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This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. Today, the European Commission concluded that Bulgaria is ready to adopt the euro as of 1 January 2026 – a key milestone that would make it the twenty-first Member State to join the euro area. This assessment is set out in the 2025 Convergence Report, […]
This article is published in association with IMF. Washington, DC: The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the 2024 discussions on common euro area policies with member countries[1] The euro area is recovering gradually, with a modest acceleration of growth projected for 2024, gathering further speed in 2025. Increasing real wages together with […]
This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission. Today, the European Commission has published the 2024 Convergence Report in which it provides its assessment of the progress non-euro area Member States have made towards adopting the euro. The report covers the six non-euro area Member States that are legally committed to adopting […]
Super Mario did it again. Only months before leaving the helm of the European Central Bank he made sure his accommodative monetary policy will hold well, even after he leaves Frankfurt am Main. Last Thursday, he pushed interest rates below the zero level for at least another year. Even if his successor will be a […]
One after the other, all the major central banks of the world follow the regrettable example of the Fed and the ECB in reversing their efforts to contain the greed of the financial mammoths. The American central bank, the Fed, and the European Central Bank will continue feeding the giant financial conglomerates with $4.5 trillion […]
At the time of trillion dollar companies and global borrowing much above the 2008 crisis levels, and after nine years of continued swelling of values in all and every western capital markets, bankers decided there cannot be turning back to normality, interest rates and debt wise. They say the thing must not be stopped from […]
Angela Merkel’s era in Germany definitely comes to an end. It coincides, not necessarily in a causal manner, with the extreme right and xenophobic rising tendencies in the country’s political and social structures. These developments will put not only Germany to a political limbo but they will also freeze the progress of the European Union […]
Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, was criticized by major global financial media for insisting to end the easy money policy this December. The argument is that, after ECB’s Governing Council decided at the end of the prosperous 2017 to end its extraordinary monetary policy, the world has become a riskier place. […]
The announcement of the end of the monthly money injections into Eurozone by Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank was not received in the capital markets as a hawkish toughening of monetary policy, as it theoretically should have been. The reasons are many. On the contrary, the euro lost more ground with […]
Finally, Germany blinked. Chancellor Angela Merkel at last decided to clearly respond and, up to a certain degree, uphold French President Emmanuel Macron’s ideas, about reforming the Eurozone, in order not only to save it from unraveling, but, if possibe, to make it more cohesive and stronger. In an interview to last Sunday’s issue of […]
the next Italian election is, very probably, to take place within the next few months or even weeks. Then, Berlin, the rest of Eurozone capitals and probably the entire western financial world will learn, if it’s still politically possible to ask just one country’s taxpayers to save an obviously faltering global financial system. The test […]
Mario Draghi the President of ECB, speaking at the European University Institute in Florence, on 11 May 2018, must have been under the influence of the idealistic aura of this Florentine learning institution. He went as far as proposing political policies, bravely overstepping his role as central banker of Eurozone. Draghi asked for an effective […]
The divisive effect on Europe that Donald Trump’s trade war has generated, takes on new dimensions now. Only the European Sting highlighted this aspect, when the President of ‘America first’ fired the first shots, igniting the trade skirmishes. The differences, about how to respond to the US trade aggression, between the French President Emmanuel […]
Last Thursday, 26 April Mario Draghi, tactfully left it to be understood that Eurozone may not any more grow so fast as we all knew it was doing until recently, and, consequently, the inflation goal of close to 2% may not be achievable. He communicated that by not repeating what he had said on 8 […]
During the past few weeks, financial markets sharks have been sending stock and bond prices and money parities wildly up and down, while busy securing for themselves hefty short term gains. Obviously, this is to the detriment of the real economy, where values are produced by technology and sweat. In Europe and, partly, in the […]
The too slow or non existing pace of wage increases is the main reason for the non revival of inflation in Eurozone. This is what Mario Draghi told the Economic Committee of the European Parliament last Monday. He added that this is why the economic slack in the euro area may be larger than we […]
The center right and center left German mainstream political parties agreed yesterday evening to form a new grand coalition government. It will be the third time since 2005 the two Christian parties and the socialists jointly govern their country. The socialists will control the Finance, Foreign and Labor ministries, with Martin Schulz, the Social Democratic […]
All along the years after the 2008-2010 financial crisis, which in the European Union took the form banking/government debt breakdowns starting with Greece, there were cries for the creation of a solid Eurozone. In every respect, these calls amounted to demands that super prosperous Germany accepts some degree of risk-sharing with the rest of the […]
With the Italian elections set for 4 March and anticipated to produce a hang parliament, four out of the five bigger European countries will be in political limbo for a good part, if not for the entire new year 2018. France is the only exception in this Euro-plague of political uncertainty. In some cases the […]
Last week, the deep German state struck again targeting the heart of Eurozone. The hit was effectuated by Sabine Lautenschläger, a middle aged Stuttgart born ex BaFin (Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) employee and presently member of the powerful executive board of the European Central Bank. Sabine now wants the ECB to abandon its extraordinary monetary […]
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’ […]
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 […]
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 […]
Four top ranking Washington bigwigs – who flew to Munich, Brussels and Bonn to mend fences with Europe, after Donald Trump termed NATO ‘obsolete’ and rejoiced the unraveling of the EU, left the Europeans bewildered with the dangerously diverging stories they had to narrate. Only the extreme right wing, Polish Defense Minister Anton Macierewicz seemed […]
Grexit, Greece’s exit from the euro area, is back in the news – for the wrong reasons. During this past week, the country’s creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the European Stability Mechanism and the International Monetary Fund, finally agreed amongst themselves to set even tougher conditions in order to continue refinancing the […]
Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, is under mounting pressures both at home and abroad. From the other side of the Atlantic US President Donald Trump is overtly targeting a much cheaper dollar compared to euro, while at his inaugural speech he clearly praised trade protectionism by saying, “Protection will lead to […]
Last Thursday, 12 December, Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, was forced to compromise with the Germans during the Governing Council’s regular meeting. He accepted to reduce the monthly injections of cash into the economy (through asset purchases of mainly government bonds) from €80 billion to €60bn, along the lines of the nonstandard […]
This year’s annual meetings of the IMF – World Bank Group in Washington D.C., which kicked off on Thursday 6 October, turned out to be an all out financial war of words between the United States and Germany. In the middle of it stands the battered Deutsche Bank. For a start, there was a 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 […]
Last Thursday, Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, was unable to move the capital and money markets with his customary monetary policy Press conference in Frankfurt am Main. On the contrary, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, a global castoff, did it the next day just by pressing a button. However, it took […]
The European leaders who form the EU ‘directoire’ may get together as many times as they like, but still appear incapable of solving the club’s existential problems. Last Monday the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the French President Francois Hollande and the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met in Naples to relaunch Europe, after the Brexit. […]
One of the most direct and important consequences of the Brexit vote is the uncertainty it casts on the merger of Europe’s largest stock exchanges and clearing houses, the London Stock Exchange and the German bourse in Frankfurt, the Deutsche Börse. The two mammoth institutions, the double sun of Europe’s financial universe, last March agreed […]
Last Tuesday Eurostat, the EU statistical service issued a Press release revealing that the GDP of Eurozone (EU19) and EU28 rose in the first quarter of this year by 1.7% and 1.8% respectively, compared with the same three-month period of 2015. On the yearly developments platform, there is more good news. The same source revealed […]
