(Bloomberg) -- European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said she and her counterpart at the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell exchange views, but don’t coordinate.
“We talk to each other, but we don’t coordinate, we don’t,” she told Jon Stewart in a Daily Show interview broadcast late on Monday in New York.
Lagarde spoke after the Fed cut interest rates by 50 basis points last week. The ECB has lowered borrowing costs twice — in June and September — in more traditional quarter-point steps.
“We only did 25, he did 50,” she said, referring to Powell. “But then we did it again, so that’s 50, 50.”
Inflation in the euro area has slowed markedly and is expected to continue to do so this month. Still, Lagarde didn’t give the all clear.
Asked if inflation was defeated, she said “not quite — we are getting there.”
“My target is 2%, I want to get to 2%,” Lagarde said. In August, annual consumer-price growth was at “2.2%, but I want to make sure that we are at 2% and that we stay at 2%,” she said. “We’re getting very close.”
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