IMF economists, Kalpana Kochhar and Roberto Perrelli, in their study entitled “How Emerging Markets Can Get Their Groove Back”, posted yesterday by iMFdirect, give a rather frightening response to this question. They conclude that “we estimate that emerging market’s “potential” growth needs to be revised down”. IMF Economic counsellor and director of the Research Department, […]Preparing for developing countries the ‘Greek cure’
October 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment
IMF economists, Kalpana Kochhar and Roberto Perrelli, in their study entitled “How Emerging Markets Can Get Their Groove Back”, posted yesterday by iMFdirect, give a rather frightening response to this question. They conclude that “we estimate that emerging market’s “potential” growth needs to be revised down”. IMF Economic counsellor and director of the Research Department, […]American negotiators can’t pay for their trip to Brussels, EU-US trade agreement freezes
October 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Quite unexpectedly, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht announced yesterday night the cancellation of 2nd Round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in Brussels, due to the US administration shutdown. His counterpart, United States Trade Representative Ambassador Michael Froman informed him that “due to the ongoing furlough, the US Administration will not be […]Parliament to ask for the suspension of EU-US deal on bank data
October 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The members of Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) of the European Parliament and the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström will discuss on Wednesday 9 October the possibility to ask for the suspension or even the termination of the EU-US agreement on the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP). This action will come as a response […]Snowden is the “EU nomination” for this year’s Oscars
September 30, 2013 by 4 Comments
After last June’s revelations about the PRISM scandal you can actually feel it that the air in world politics has less oxygen. The leaders of the major world powers, EU, USA and Russia faced severe respiratory issues during this period. Obama is still suffering from severe panic attacks, Putin broke the window to get some […]EU deserves the title of the Syrian affair merchandiser
September 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
With the US-Russian agreement on chemical weapons in Syria the world economy and more so Europe avoided a new blow, at a time when the resumption of business activities, especially in the European south, prove to be more fragile than expected. There is no doubt that this development defused the tensions which run high after […]IMF’s Lagarde to Peoples of the world: You have to work more for the banks!
September 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, delivered a speech recently during this year’s Jackson Hole Symposium, praising the Unconventional Monetary Policies (UMP) followed by the central banks to save the world from a great depression, similar to the one of 1929. The risk was real as Lagarde noted but she didn’t […]OECD: Mind the financial gap that lies ahead
September 10, 2013 by 1 Comment
A rather disappointing picture of the world economy drew OECD Deputy Chief Economist Jorgen Elmeskov last week, when he said that “The gradual pick-up in momentum in the advanced economies is encouraging but a sustainable recovery is not yet firmly established. Major risks remain”. If it was not for China’s predicted growth during the last […]Europe united in not supporting a US attack on Syria
September 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Linas Linkevičius, whose country is currently holding the rotating president of the EU Council, during the workings of last Saturday’s informal meeting of the 28 Foreign Affairs ministers in Vilnius supported so openly and provocatively the US positions on Syria, to the point that only his tiny and deeply anti-Russian country […]Obama turns the G20 summit into warmongering platform
September 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In an unprecedented move the American President Barack Obama asked yesterday all and each one of the G20 leaders participating in the Saint Petersburg summit to back ‘his’ war against Syria by signing a paper (joint declaration) authorising the US to use military force. This is an attempt by the US to neutralise the United […]Why Obama asks approval from Congress to bomb Syria?
September 2, 2013 by 1 Comment
The fact that the American President Barack Obama unexpectedly decided to “seek authorisation for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress”, in order to launch an attack against the Syrian government forces, is the first direct and open recognition of the limits of the American military and political supremacy, after the […]What lessons to draw from the destruction of Syria
August 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Three major Middle East countries, Iraq, Egypt and Syria are in a transitory phase or in deadly civil war and all of them being threatened with effective partitioning. After Iraq, the US supported actively by Britain, is now planning an attack to Syria which will certainly lead to a partitioning of the country. In this […]Does the West play the Syrian game in Egypt?
August 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The Americans after having managed to become the target of aggressive rhetoric from all sides of the Egyptian political spectrum they now try to enter again in the picture behind the European Union. To this effect the US Secretary of State, John Kerry and the European Union High Representative, Catherine Ashton issued a joint statement […]ECB guarantees the liquidity of the Atlantic financial volume
August 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
There is no doubt that the European Central Bank is determined not only to continue supporting Eurozone’s real economy with liquidity at almost zero interest rate cost for as long as it needs to achieve tangible growth, but by the same token it appears ready to succeed the American Fed in keeping the western financial […]Two EU Commissioners fire at will against the US
July 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
From both sides of the Atlantic Ocean two European Commissioners, Michel Barnier from Washington and Vivian Reding from Heidelberg, while addressing yesterday quite different audiences, sent out converging messages criticising the US. They both expressed novel views vis-à-vis EU–US relations in general, which can be interpreted as hardening of Commission’s position in reference to on-going […]Who and why want the EU-US trade agreement here and now
July 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In the brief period of one week the European Union and the United States concluded last Friday in Washington the first round of talks for a major Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that is their bilateral free trade agreement. The time schedule of this grandiose endeavour is unbelievably short, given the magnitude of the […]The US repelled EU proposals on common rules for banks
July 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Commission and more precisely the European Commissioner Michel Barnier fights a battle in two fronts over the financial sector’s future. One internal with Germany on EU banking union and another one external with the US on common rules for banks. Understandably in both fronts he has the full backing of the Commission and […]ECB is about to lend trillions to banks
July 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The institutionalisation of the Single Resolution Mechanism to deal with failing banks, a new tool to complement ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), two cornerstones in building the European Banking Union, cannot be accomplished correctly, if member states were allowed directly or indirectly to support with public money their failing or about to fail banks, in […]Why the ECB suddenly decided to flood banks with money?
July 10, 2013 by 1 Comment
It was not a coincidence that the Governing Council of the European Central Bank suddenly decided unanimously last week to further relax its monetary policy promising more and cheaper loans to all banks, exactly at a time when the US central bank, the Fed, is about to start calling back the trillions of dollars it […]Bugged Europe accepts US demands and blocks Morales plane
July 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
If the plane of a European Union head of state or government, while passing over a Latin American country, had been forced to land by the country’s military and civil authorities, and then searched for 15 hours, say by the Bolivian police and secret agencies, the entire EU political establishment would have climbed at the […]EU-US trade talks go ahead despite Prism and civil rights breach
July 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Apart from the largely hypocritical cries by European politicians mainly in Brussels about civil rights breaches, the only concrete and immediate implications that the American PRISM scandal could have had on EU-US relations refers to the Free Trade and Investments Agreement that the two sides are about to negotiate. For one thing European citizens are […]EU-US trade agreement talks to be affected by American bugs
July 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Bugging EU institutions’ premises and members states’ offices in the US by American secret agencies may seriously affect the progress of negotiations for the conclusion of a Free Trade and Investments Agreement between the two largest trading partners of the world. While the first reactions by EU dignitaries, after the revealing publications by Der Spiegel […]EU: 13 major banks may pay fines 10% of worldwide turnover
July 3, 2013 by 2 Comments
In a long-awaited decision, Joaquín Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy, accused thirteen western giant investment banking groups and two support bodies that those banks created a trust, setting prices in the over the counter trade of Credit Default Swaps and Derivatives, a multi trillion business. The Commission’s investigation covers […]The US bugged Europe: Is this news?
July 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
It took a new wave of publications by major European media (Der Spiegel, Guardian) about the bugging of EU’s and EU member states’ offices in the US by the American secret services, to wake up the European Union leaders. Yesterday all three European Union presidents and at least two Commission vice presidents issued statements asking […]Counting spillovers from the fast track EU-US free trade agreement
June 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In a day when the US economy got good marks from the IMF for growth and the appropriate monetary easing by the Fed, last Friday 14 June the Foreign Affairs (trade) Council of the European Union also gave the green light to the European Commission to enter into formal bilateral trade negotiations with the United […]EU Parliament shows its teeth in view of 2014 elections
May 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
One year ahead of the European Parliament elections and the legislators are showing to the Commission and the Council their teeth, which have been sharpened by the Treaty of Lisbon. Practically nothing can be done in the European Union without the consent of the Parliament. A trilateral agreement (Parliament, Council and Commission) is needed on […]The G7 fails to agree on growth but protects the big banks
May 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Once more the world got together in the G7 group of the industrialised nations and asked Germany to spend more in order to help the rest of the Eurozone and the globe start growing again. The last time was in Washington during the Spring Conference of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where […]Commission: Do it like the Americans in the food sector
May 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Only some weeks after the European Union consumers learned that they were eating low quality and contaminated with phenylbutazone horse meat, having paid for it as if it was prime quality beef, the Commission chooses to release its proposal for a new Directive, providing for less controls and higher fines and charges. The new legislation […]Hostages to a rampant banking system
April 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Commission presented yesterday its European Financial Stability and Integration Report (EFSIR) at a joint conference with the European Central Bank (ECB) in Brussels. Overall, the report concludes that “despite improvements, the financial crisis continued to exert a significant impact in holding back economic growth in 2012”. Earlier today, Friday 26 April, the European […]EU Council: The US airlines may freely pollute the European air
April 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Union dignitaries could at least have waited for the American Secretary of State, John Kerry, to leave Brussels before offering him yesterday our European dignity as a gift, for his first official visit to the EU capital city. The day that Kerry set his foot on Brussels, the European Council revoked the obligation […]Everybody for himself in G20 and IMF
April 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The G20 meeting of this last weekend evolved in the shadow of the confrontation between the US Secretary of Treasury, Jack Lew and the German Federal minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble. Obviously the subject of this antithesis was the reluctance of Eurozone to apply the American recipe for economic growth. That is the issue of […]EU Parliament raises burning issues over the FTA with the US
February 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday, the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee discussed for the first time, the much advertised joint announcement by the EU and the US, to start negotiations for the conclusion of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement. As the European Sting predicted the FTA negotiators would be confronted with two very old and very thorny issues. According […]The US reject EU proposal for prudential financial controls
February 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The North Atlantic economic volume, comprising mainly Eurozone and Britain on the one side and US and Canada on the other constitute the largest almost uniform playfield. Of the two sides, however, the more dependant on the rest of the world is the American one and more precisely the US, with its huge double deficits, […]Does the EU want GMOs and meat with hormones from the US?
February 11, 2013 by 2 Comments
The prospective drafting of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Union and the United States is developing into a major issue and as things evolved last week, it seems that this may lead the EU into a new division, between France on the one side and the free trade lovers Britain and […]
