How Europe beat the financial crisis – and the risks it still faces

This article is brought to you based on the strategic cooperation of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Kalin Anev Janse, Secretary General, European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Ten years after the financial crisis, what is the most important news for me, coming from the other side of the channel? It is that Europe is booming – […]

Germany may have a stable and more cooperative government

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 […]

Why is Grexit again in the news? Who is to pay for Eurozone’s banking problems?

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 […]

The time is up but the game is still not over for Greece: negotiations continue in anticipation of a new deal

The deadline of the 4-month extension that the Greek government had received on February 20 just expired today. However, the Greek government and particularly the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on a last moment decision to return to the negotiating table sent a letter to the institutions only hours before the expiration of the bailout programme. […]

Eurozone’s sovereign debt not a problem anymore?

Understandably sovereign debt statistics for Eurozone and the EU have become most crucial over the past five years, not only for the implicated countries but also for the global financial community. Until recently a bad spell over Greece’s prospects concerning its government debt could send all and every world market to a downwards spiral. And […]

Cyprus banks under scrutiny

Eurozone’s support to Cyprus is not on the agenda of todays’ Eurogroup, the council of the 17 Eurozone ministers of Finance, nor will this issue be discussed in tomorrows’ Ecofin, the council of the 27 EU economic ministers. This is a clear sign that there will not be any decision on this problem until the […]

The European Parliament fails to really restrict the rating agencies

The European Parliament adopted yesterday tougher rules for the issuance of creditworthiness ratings on governments and private businesses by the relevant agencies. Obviously the new legislation was voted in relation with and aims to set new restrictions on the activities of the three largest of them, namely Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch IBCA. But […]

Eurozone’s credibility rock solid

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) issued yesterday its first short-term debt paper (bills), which met an unprecedented success in this capital market auction. The bid/cover ratio was 3.2. This means that for every euro of this debt issue, investors offered 3.2 euros. The bills mature on 4 April 2013. In detail this ESM’s bill issue […]

Japan to invest in euro values

Japanese minister of Finance Taro Aso early on Tuesday 8 January said his country will invest some of its huge foreign reserves in European Stability Mechanism debt paper. Japan is second only to China in foreign-exchange reserves with $1,274,160 million. Chinese foreign reserves are anything around $3.2 trillion. Almost instantly after the Taro statement the […]

Eurozone 2013: Where to?

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 […]

At last a good price for the Greek debt!

Greece and its Eurozone masters once more took by surprise  all and every financial market, by offering a generous buy back price for the country’s outstanding debt held by the private sector, mainly banks, pension funds and speculators. In more details on Monday 3 December the Greek debt management agency (ODHX) announced that Athens calls on […]

Bundestag kick starts the next episode of the Greek tragedy

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 […]

European Union: From financial consolidation to deeper political division

In June 2012 the 17 Euro-area leaders who made a giant step forward towards a closer Eurozone union, when back home, those on the giving side, namely Angela Merkel, pretended that nothing has changed, while the ‘winners’ made it look like a gift, which it was not. As for the 10 heads of states and […]

The world to teach Germans to…un-German

Italians and Greeks are trained tax dodgers for millennia now, while Spanish banks lately discovered how to usurp their depositors’ money. No wonder then why the three Mediterranean nations found it difficult to endure the Teutonic straight euro money jacket. As for the Portuguese and the Irish they both followed those Med attitudes and the […]