In principle, the modern central bank has only one function: to monetize the ever-increasing national debt of socialist states and thus keep the credit cycle alive. You can safely forget all the fuss about stability criteria, inflation targets etc. when it comes to helping the political buddies out of the shit once again. The representatives of the European Central Bank recently declared the fight against inflation a victory in order to be able to lower key interest rates and provide more liquidity just in time for the middle of the year. In principle, the aim is to be able to keep adding new government bonds to the balance sheet; the interest rate hype surrounding this is just window dressing. Inflation figures of the individual eurozone members have by no means reached the desired target, they are rising in the wake of the massive liquidity jumps in Asia, commodity inflation, the geopolitical crises and the high sovereign debt in Europe.

By the way: these are the official inflation numbers. And anybody who still needs to pay for his life by himself knows that they simply are made up.