Labour Force, Australia, March 2026

Ms Schnabel started her presentation by noting that the period after the Governing Council’s previous monetary policy meeting on 4-5 February 2026 could be divided into two distinct phases. In the first phase, up to the start of the war in the Middle East, the low-volatility and strong risk appetite environment had remained in place. In the second phase, when energy prices had surged in response to the war, volatility had increased in equity markets and especially in bond markets, and there had been sell-offs in both risk asset markets and bond markets. Brent crude oil prices had surged above USD 100 per barrel to levels last seen after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Natural gas prices had also increased substantially, but had remained well below their 2022 levels. At the same time, the Brent crude oil futures curve had shown historically high backwardation – a strong negative slope – suggesting that traders were expecting the spike in oil prices to be reversed quickly. However, over time traders had pared back expectations of a swift reversal of the spike in energy prices. Since the beginning of the war, the Brent crude oil futures curve had gradually shifted upwards and stood visibly above the curve that had prevailed shortly after it started. ECB ACCOUNTS: RISK OF UNDERSHOOTING THE TARGET HAD DISAPPEARED FOR THE TIME BEING ... ECB ACCOUNTS: THE STARTING POSITION FOR INFLATION WAS MUCH MORE FAVOURABLE NOW THAN IT HAD BEEN IN 2022 ECB PUBLISHES ACCOUNT OF MARCH 18-19 POLICY MEETING: *ECB OFFICIALS SAW WEAKER EURO AS UPSIDE RISK TO INFLATION *ECB OFFICIALS: WAR FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED INFLATION OUTLOOK *ECB OFFICIALS SAW ENERGY DISRUPTION POTENTIALLY LASTING MONTHS

At the monetary policy assessment of 17 and 18 March 2026, the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank decided to leave the SNB policy rate unchanged at 0%. The SNB communicated its monetary policy decision to the public on 19 March 2026. The decision was preceded by an analysis and discussion of the monetary policy conditions and the economic ...

Since our last update (published March 23rd) the Reserve Bank of New Zealand held a policy rate meeting where they opted to keep the Official Cash Rate unchanged at 2.25%. This was in line with our own forecast and with market expectations. At that meeting, the RBNZ took the unusual step of publishing updated inflation forecasts, which they usually only do ...