MacroScope

European Central Bank  President Jean-Claude Trichet plans to keep a cool head at this weekend’s meeting of Group of Seven policymakers in Canada’s far north.

Large iceberg over Frobisher Bay

“I am very happy to go very far up, far up in the north of Canada,” he told journalists before hopping on a plane en-route to frostbitten Iqaluit, some 300 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle.

“We will have all the right environment to be as cool as possible in judging the situation.”

Local police have already said G7 visitors should not worry if they see men with rifles speeding around on snowmobiles, as the town is more usually host to hunters than foreign dignitaries.

It was a routine press conference given by Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney on the results of Friday’s G7 meeting.

After reassuring Canadian’s that they “probably have the most efficient, effective financial system in the world”, Carney was asked how Wednesday’s coordinated interest rate cut came together and who drove the process.

His answer revealed not only a “code of silence” among Central Bank leaders, but also hinted that those same leaders might have some special powers — at least if we are to believe they all independently decided an interest rate cut was a good idea at the exact same time.