Forex Flash: Central bank policies open-ended – NAB

FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - According to Group Chief Economist Alan Oster at NAB, "The ECB's announcement of a new arrangement to purchase Euro-zone sovereign debt and the Fed's decisions to implement a third round of quantitative easing has boosted markets."

Neither the Fed nor the ECB have set explicit limits on these new programs - the Fed's QE3 will last until the outlook for the labor market "improves substantially" and the ECB's Governor has said that "there are no ex-ante limits" on its new plan to buy Euro-member sovereign bonds. Following this, the Bank of Japan lifted its existing scheme to buy Government bills and bonds by another 10 trillion yen to 80 trillion yen.

The CPB's monthly estimate of global industrial output and trade show the pace of growth slowing through the first 6 months of the year. The quarterly pace of growth in world industrial output slipped from 1.8% in the March quarter to zero in June but the preliminary numbers for July show it picking up slightly. The slowdown is broad-based with industrial growth close to zero in the emerging market economies and the big advanced economies moving into an industrial downturn.