"I would not exclude them, but also not say that they necessarily come," said the central banker on Monday evening in an ORF interview. At the beginning of March, Holzmann told the German daily Handelsblatt that the European Central Bank (ECB) should raise interest rates by 50 basis points in each of its next four meetings.
"Well, what has happened in the meantime is that through these crises and aid measures, liquidity in the financial system has decreased," Holzmann said when asked on ORF television whether he was sticking to this demand in view of the recent turbulence in the banking sector. The ECB is concerned with fighting inflation, but if the shortage of liquidity on the financial markets is already showing signs of a deflationary development or a decline in inflation, there is no need to raise interest rates further, Holzmann said. "Or you can slow down the rate hike," he added.
Despite the recent turbulence, the ECB raised its key interest rate again by 0.5 points on Friday in the fight against inflation – to 3.5 percent. Previously, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the US had triggered shockwaves on the stock markets worldwide and concerns about the stability of the banking sector.
Bank bailout causes scepticism
In Europe, the billion-dollar rescue of the major Swiss bank Credit Suisse by its larger rival UBS has recently caused criticism and skepticism. The three-billion-franc emergency takeover was intended to nip a new financial crisis in the bud. However, the question arose as to whether this would not create a bank that is too big for a country like Switzerland.
Whether this is not dangerous, that the balance sheet total of the new UBS twice as large as the entire economic output of Switzerland, said Holzmann: "It could be dangerous, but it does not have to be dangerous."