Central banks spent this week talking about the plumbing
A discount window speech, a resolution speech, an outright bond sale and a payments deck - four institutions discussing the machinery that carries a rate decision.
Analysis
Currencies and central banks, read from the decision itself
Three releases today came with instructions for doubting them
The ONS shipped revisions triangles, Barr conceded the quality adjustment before using his figure, and the RBI published a weighted average next to a range three times as wide. Each told you where its own number is weak.
Three indices crossed the desk today. Only one of them can force a trade
An export similarity index, an index built from newspaper sentences, and a market classification. Two describe the world; the third is written into contracts, which makes it a different kind of object entirely.
Two kinds of price rise, and only one of them is in the forecast
Lane describes an energy shock that a futures curve will eventually unwind. Bruegel describes €2,100 added to a car by rules that will not unwind at all. Central bank projections handle the first and not the second.
The useful half of a central bank statement is what it left out
Four habits for reading a rate decision: the vote, the unchanged clause, the effective date, and the footnote nobody quotes.