ECB Watch: The lion that squeaked

At the end of the European Central Bank’s monthly monetary policy meeting on November 3 2005 the bank’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, described the existing policy stance – which had kept the ECB’s key refinancing rate unchanged at 2% since June 2003 – as “appropriate”. Yet at a conference barely two weeks later, on November 18, and again to a committee of the European Parliament on November 21, Trichet publicly declared that he felt the ECB was now ready to raise its interest rates “moderately”.