The major highlight on today’s economic docket is definitely going to be the European Central bank rate decision and the customary post-decision conference deliver by ECB president Mario Draghi.
The EU and specifically Italy have been in the limelight these past days after the European Commission required Italy to rewrite its budget, and gave it three weeks to do so based on a negative opinion, deviating from earlier commitments made by Italy and potentially also not in sync with EZ rules.
It seems like an uphill struggle as members of the Italian government have implied they will not give up will not change budget despite making it clear that they do not want to leave the euro or the european union.
The losses suffered by the euro on Wednesday seem to have found a temporary floor as we await for the ECB event later today. The single currency hasn’t been helped by recent softer data out of the region.
EURUSD is currently at 1.1414 after closing at 1.1391 on Wednesday.
Issues with Italy are not expected to have a bearing on today’s ECB communication or of future ECB policy, at least thus far.
Later this afternoon we will also have US Durable goods orders reported for September.
