In truth, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a clearer path ahead of him than his counterpart at the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi. Both, however, are perched on separate precipices, surveying the possibilities of the next policy moves. A year ago in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the annual Fed getaway, Bernanke laid out plans for a $600 billion quantitative easing program, which provided a jump start to a then-sluggish recovery, and not much has changed 12 months later. The announcement also triggered grumbling around the globe, especially from countries such as China and Brazil who have their hearts set on an expensive U.S. dollar to keep their export businesses profitable.
Should the Fed choose to launch QE 3, as the easing will be the third round in the post-recession era, Bernanke will once again need to explain, for what it's worth, that the value of the dollar is not the primary reason for a new round of bond buying. He will convince nobody overseas of this line of reasoning, but he will try, anyway. In a much tighter political, Draghi will speak Saturday, following Bernanke's speech on Friday morning. As a quick aside, it is not an accident that markets will still be open when Bernanke speaks and not when Draghi speaks.
That said, Draghi needs to negotiated a clouded political atmosphere in Europe, where German central bank President Jens Weidmann, a former adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel, is taking advantage of his new bully pulpit by obstinately opposing bond buying by the ECB. Merkel last week sounded softer in her approach to Greece, where Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been seeking an extension on terms that dictate the availability of international loans.
Merkel told members of her own party during the weekend to show some solidarity in the message that the eurozone, including Greece, must remain intact. She also said Greece was "making a serious effort" to bring its budget into compliance. In France, taking a more socialist stance, President Francois Hollande said the terms of the loans should not, in effect, kill the patient. The terms should be "tolerable for the population," he said, as quoted by The New York Times.
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