To be fair, she could use better choice of words here if she wants to sound more assuring. But in all likelihood, it looks like she wants to maintain optionality in her decision. How typical of a central banker these days, eh?
The key word in her answer that is baseline. As we all know, there’s baseline scenarios to just about anything. However, it doesn’t mean that the actual outcome follows said baseline. And in her own semantics, Lagarde will definitely argue it that way if and when the time comes for her to leave the central bank earlier than her term dictates.
As a reminder, it is speculated that Lagarde will depart from the ECB possibly before April next year. That is to say before the French presidential elections take place. As such, it will allow for Macron and other key EU members to nominate their preferred candidate of choice in replacing Lagarde as ECB president.
