Parallel downfalls of Merkel and Deutsche Bank threaten Germany and Europe

Only a few years ago, Germany’s stars of pride and accomplishment were personified and embodied in the unparalleled triumphant stories and achievements of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Deutsche Bank. They both had amazed Europe and the world, with their successes in the politico-economic universe. Until the legislative elections of September 2017, and probably sometime earlier […]

Is Germany closer to Russia than the West? Nord Stream II and Iran count more

Last Friday, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, rushed to Sochi, the Black Sea seaside Russian resort to meet Vladimir Putin. It was the first visit by a Western leader to meet him at home, after his fourth inauguration on 7 May as President of the vast country, this time for six more years. Looking through […]

Germany caught with selfish double standards in euro area policy

Over the past three years the European Central Bank, guided by its President Mario Draghi, has been folowing a super relaxed monetary policy. It has been aiming at reviving uncertain economic growth and dying inflation, by handing out to banks, and through them to the economy, hundreds of billions of euro and at the same […]

The ECB again takes care of the bankers not the people

Last week the European Central Bank surprised everybody by letting it be known that interest rates will “remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time, and well past the horizon of our net asset purchases”. To be noted, presently, the main refinancing operations interest rate is zero. Of course, the markets […]

Trailing the US-EU economic confrontation

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 Americans are preparing for the next financial crisis

Last week, Janet Yellen, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in more than one ways revealed that the American central bank prepares to confront the next financial downturn. On Wednesday, 28 September, speaking at the House Financial Services Committee in Washington D.C. , she defended the Fed’s rigorous supervision over […]

Commission paralysed before the banking leviathan

Although the “Structural reform of the EU banking sector”, as proposed yesterday by European Commission member Michel Barnier, undoubtedly goes halfway to fulfilling the suggestions of the Erkki Liikanen High Level Group Report, it agitated people on both sides of the spectrum. Those who protect the banks by profession said it is ‘irresponsible’, and those […]

The German banks first to profit from public subsidies of trillions

The German banks in the north of the country seem to face grave problems. Yesterday the European Commission was forced to approve more state aid to Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (NORD/LB). This is a German Landesbank, one of the largest commercial banks in the country, which serves as central institution to savings banks in the German […]

German banks suffer of nausea amidst rough seas

Earlier this week, Dr Andreas Dombret, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, responsible for financial stability and risk controlling, delivered an open lecture in Hamburg, entitled “In the year 2013 – Challenges from a financial stability perspective” . Apart from the burning questions he posed for a number of Eurozone countries’ sovereign debt, […]