Yesterday the European Central Bank released data on Eurozone bank deposits and loans for December 2012. According to this report deposits by households and the non financial business sector increased during 2012 by at least 4%, while the loans to private sector (non-financial businesses and households) continued to decrease. The diverging direction of increasing […]Banks suffocate the real economy by denying loans
January 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday the European Central Bank released data on Eurozone bank deposits and loans for December 2012. According to this report deposits by households and the non financial business sector increased during 2012 by at least 4%, while the loans to private sector (non-financial businesses and households) continued to decrease. The diverging direction of increasing […]Eurozone’s sovereign debt not a problem anymore?
January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Understandably sovereign debt statistics for Eurozone and the EU have become most crucial over the past five years, not only for the implicated countries but also for the global financial community. Until recently a bad spell over Greece’s prospects concerning its government debt could send all and every world market to a downwards spiral. And […]EU: Centralised economic governance and bank supervision may lead to new crisis
January 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In the first Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) of the year on January 22, the two first and more important items on the agenda were the “enhanced economic governance and policy coordination” (the “two-pack” economic governance) and secondly the “financial regulation and bank supervision”. On both accounts the Council made giant steps forward setting […]Financial transactions tax gets go ahead
January 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Sting on Saturday 19 January wrote that, the “The ECOFIN Council is expected on Tuesday 22 January to adopt the Commission’s proposal to authorise enhanced cooperation on the Financial Transactions Tax”. Indeed today 22 January 2013, the Ecofin Council adopted a decision authorising eleven member states to go ahead with enhanced cooperation on […]Cyprus banks under scrutiny
January 21, 2013 by 1 Comment
Eurozone’s support to Cyprus is not on the agenda of todays’ Eurogroup, the council of the 17 Eurozone ministers of Finance, nor will this issue be discussed in tomorrows’ Ecofin, the council of the 27 EU economic ministers. This is a clear sign that there will not be any decision on this problem until the […]Jeroen Dijsselbloem new Eurogroup president
January 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
According to an official announcement of the Council of the European Union, on 21 January, the Eurogroup, the council of the 17 Eurozone ministers of Finance appointed its new president, the Dutch Minister of Finance Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Dijsselbloem takes over from Jean-Claude Juncker, minister of Finance and Prime Minister of Luxembourg, and will hold the […]Trade surplus up production down in Eurozone
January 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Despite the apparent slow-down of the world economy and the drop of external demand for Eurozone products the first estimates by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, show a hefty trade surplus of €13.7 billion for the 17 countries single money zone in November 2012. Not all news however was positive for Eurozone in November. Industrial […]Eurozone: How can 200 banks find €400 billion?
January 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) considers that Eurozone banks need to strengthen their capital accounts by at least €400 billion in order to reach a viable capital to assets coverage ratio of 5%. The good news from OECD however is that its economist estimate that the single money EU zone seems to have […]France: New labour laws for more competitiveness
January 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Only hours had passed, after Olli Rehn, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs early in the morning of Friday 11 January in Brussels had accused France of doing little to regain its lost competitiveness, and in Paris during the same afternoon three labour unions agreed with employers on a package deal […]ECB to support only banks not Peoples
January 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In two different articles the European Sting yesterday made important references and observations on the policy lines followed by the European Central bank. ECB’s double standards Maria Milouv in her article entitled, “European financial values on the rise”, commented as follows: “With the prospect of a further reduction of ECB’s interest rates appearing now more distant […]IMF: Sorry Greece, Ireland, Portugal we were wrong!
January 5, 2013 by 3 Comments
Sorry Greece, Ireland and Portugal says now the International Monetary Fund, we have grossly underestimated the negative effect on your economies, from our draconian austerity policies we recommended two years ago. This unbelievably blatant recognition, that the Fund, together with the EU Commission and the European Central Bank are applying wrong policies to the over-borrowed […]A new European banking space is born this year
January 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The year 2013 can be termed as the European banking year, after the last EU Summit of heads of governments and states decided on 13 December to create a unified bank supervision and auditing space, under the European Central Bank in 24 out of the 27 countries, at the exemption of Britain, Sweden and the […]At last a good price for the Greek debt!
December 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Greece and its Eurozone masters once more took by surprise all and every financial market, by offering a generous buy back price for the country’s outstanding debt held by the private sector, mainly banks, pension funds and speculators. In more details on Monday 3 December the Greek debt management agency (ODHX) announced that Athens calls on […]Bundestag kick starts the next episode of the Greek tragedy
November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
It’s quite astonishing to watch the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voting on Friday 30 November, with the overwhelming majority of 473 deputies in 584 present, saying yes to a third in a row aid programme for Greece, while all the major media insist, that the public opinion in this country is against any help Berlin should […]What happens when the Eurogroup decides to help Greece
November 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Once more Eurozone and Greece made it. Using “creative accounting” they agreed that the over indebted country’s loan load will be drastically reduced after one…decade! Says the Eurogroup statement of 27 November 2012 on Greece: …in 2022 the debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio will be substantially lower than 110%. But this is just […]How Greece was destroyed
November 24, 2012 by 1 Comment
Right from the beginning, the scenario of the Greek financial tragedy was criticised as fake. Towards the end of 2009, the newly elected government of George Papandreou, son and grandson of prime ministers, found out that his PASOK socialist party had won the election on populist promises that could not be fulfilled. Papandreou […]On the euro but out of it?
November 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The fact that Greece reached the exit of Eurozone more than once during the past months and a Grexit (exit of Greece from Eurozone) is still not excluded did not stop the European Central Bank from keeping the country on the euro. This time however for decorative reasons. The ECB used the most ancient depiction […]Long live Eurozone’s bank supervisor down with the EU budget supremo
November 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment
EU leaders in their last summit of mid-October appeared ready to make another systemic blunder. After creating a limping Eurozone, with a common currency but not common rules for sovereign debt issues, now they discuss the institutionalisation of a common EU budget and a Brussels “supremo of Finance”. And all that with no political legitimacy. […]The world to teach Germans to…un-German
September 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Italians and Greeks are trained tax dodgers for millennia now, while Spanish banks lately discovered how to usurp their depositors’ money. No wonder then why the three Mediterranean nations found it difficult to endure the Teutonic straight euro money jacket. As for the Portuguese and the Irish they both followed those Med attitudes and the […]Eurozone again whipped by Greek winds
June 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The details of Private Sector Participation (PSI) in the haircut of the Greek debt is presently the critical issue, on which will be judged not only the prospects of Athens regaining sometime in 2015 the possibility of self-financing its debts, but the outcome of negotiations over the PSI will also define the overall abilities of […]
