European Central Bank council member Axel Weber said the ECB should help banks through end-of-year liquidity tensions before determining in the first quarter when to withdraw emergency lending measures.
âMost of these discussions about the continuation of the exit I think will be focused on the first quarter,â Weber, who heads Germanyâs Bundesbank, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Frankfurt yesterday. âItâs clear that we need to re-embark on a normalization procedure.â
The comments suggest the ECB is growing more confident that the euro region is coping with its sovereign debt crisis after Germany powered the 16-nation bloc to its fastest economic growth since 2006 in the second quarter. By contrast, the Federal Reserve was this month forced to announce fresh measures to shore up a stuttering U.S. economy.