Euro zone: The ECB cannot simply follow the Fed, says Lagarde | Photo credits: ECB / Sérgio Garcia | Your Image / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
FRANKFURT, Nov 3 (Reuters) – The President of the Central Bank (ECB) said on Thursday that an economic recession in the euro zone would not be enough to control inflation and that the institution of Frankfurt could not be satisfied with duplicate the decisions made by the US Federal Reserve.
Speaking at a symposium organized in Riga by the central bank of Latvia, Christine Lagarde however underlined that the ECB should be attentive to the decisions of the Fed because these influence the markets in the world.
“We have to be mindful of possible fallout,” she said. “We are not identical and we cannot progress at the same pace (or) with the same diagnosis on our economies,” she added.
“But we are also influenced by the effects, in particular via the financial markets, and to a lesser extent, via the exchanges as well, because it is clear that the exchange rate is important and must be taken into account in our projections of inflation,” she also said. (Report Balazs Koranyi; French version Claude Chendjou, edited by Marc Angrand)