Growth forecasts were revised down. Experience suggested that the mood should have been more buoyant. Policy was accommodating the recovery from the global and European financial crises. There was a fall in commodity prices, particularly oil prices (Graph 1). Declines in oil prices are typically seen as expansionary, because they often imply that supply has increased, and this was precisely what OPEC was doing.
Lucas Papademos: Interview with Corriere della Sera Interview with Mr Lucas Papademos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, conducted by Ms Marika de Feo (Corriere della Sera), Frankfurt, 31 March 2005. Corriere della Sera publishes an abstract of the text below.