On Thursday 22 October Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank delighted the world capital markets with his comment about the “factors that are currently slowing the return of inflation to levels below, but close to, 2% in the medium term” He added that “In this context, the degree of monetary policy accommodation […]Draghi rehabs ECB into a tool to support growth and employment; a departure from Teutonic orthodoxy
November 2, 2015 by Leave a Comment
On Thursday 22 October Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank delighted the world capital markets with his comment about the “factors that are currently slowing the return of inflation to levels below, but close to, 2% in the medium term” He added that “In this context, the degree of monetary policy accommodation […]Why the ECB prepares to flood the markets with more and free of charge euro; everybody needs that now
October 26, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Mario Draghi’s statement of last Thursday from Malta that the European Central Bank’s “monetary policy accommodation will need to be re-examined at our December monetary policy meeting”, offered a strong support to all major capital markets, with stocks gaining a lot of ground and the euro receding slightly. Understandably, a generous increase of ECB’s monthly […]Yanis Varoufakis: “Unsustainable debt turns the creditor into Leviathan; Life under it is becoming nasty, brutish and short”
August 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The Lethal Deferral of Greek Debt Restructuring Written by Yanis Varoufakis ATHENS – The point of restructuring debt is to reduce the volume of new loans needed to salvage an insolvent entity. Creditors offer debt relief to get more value back and to extend as little new finance to the insolvent entity as possible. Remarkably, […]Is the ECB enforcing the will of the big Eurozone member states on the small? Can the euro area live with that?
July 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Reviewing the political or economic events in retrospect always gives the observer a privileged position. This is the point where Benoît Cœuré – a Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank – found himself at an interview last Monday. At some point he was asked if the ECB had suffocated Greece’s commercial […]D-Day for Grexit is today and not Friday; Super Mario is likely to kill the Greek banks still today
February 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Today is really the D-Day for the Greek matter. After a couple of moves in this grand chessboard, checkmate is just unavoidable. Today we are likely to reach a point without return where nobody will be able to save Greece from collapse and the Eurozone from breaking down. It is the great final round and […]“C’est la vie”? French recession and unemployment to linger in Eurozone
December 5, 2014 by Leave a Comment
It was last Wednesday when the financial information services company Markit published the Markit Eurozone Composite Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for the month of November. This indicator revealed a weak growth outlook for the 18-country Eurozone while the disappointment of investors was apparent. November’s Eurozone economic growth The downslope of Eurozone’s growth continued in November […]Five-year low inflation for Eurozone and now Mario has to finally wake up the Germans
October 2, 2014 by
The European Central Bank’s (ECB) governing council is gathering today in Naples to discuss the monetary policy just two days after the publication of the flash estimate of the annual inflation of the Euro area by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The inflation is expected to be 0.3% in September, a 0.1% […]Quantitative easing: how Mario can tackle low inflation in Eurozone
May 30, 2014 by Leave a Comment
One of the major issues that the European Central Bank (ECB) struggles to solve is low inflation. It seems that it is not even close to the target that has been set; a rate of below but close to 2% over the medium term. April’s inflation data indicated a 0.7% inflation rate, a percentage not far away […]European banking stress tests 2014: A more adverse approach for a shorter banking sector
April 29, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 is mainly related to the banking sector. The capital adequacy of the European banks is an important aspect that European Regulation Bodies have to be aware of. During the past years the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the Committee of European Banking Supervisors are setting up simulations that […]European Banking Union: no one is perfect
March 27, 2014 by 1 Comment
Europe came to an agreement last Thursday 20 March to complete the second pillar of the European Banking Union with the establishment of the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM). After months and months of negotiations between the European Parliament and the member states, Europe will have as of now the relevant legislation and the mechanisms to function a banking […]Parliament: Last compromise on bank single resolution mechanism
March 6, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Undeniably, the European Banking Union’s prime target is to definitely cut the umbilical cord between banks and sovereigns, through the creation of a uniform supervision and insolvency dealing environment for all Eurozone lenders. Yet, Germany and France insist that the final decision for the resolution of a failing bank must be taken by member state […]The fatal consequences of troika’s blind austerity policy
January 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
When the ‘troika’, made up by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund was atypically formed first in spring of 2010 to bail out and audit Greece, its widely advertised purpose was to inflict an internal devaluation on this country. Later on the troika undertook to perform the same task […]Draghi cuts the Gordian knot of the Banking Union
October 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, had three messages to send yesterday to Eurozone’s political leaders. He did that while answering journalists’ questions, after the regular monthly meeting of the Governing Council, which left the basic interest rate unchanged at 0.5%. For the first time Draghi puts a big question mark over […]EU Commission challenges Berlin by proposing breakthrough legislation on banks
June 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In an inspired speech last Friday, in Helsinki the European Commissioner Michel Barnier, speaking at the 4th Annual Economic Forum, made crystal clear that the Commission has not abandoned the target of a strong and effective European Banking Union. He stressed that “We cannot have a genuine Economic and Monetary Union without a Banking Union”. […]ECB describes in detail how it exploits the poor
February 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Central Bank during the last two years made profits of €2.11 billion, by exploiting the misery of the five Eurozone countries in financial distress. Of that money, €1.2bn came only from Greek sovereign bonds, that is from the Greek taxpayer and there aren’t many of them. The information is supplied by the ECB […]3+1 issues to haunt tomorrow’s EU Summit
February 6, 2013 by 1 Comment
Tomorrow’s European Council Summit has a very loaded agenda, with first item on it the pending agreement over EU’s proper budgets for the next seven years. Apart from this there are another two crucial matters the 27 leaders have to tackle, namely the bilateral trade agreements with Europe’s main trading partners (meaning Japan, US and […]Everybody against Germany over the expensive euro
February 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
At last Francois Hollande said it. The French President in a strong statement yesterday said the Eurozone must have an exchange rate policy for the euro. It was high time that Hollande said that, because no other Eurozone leader has the weight to demand such a ground-breaking monetary policy change. So far all European Central […]ECB asks for more subsidies to banks
February 1, 2013 by 1 Comment
The European Union authorities have so far bestowed hundreds of billions of EU taxpayers’ money to the European Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Facility of a total value of at least €700 billion, to be used to bailout banks and not only. As if those practically unlimited resources were not enough to secure […]Banks suffocate the real economy by denying loans
January 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday the European Central Bank released data on Eurozone bank deposits and loans for December 2012. According to this report deposits by households and the non financial business sector increased during 2012 by at least 4%, while the loans to private sector (non-financial businesses and households) continued to decrease. The diverging direction of increasing […]It’s a lie Eurozone isn’t competitive
January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday a press release of Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, revealed that during the third quarter of 2012 Eurozone recorded a positive foreign trade balance in goods of the order of €30.5 billion. It’s even more interesting however that during the same period the balance of trade in services left an impressive […]EU: Centralised economic governance and bank supervision may lead to new crisis
January 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In the first Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) of the year on January 22, the two first and more important items on the agenda were the “enhanced economic governance and policy coordination” (the “two-pack” economic governance) and secondly the “financial regulation and bank supervision”. On both accounts the Council made giant steps forward setting […]Banks get new capital for free and citizens pay the bill
January 22, 2013 by 3 Comments
Yesterday the European Commission approved “temporarily” the recapitalisation of a Portuguese bank Banif with €1.1 billion. The Commission will take a final decision on the compatibility of the capital injection with EU state aid rules after the assessment of the restructuring measures will be proposed by Portugal. Presumably those restructuring measures will be layoffs […]Inflation not a problem for Europe
January 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The downward trend of Eurozone inflation was confirmed yesterday by Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union. According to this source “Euro area annual inflation was 2.2% in December 2012, the same as in November. A year earlier the rate was 2.7%. The EU27 annual inflation was 2.3% in December 2012, down from 2.4% […]The new European Union of banks is ready
January 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Yesterday, José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the European Commission, speaking in a farewell ceremony to honour the Cypriot Presidency of the European Union during the second half of 2012, made clear that the Commission has made the creation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) for the EU banks as its utmost priority and will […]ECB to support only banks not Peoples
January 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In two different articles the European Sting yesterday made important references and observations on the policy lines followed by the European Central bank. ECB’s double standards Maria Milouv in her article entitled, “European financial values on the rise”, commented as follows: “With the prospect of a further reduction of ECB’s interest rates appearing now more distant […]European financial values on the rise
January 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
No doubt the screams, mainly coming from English language media, economists and commentators about the possible dissolution of Eurozone have now subsided and only some late comers in the league of those who have bet on Eurozone’s destruction still try to salvage their wrecks, by predicting catastrophe. On the other side of the fence those […]Draghi hands over to banks €77.7 billion more
January 10, 2013 by 1 Comment
The European Central Bank lent but in reality handed over yesterday 9 January a total amount of €77.7 billion to a number of Eurozone banks, under an arrangement called Main Refinancing Operation (MRO) at the negligible interest rate of 0.7% for a duration of 7 days. This is however the upper side of the iceberg. It’s […]Eurozone business activity again on upwards path
January 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Business activity in Eurozone has being deteriorating for the past nine months. Last December however the PMI, index which measures this phenomenon, gave the first indications that the bottom of the dreadful U curve is now behind. In detail, the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the industrial sector, being drafted on data over the demand […]IMF: Sorry Greece, Ireland, Portugal we were wrong!
January 5, 2013 by 3 Comments
Sorry Greece, Ireland and Portugal says now the International Monetary Fund, we have grossly underestimated the negative effect on your economies, from our draconian austerity policies we recommended two years ago. This unbelievably blatant recognition, that the Fund, together with the EU Commission and the European Central Bank are applying wrong policies to the over-borrowed […]A new European banking space is born this year
January 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The year 2013 can be termed as the European banking year, after the last EU Summit of heads of governments and states decided on 13 December to create a unified bank supervision and auditing space, under the European Central Bank in 24 out of the 27 countries, at the exemption of Britain, Sweden and the […]A very good morning in European markets
January 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Despite the fact that the American Congress endorsed the agreement needed for the US to avoid the “fiscal cliff”, the dollar didn’t seem to recover and continued on its mild downward tendency with the euro, a path that started three weeks ago, with the finalisation of Greek package. In the US the agreement negotiated between […]Eurozone 2013: Where to?
December 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment
In 2012, Eurozone not only managed to effectively counter its double-faced, credit and sovereign debt crisis, but also convinced the global financial community, that the single European currency is probably the safest deposit of value. The world responded positively by voting the euro at the region of 132 American cents. A fair price, to keep […]Bundestag kick starts the next episode of the Greek tragedy
November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
It’s quite astonishing to watch the German Parliament, the Bundestag, voting on Friday 30 November, with the overwhelming majority of 473 deputies in 584 present, saying yes to a third in a row aid programme for Greece, while all the major media insist, that the public opinion in this country is against any help Berlin should […]
