ECB president boasts about success of OMT, although concedes governments did help a bit
ECB president Mario Draghi has said that now is “potentially” the first time the “significant improvement in confidence and interest rates are finding their way through to the economy” after cautioning in November that he was not satisfied with financing conditions.
He credits the reduction in risk with the success of the outright monetary transactions (OMT) bond buying programme, whose mere presence and perceived credibility was enough to decrease general riskiness in the eurozone.
It's clear he recognises the objection of the Germans to further funding and bailouts though.
Interesting Draghi went straight to Target2 reduction ("good for creditor countries") in OMT reflection answer just now though.
— Joseph Cotterill (@jsphctrl) August 1, 2013
But he generously conceded that the recovery wasn't entirely down to the OMT programme, sharing the credit in part with individual governments, whose reforms and improvements in governance had helped (a bit).
The ECB's priority must now be to repair the monetary policy transmission channels so stimulus can work effectively, he said.