The biggest problem is normalization has gone too slow.
It would be interesting to see what policy would be put in place if Europe were to fall into a recession in 2019.
The stock market is acting very unusually because the S&P 500 has been range bound while the earnings growth in Q1 is in the high teens as we mentioned in Are Markets Priced For Perfection?...