The International Monetary Fund questions the efforts of the European Union to establish effective fiscal discipline policy instruments and a smoothly functioning banking union in the euro area. In a survey entitled “More Fiscal Integration to Boost Euro Area Resilience”, the Fund analysts observe that “Crisis exposed important gaps in architecture of the euro area”. […]What is the IMF telling Eurozone about fiscal and banking unification?
September 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The International Monetary Fund questions the efforts of the European Union to establish effective fiscal discipline policy instruments and a smoothly functioning banking union in the euro area. In a survey entitled “More Fiscal Integration to Boost Euro Area Resilience”, the Fund analysts observe that “Crisis exposed important gaps in architecture of the euro area”. […]Germany: A grand coalition may trouble employers and bankers
September 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The very likely formation of a grand coalition government in Germany, led by the CDU-CSU Christian democrats, under Chancellor Angela Merkel and comprising the SPD socialists, will not be without tangible results in at least two crucial fronts. The wages of Germany’s hard working millions and the long overdue rearrangement of Eurozone’s banking system, are […]Draghi: A bridge from Brussels to Berlin
September 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Past the German elections, the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, must have left free to take some steps forward in his quest for the accomplishment of the European Banking Union, and promote the defragmentation of Eurozone’s financial markets. Speaking yesterday in a hearing at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of […]Is Eurozone heading for disinflation?
September 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Under different circumstances a drop of inflation to 1.3% could have been a cause for celebration. It’s not like that now. The fall of the inflation rate to that level in August is a rather negative development. However averages on many instances hide the truth. Eurozone countries in deep recession like Greece and Cyprus or […]Landmark EU Parliament – ECB agreement on bank supervision
September 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In a ground breaking development opening the way to the European Banking Union, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank undersigned the draft text of an Interinstitutional Agreement providing for the exact procedures related to the enactment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The legislative had reserves about the transparency and accountability of the SSM […]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 […]Draghi reserved about Eurozone’s growth prospects
September 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, during the Press conference following the meeting of the Governing Council, in answering a journalist’s question appeared quite reserved about Eurozone’s growth prospects. Despite the fact that ECB’s staff projections for 2013 have been revised upwards, estimates for 2014 growth potential are now downgraded. Not to […]ECB: Growth measures even before the German elections
September 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Benoît Cœuré a French economist, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and former head of French public debt office, delivered a revealing speech on ECB’s programme for Eurozone state bond purchases in the secondary markets, known as Outright Monetary Transactions initiated in September 2012. Cœuré said that OMTs arrested and neutralised […]The untold story of who caused and who pays for the economic crisis
August 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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 […]ECB will be the catalyst of Eurozone’s reunification
August 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Today Thursday the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is expected to confirm from Nottingham, a historic city in east Midlands, that the central bank of Britain is not to raise its basic interest rate from the currently very low level of 0.5%, “until the Labour Force Survey headline measure of the […]EU Commission expects consumer spending to unlock growth
August 26, 2013 by 1 Comment
Last Friday 23 August the European Commission released its flash estimate for the consumer confidence index of this month, finding it markedly improved in relation to July. The full Business and Consumer Survey with final data on August developments is due to be published on 30 August 2013. In detail the Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic […]The German banks first to profit from public subsidies of trillions
August 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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 […]Eurozone banks are unable to support real economy’s dawning growth
August 14, 2013 by 1 Comment
Industrial production in the European Union is definitively in a virtuous path as statistical data confirm business managers’ assessment, that their order books are as full as they have never been in the past. The same is true for industrial production. According to a press release published yesterday by Eurostat – the EU statistical service […]Eurozone: Retail sales betray economic frailty
August 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Retail sales are an infallible measurement of the internal dynamism or its absence in every economy. They are tightly associated with consumption which is by far the largest component of Gross Domestic Product, investments and exports accounting for the rest of it. For quite some time now retail trade dynamism in Eurozone is practically non-existent […]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 […]Eurozone: Bank resolution proposal gains wider interest
July 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment
It will be increasingly difficult for Germany to repel the creation of a strong and centrally controlled Single Resolution Mechanism for failing banks, the other pillar of the European Banking Union. Yesterday Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the European Central Bank expressed his full and unconditional support for the relevant Commission’s proposal. Understandably the first pillar […]Banks get trillions and the unemployed ECB’s love…
July 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
To understand the kind of world we live in it suffices to follow the way the banks make their billions. Let’s start from the repercussions from the great credit crunch of 2008-2009 which still haunt our everyday lives in Europe and the US but no bank has come close to pay the price for their […]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 […]Commission to decide on bank resolution issues
July 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are planning to challenge once more the supremacy of Germany in the Ecofin Council and bring back the issue of the single bank resolution authority. The clash over the character of this cornerstone building-block of the European Banking Union is some weeks old […]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 […]European Banking Union: Like the issue of a Eurobond?
July 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment
If what the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, said yesterday to EU’s legislators is read together with the inspired speech the European Commissioner Michel Barnier, delivered in Rome’s Palazzo Farnese (the French embassy in Italy), then the conclusion is that the European Union cannot be a source of problems as the extremists […]Why the euro may rise with the dollar even at lower interest rates
July 8, 2013 by 1 Comment
Goldman Sachs, the US financial giant, may be right in predicting more expensive euro parities with the American dollar around 1.37 within six months, largely higher than the current levels of 1.28-1.30. The European Sting has been pointing for a long time to Eurozone’s foreign account surpluses and the standard inflows of investments into the […]ECB offers plenty and cheap liquidity to support growth in all Eurozone countries
July 5, 2013 by 1 Comment
The rare and openly confirmed unanimity of European Central Bank’s Governing Council that interest rates should remain at their present or even lower levels for a long time, didn’t only gave a cause for celebrations in all European bourses, but it also induced some analysts to comment that Eurozone’s recession may be more persistent than […]IMF v Germany: Eurogroup keeps the fight under control
June 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
As it usually happens in the European Union, a much debated and infested with conflicting interests major issue, like the bank recapitalisation, will not be decided upon in one go but it will remain open for as much time as needed to mitigate differences. Yesterday evening the Eurogroup meeting, which usually precedes the Ecofin Council […]Eurozone: Avoiding a new Greek accident
June 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The withdrawal yesterday night of the junior partner, the DHMAR (Democratic Left) political party from the Greek tripartite government coalition poses again the effectiveness problem of the overall economic strategy Eurozone applies to counter its sovereign debt sustainability problem and exit a two years old recession. The obstacles are political, social and also of economic […]Ecofin: ‘The Friday battle’ for the banking union
June 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The crucial character of this Friday’s Ecofin Council can be seen in the size of the Commission’s preparative memo. More than 3,000 words were needed for it. The text of yesterday’s Press release contains everything, from the specific economic policy recommendations to countries with excessive deficits, the entry of Croatia, the €10 billion capital increase […]Lies and reality about incomes and wealth in the EU
June 19, 2013 by 1 Comment
The European Central Bank in April this year produced a statistical paper on the distribution of real household wealth in Eurozone countries. The study argued that in terms of net wealth the average German household appears much poorer than their counterparts in the crisis hit countries of south Europe, that is Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy […]The strong version of the EU banking union gains momentum
June 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The creation of a real European Banking Union, built to serve all Eurozone member states on equal terms found yesterday a new strong supporter. Yves Mersch, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and former Governor of the Central Bank of Luxembourg speaking yesterday at the UniCredit Business Dialogue in Hamburg, […]Schaeuble wants IMF out and bailouts ‘a la carte’ with Germany only to gain
June 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German Minister of Finance issued an appeal yesterday to European partners to do together whatever it takes, in order to push the International Monetary Fund out of the European Union. Four years ago it was again Schaeuble and Germany the ones who demanded the cooperation of IMF in the first bailout of […]Has Germany rebuffed ECB on the banking union?
June 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The leadership of the European Central Bank took yesterday a step back from its strong presence in the public discussion over the depth and the strength of the under construction European Banking Union (EBU) and more precisely the single bank resolution authority. Both its President and Vice President Mario Draghi and Vítor Constâncio had very […]Commission: New proposal for centrally managed bank resolution
June 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Commission is about to honour once more its title as ‘Guardian of the Treaties’. This fundamental Commission’s mandate obliges the EU’s executive to always promote more rather than less Union. In this respect after the French President Francois Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in Paris last week, to support a […]Paris agreed with Berlin over a loose and ineffective banking union
May 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Safeguarding the basics of the Franco-German unity, which functions as the powerhouse of the European Union, had another victim. The French President Francois Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed yesterday in Paris to undermine the effectiveness of the European Banking Union. Instead of a strong central and financially independent bank resolution authority in […]
