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The US and China agreed to hold talks on 7-8 January in Beijing to settle their trade differences, which have already eaten into both economies and disturb the global financial universe. If they fail to agree this week, the impact will be worse. It seems things are so bad, that the US Federal Reserve Chairman […]
It seems the US-China trade conflict, if not full scale trade war, is entering the phase of no return. Nothing will be as before in the economic and otherwise relations between the two largest economies of the world. Washington appears ready to push its cause to the end, while Beijing still pretends not to understand […]
Last Friday, Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, said from China, where she was on official visit, that in seven weeks she will have a Brexit transition deal with the EU. Surely, nobody believes her. The reason is that her Tory governing party is so deeply split over the Brexit terms, up to the point […]
If last Friday’s Reuters report from Brussels is correct and Theresa May and Donald Tusk agreed to solve the Brexit dead-end in ten days, then the wild Brexiteers must have retreated and the orderly exit side has won the first round. Tusk, the President of the European Council said in a tweet that he told […]
Last Saturday 8 July the Belgian newspaper De Standaard published an interview with Peter Praet, Member of the Executive Board and chief economist of the European Central Bank. Praet said it plainly “We do say that we still need a long period of accommodative policy before we are ready”. What he means by ‘being ready’ […]
European Commission’s decision to ban the Deutsche Börse – London Stock Exchange merger, on the one hand solved a long list of problems it could have triggered, in view of and after the Brexit. On the other hand though, this decision has created probably as many issues, because London is the long established low cost […]
In the short period after the 8 November election that brought him to the Oval Office of the White House for the next four years, President – elect Donald Trump has more or less outlined the policy mix he is going to implement as from 20 January. His choices for key government positions and his […]
From Beijing and Tehran to Brussels and London, and further away to Mexico City and Caracas the night of 8 November will create a landmark in contemporary world history. The results of the US election and the new occupant of the White House in Washington D.C will certainly affect the way the world turns around. […]
More than one economic pundit felt relieved learning that Eurostat, the EU statistical service last Friday estimated the September CPI inflation in Eurozone at 0.4%, the highest level in two years. Understandably, they think that the stagnating and almost deflationary euro area is leaving behind its grim past, aided by ECB’s liquidity injections of €80 […]
The choice made by a bit more than half of the adult Britons to exit the European Union has already triggered financial and political turmoil. In a short while the direct impact on people’s lives will start to materialize. Let’s count the most important adverse effects: the financial markets turmoil, the international trade fallout, the […]
It has become commonplace to state that the European economy still doesn’t fare well after six years of recession or practical stagnation. For good reasons however in the past few days the horizon looked particularly darkened. Negative statistical evidence and meandering statements by key people are indicative of that. Inflation or rather disinflation statistics, persistently […]
Last Thursday 7 April, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) concluded that there is “No successful reform of the Economic and Monetary Union without a regional dimension”. Indirectly, this means the EMU remains a system just to support the banking industry. In other words, the banks are still completely unregulated, high flying and counting […]
The European Central Bank announced last week that under its extraordinary Asset Purchase Program (APP), it has injected €712.3 billion into the euro area financial system until January this year. Out of that, €544.2bn are Eurozone government and public entities bonds, bought under the Public Sector Purchase Program (PSPP). This last plan was decided in […]
The Iowa US presidential candidate nomination race results in both the Republican and the Democrat vote, proved that in the US politics still matter. The populist, unpredictable and apolitical billionaire Donald Trump was largely defeated by Ted Cruz, a super conservative Texas politician. On the other side Hillary Clinton the champion of the American business […]
On Thursday 7n January this newspaper commented that behind the capital markets selloff, which shook the financial world in the first week of this year, were the financial moguls who want to impose their terms to central banks and mainly the American Fed. Since then stock markets keep losing a lot of grounds every day. […]
Undoubtedly, Mario Draghi’s speeches and comments are being carefully monitored, analyzed and discounted by government decision makers, capital market experts and of course the Press. Invariably, this was the case last week, when the President of the European Central Bank appeared before the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. ECB’s accountability to the European […]
Last week five of the world largest banks, JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland and Union de Banques Suisses were fined by the American magistrates a total of $ 4.7 billion for rigging interest rate benchmarks. The banks had been setting those standards by themselves for five years after 2007. In another case the […]
How come and despite the fact that bankers systematically and quite openly cheat hundreds of millions of people, usurping trillions from them, and the only ones of that trade that have been locked up in a penitentiary are the bosses of the three Icelandic banks Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, which went bankrupt in 2008? All […]
Last week the European Commission ruthlessly wrote the last chapter of the Slovenian financial tragedy. In it, this nation of only two million people was forced by Brussels to save with around €7 billion of taxpayers’ money (a bit less than one tenth of GDP) the overgrown, reckless, aggressive even fraudulent banking system of this […]
Two unrelated at first reading, but in reality very closely connected developments, materialised this week. On the one side it’s the new fall of industrial producer prices in February 2014 (deflation), while on the other, Germany surprised everybody by adopting, for the first time in its economic history, a compulsory minimum wage, expected to be […]
Iceland has two very good reasons to freeze its EU accession talks until the tiny country holds a referendum on it. Icelanders think twice when it comes to money and fish. On money their views differ widely from what the EU thinks about it and when it comes to fish, Iceland also has quite diverging […]
Olli Rehn, Vice-President of the EU Commission responsible for the economy and euro and Yves Mersch, member of the executive board of the European Central Bank both delivered speeches yesterday in the European Forum Alpbach 2013, set in the breathtaking Alpine landscape. A very convenient excuse for an escape to Tirol. The European Forum Alpbach […]
The public outcry against bankers at last produced some tangible results in Brussels. According to a ground-breaking agreement struck between the European Parliament and the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, bankers’ bonuses are capped at the double of their annual salaries. Secondly the capital requirements of the banks are increased to […]
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