Euro area inflation down, but the ECB wants to continue with the credit crunch
The annual inflation rate in the euro area fell to an eight-month low of 8.5% in January 2023 from 9.2% in December, below market expectations of 9%, according to estimates foreplay. Data for inflation for Germany is not available, as the country's statistics office had to delay the release of its figures due to technical problems with processing the data. Inflation slowed in Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands, but increased in Spain and France. In January, energy prices increased at a slower pace (17.2% vs 25.5%) and services inflation also decreased (4.2% vs 4.4%) while costs increased fastest for food, alcohol and tobacco (14.1% vs 13.8%) and non-energy industrial goods (6.9% vs 6.4%). Compared to the previous month, consumer prices decreased by 0.4%, as in December, led by a 0.9% drop in the cost of energy.
Now inflation seems to be slowing down, simply because the external energy causes that caused it are running out, or reducing their weight. Now the ECB seems oriented to apply at least two more interest rate increases that the Nordic countries, Holland above all, would like in the overall order of one percentage point. Looking at the trend in inflation, we might think that this is an excessive variation, which risks accentuating a trend that has already started, but monetary maximalism seems to have no limits.
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The article Euro area inflation down, but the ECB wants to continue with the credit crunch comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/inflazione-area-euro-in-calo-ma-la-bce-vuole-proseguire-con-la-stretta-creditizia/ on Wed, 01 Feb 2023 16:27:18 +0000.