Poles apart on rate outlook

After months of pursuit, Reuters landed a game-changing interview on April 7 with Polish Monetary Policy Council member Anna Zielinska-Glebocka, who said the council might hike interest rates by up to half a point in the second half of they year even without a prior change to its informal neutral bias. This was a bombshell in central banking terms, essentially ripping up its rule book and putting markets on notice that the prior warning for monetary tightening, which they were expecting may not be forthcoming. The interview hardened market expectations of rate rises to come in Poland this year, which have propelled the zloty upwards. The icing on the cake was that Zielinska-Glebocka was speaking in our Warsaw bureau, which she was visiting for a meeting of the Thomson Reuters Economic Spot panel, a group of analysts which the bureau convenes periodically. Two days later, Reuters also was first with news of central bank intervention to weaken the zloty.