mario draghi : ecb press conference – introductory statement introductory statement by mr mario draghi, president of the european central bank, and mr vitor constancio, vice - president of the european central bank, frankfurt am main, 10 march 2016. * * * ladies and gentlemen, the vice - president and i are very pleased to welcome you to our press conference. we will now report on the outcome of today ’ s meeting of the governing council, which was also attended by the commission vice - president, mr dombrovskis. based on our regular economic and monetary analyses, we have conducted a thorough review of the monetary policy stance, in which we also took into account the new macroeconomic projections by our staff extending into the year 2018. as a result, the governing council has decided on a set of measures in the pursuit of its price stability objective. this comprehensive package will exploit the synergies between the different instruments and has been calibrated to further ease financing conditions, stimulate new credit provision and thereby reinforce the momentum of the euro area ’ s economic recovery and accelerate the return of inflation to levels below, but close to, 2 %. first, as regards the key ecb interest rates, we decided to lower the interest rate on the main refinancing operations of the eurosystem by 5 basis points to 0. 00 % and the rate on the marginal lending facility by 5 basis points to 0. 25 %. the rate on the deposit facility was lowered by 10 basis points to – 0. 40 %. second, we decided to expand the monthly purchases under our asset purchase programme from €60 billion at present to €80 billion. they are intended to run until the end of march 2017, or beyond, if necessary, and in any case until the governing council sees a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation consistent with its aim of achieving inflation rates below, but close to, 2 % over the medium term. to ensure the continued smooth implementation of our asset purchases, we also decided to increase the issuer and issue share limits for the purchases of securities issued by eligible international organisations and multilateral development banks from 33 % to 50 %. third, we decided to include investment - grade euro - denominated bonds issued by non - bank corporations established in the euro area in the list of assets that are eligible for regular purchases under a new corporate sector purchase programme. this will further strengthen the pass - through of our asset purchases to the financing conditions of the real

and adjectives. this old mantra remains true in the facebook age : facebook posts are more likely to be shared the more frequent nouns and verbs and the less frequent adverbs and adjectives. the ratio of nouns and verbs to adverbs and adjectives in an elvis song is 3. 3. in my speeches it is 2. 7. smart ( 2016 ). in their classic elements of style ( 1979 ), william strunk and e b white write : “ write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. the adjective hasn ’ t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. ” all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / speeches the behavioural dimension to public language involves speaking in ways which best connect the receiver with the sender. behavioural science has given us plenty of insights into how to do that. messages wrapped in real - world narratives are more likely to stick than those wrapped in numbers. messages which are personalised are more likely to stick than those that are anonymous. and messages that are local are more likely to stick than those that are national. these maxims have been borne out in real - world experiments. personalising and localising messages has been found to increase their reach, and their chances of being acted on, in a wide variety of public policy settings : in everything from encouraging tax payments to discouraging carbon emissions ; from encouraging school attendance to discouraging crime ; from encouraging charitable giving to discouraging sugar consumption. linguistic “ nudges ” appear to work. yet localised and personalised messages often flow less easily from the mouths of central banks. for understandable reasons, they have tended to have a national rather than local focus, to weigh the objective over the emotional, to be fact rather than anecdote - based. that is all well and good. but it does carry a cost. it is hard to engage with a building. the view from 30, 000 feet can feel a little distant. excel spreadsheets do not emote. this can inhibit building trust and improving understanding. localising the message can certainly help. here, the work of the regional feds in the us and the bank ’ s regional agents in the uk is crucial. more generally, analysis of the regional and distributional split is important for understanding the economy and localising messages about how it is performing. even though monetary policy acts nationally,