During this period, the Federal Reserve implemented several phases of quantitative easing. In turn, the sharp depreciation of the euro against the dollar from mid-2014 to mid-2015 correlates with the adoption by the ECB of an accommodative monetary strategy, including asset purchase programmes, a negative deposit rate, forward guidance and targeted long-term refinancing operations.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 12.0 percent in the second quarter and 7.1 percent in the third quarter of this year. The unemployment rate improved from the peak of 17.6 percent in April last year to 8.9 percent in September this year. Inflation decelerated to 4.6 percent last October, bringing the average in the first 10 months of this year to 4.5 percent.