Many Central banks To increase, chose last year Key interest ratesIn order to try to respond to the higher rate inflammation. For example, this has happened in the Eurozone, the United States and the United Kingdom, which, however, have decided to take the “foot off the accelerator”. However, Japan’s central bank remains firm, with the key interest rate remaining in negative territory since 2016.
In the most recent meetings, central banks have shown signs of interest rate stabilization:
- The European Central Bank (ECB), after ten consecutive increases, maintained the key refinancing rate at 4.5% and will continue to do so until December 14, the date of the next monetary policy meeting;
- The US Federal Reserve (Fed) announced that it would keep benchmark interest rates unchanged between 5.25% and 5.5%, the second pause in a row after a series of increases that began in March 2022;
- The Bank of England also recently revealed that it has kept key interest rates at 5.25% for the second time in a row, after several increases over the past year.
In the opposite direction, as you can see in the Statista image, is Bank of Japan (BCJ), which started using a zero interest rate strategy in the 1990s, has maintained this policy with greater enthusiasm than the ECB, which maintained interest rates at 0% until the middle of last year (June 2022). However, the BCJ went further and opted for a negative interest rate policy from 2016 as the country struggled with chronic problems of economic growth and deflation. Currently, the ratio remains Negative-0.1%.
