BIS Review 67/2006  3  As President Trichet 1 remarked during a lecture at the Banco de España in early June, other central banks, such as the US Federal Reserve system, changed interest rates more frequently and by larger amounts during the 1999-2006 period than the ECB.
This is very clear on this slide, which shows the MRO rates in blue and the target Federal funds rate in red. While phases of interest rate hikes and decreases broadly coincide on both sides of the Atlantic, the Eurosystem modified interest rates 18 times from 1999 until today, while Federal Reserve changes were about twice as frequent (35).