Japanese minister of Finance Taro Aso early on Tuesday 8 January said his country will invest some of its huge foreign reserves in European Stability Mechanism debt paper. Japan is second only to China in foreign-exchange reserves with $1,274,160 million. Chinese foreign reserves are anything around $3.2 trillion. Almost instantly after the Taro statement the […]Japan to invest in euro values
January 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Japanese minister of Finance Taro Aso early on Tuesday 8 January said his country will invest some of its huge foreign reserves in European Stability Mechanism debt paper. Japan is second only to China in foreign-exchange reserves with $1,274,160 million. Chinese foreign reserves are anything around $3.2 trillion. Almost instantly after the Taro statement the […]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 […]Should Europe be afraid of the developing world?
January 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
China and India are undoubtedly the two heavyweights of the developing world. On their foot-steps one can categorise also Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and some more countries of South East Asia. Yes, those are the tigers of growth, based on the iron willingness of their people to secure a more or less comfortable life, after […]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 […]A very good morning in European markets
January 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Despite the fact that the American Congress endorsed the agreement needed for the US to avoid the “fiscal cliff”, the dollar didn’t seem to recover and continued on its mild downward tendency with the euro, a path that started three weeks ago, with the finalisation of Greek package. In the US the agreement negotiated between […]The Chinese solar panels suddenly became too cheap for Europe
December 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
On 6 September 2012 the European Commission introduced an anti-dumping investigation on imports of solar panels and components originating from China. Understandably the present market conditions, including selling prices of solar panels in the European Union, have been there for many years. More than ten. That is, from the moment that a number of EU […]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 […]Christmas spending: Who can afford not to cut?
November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
European Union consumers will be very careful with their Christmas gifts shopping lists this year, says an in-depth analysis of Wall Steer Journal’s Europe Edition, based mainly on data from a relevant survey of Deloitte LLP. With unemployment reaching unheard before levels above 25% in Greece and Spain and skyrocketing in other weak EU economies, the […]How many more financial crises in the West can the world stand?
November 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
“After five years of crisis the world economy is weakening again”, states bluntly the very first phrase of the editorial of OECD’s latest economic report, published on 28 November. Actually it couldn’t be differently, because the US economy doesn’t seem to respond well to therapy and Europe is in a much worse state. But let’s […]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 […]Markets are more sensitive to Greece’s woes than Merkel
November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Greece’s three official creditors, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union are actually two and in last analysis only one, the ECB. In reality all the other sixteen Eurozone governments plus the EU institutions and the IMF, haven’t given away not even one cent to Greece. They have only issued guarantees […]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 […]The undead banks
November 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
History has proved that ideology and logic (science) are in direct conflict. If you want to serve them both the outcome is usually a monster or a statement of the obvious. Take for example the soviet science, full of proletarian ideology at its apex during the Stalinist period. Its most cherished achievement was the experiments […]Lagarde’s metamorphoses, not a laughing matter
November 16, 2012 by 2 Comments
International politico-economic relations is a tricky field, with the major players constantly changing stance, according to their short term interests, putting aside whatever honourable principles are left in their decision making procedures. And all that being discussed and decided upon, by a handful of people behind closed doors. If those people were not playing with […]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 […]
