ECB member and Bank of France governor, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, hit the wires this morning insisting that despite sluggish inflation, the governing council is set to stick with the plan and end QE over he near term, citing September or December as the likely cut off point, and warning that the first rate hike could come quarters, not years after the end of asset purchases. Absent some political fiasco (ahem Italy), the ECB wants to stick with the current plan of normalisation, to some degree, and on inflation alone he went on to say that the governing council view the slowdown as 'temporary' and that it expects ... (full story)