Source: CD Media
Like the Fed, the ECB is resisting interest rate increases despite producer and consumer prices soaring. Consumer price inflation across the Eurozone was most recently recorded at 4.9%, making the real yield on Germany’s 5-year bond minus 5.5%. But Germany’s producer prices for October rose 19.2% compared with a year ago. There can be no doubt that producer prices have yet to feed fully into consumer prices, and that rising consumer prices have much further to go, reflecting the acceleration of the ECB’s currency debasement in recent years.1
Therefore, in real terms, not only are negative rates already increasing, but they will go even further into record negative territory due to rising producer and consumer prices. Unless it abandons the euro to its fate on the foreign exchanges altogether, the ECB will be forced to permit its deposit rate to rise from its current —0.5% to offset the euro’s depreciation. And given the sheer scale of recent monetary expansion, euro interest rates will have to rise considerably to have any stabilizing effect.
