Eurosystem central bank balance sheets: strains and solutions

As the European Central Bank nears the end of its year-long period of interest rate rises, attention is now turning to forthcoming adjustments to the Eurosystem’s balance sheet, heavily swollen by eight years of quantitative easing.

OMFIF is convening an expert panel to discuss the outlook for further reinvestment or possible quantitative tightening for the Eurosystem’s bond portfolios. The latest in a series of meetings on these issues investigates the scenarios featured in the International Monetary Fund’s landmark report on central banks’ profits and losses. The report includes projections of the net income of the Eurosystem and its ‘top five’ central banks over a 10-year horizon, which suggest that losses, while large, will be temporary and recoupable.

The roundtable will also consider the legal and technical issues constraining the balance sheet policies of the Deutsche Bundesbank in view of past and current lawsuits at the German constitutional court.