ECB Dismissed Overtightening Worry as Core Inflation Debated

(Bloomberg) — Most European Central Bank policymakers agreed last month that it’s too early to start worrying about the danger of raising interest rates too far as they intensified debate on how to interpret underlying inflation.

“It was generally felt that concerns of ‘overtightening’ were premature,” an account of their February meeting showed. “Given the still substantial distance to the prospective terminal rate, there continued to be value – from a risk management perspective – in frontloading rate hikes.”

Officials took a closer look than usual at the signs shown by so-called core inflation, mentioning the term twice as often this time as they did in the written record of their December meeting.

That discussion will now be informed by an unexpected surge in the underlying consumer-price gauge to a new record of 5.6% in euro-zone data also released on Thursday.

“Core inflation had surprised slightly on the upside,” the account cited officials as saying, though “recent dynamics of core inflation showed that there had been a leveling-off of momentum.”

Officials debated how much weight to place on the gauge, which excludes volatile elements such as food and energy.

“Caution was expressed against focusing too much on measures of core inflation,” the account said. “Indeed, some elements of core inflation could move quite quickly, as seen from the experience in the United States.”

A surprise rebound in inflation has prompted investors to price in a more hawkish path for ECB interest rates, which are now seen peaking at 4%. The next meeting, in two weeks’ time, will almost certainly conclude with a half-point hike. Beyond that, calls are growing to maintain the same pace, rather drop down to smaller increments as some had been suggesting just weeks ago.

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