Waiting for an interest rate cut would have been justifiable for Volker Wieland (Tagesschau.de, NZZ)

At its June meeting, the ECB decided, as expected, to cut its key interest rates by 25 basis points. The deposit rate that banks receive for money parked with the ECB is now 3.75%. The interest rate at which banks can borrow money from the central bank is 4.25 percent. The ECB is aiming for an inflation rate of 2 percent for the euro area. Following the rise in inflation as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the inflation rate is far from its peak of 10.6% in October 2022, but the decline is not as expected: The ECB's economists revised their inflation forecasts for 2024 and 2025 upwards.

The “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” also reports on the ECB's interest rate turnaround and the first interest rate cut since 2019 and uses an example calculation by Wieland to describe how purchasing power has fallen from 1999 to 2021: “For a basket of goods that cost 100 euros in 1999, for example, buyers had to pay 140 euros in 2021, monetary policy expert Volker Wieland from Goethe University in Frankfurt recently calculated. Due to the very high inflation of the last two years, the price has jumped to 170 euros today. This purchasing power has been lost without wage increases and people's prosperity has fallen."

Tagesschau.de: "EZB senkt Leitzins auf 4,25 Prozent"
Neue Zürcher Zeitung: "Die EZB vollzieht die Zinswende und reduziert erstmals seit 2019 die Leitzinsen"

Die Beispielrechnung von Prof. Volker Wieland im Vortrag der Stiftung Marktwirtschaft (Video)