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This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Simon Read, Senior Writer, Formative Content The cost of buying a home in Europe has risen by 45% since 2010, according to European Commission research. Rents have been going up in most European Union countries too, putting pressure […]
This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content This weekly wrapper brings you the latest stories from the world of economics and finance. Top economy stories: US raises interest rates again; IMF cuts global growth forecasts; Australian inflation hits 21-year high. […]
The G7 yearly summits are supposed to strengthen the unity of the world’s wealthiest democracies vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Not anymore, many say, but this time there is one important exception: Iran. The leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and of course the US, met during the weekend in the coastal […]
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 […]
A round $10 trillion worth of bonds are currently being traded in world markets on negative interest rates. At the same time, the European Central Bank prepares to flood the Eurozone and the banking world with hundreds of billions of zero interest rate euros, in an abrupt change of monetary policy course from restrictive to […]
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 […]
The US and China agreed to hold talks on 7-8 January in Beijing to settle their trade differences, which have already eaten into both economies and disturb the global financial universe. If they fail to agree this week, the impact will be worse. It seems things are so bad, that the US Federal Reserve Chairman […]
The US- China trade war is now taking new dimensions, touching the very financial heart of the most populous country on earth. The Washington administration has already more or less ordered Beijing to perform unbelievable structural changes of American liking in the economy. Now they say monetary issues have to be inserted in the trade […]
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 […]
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 […]
The appointment of Jerome Powell as the next head of the US central bank, the famous Fed, is a reassurance to the financial world that the giant lenders will continue being favored by ample and very cheap money. Last Thursday, Donald Trump, the American President didn’t dare to change the cautious approach to monetary policy. […]
At last, the European economy is growing faster than the US. According to Eurostat, the EU’s, statistical service, during the second quarter of this year, GDP grew by 2.4% in the club of 28 member states compared to the same period of 2016 and 2,2% in the US. It’s worthwhile nothing that in both the […]
The strengthening of the euro vis-à-vis the US dollar is taking alarming proportions, puzzling markets and the European Central Bank. The Eurozone single currency has gained 14% from the beginning of the year, with the tempo of appreciation accelerating. It gained around 10% during the summer. For around three years, the ECB has been following […]
The disappointment of financial markets with the lack of hints about monetary policy from the Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers is understandable. Both Janet Yellen, US Federal Reserve System Chair and Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank President while keeping their policy guidelines unchanged, choose to forcibly attack the demands of bankers – supported […]
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 […]
Germany, and more generally the EU, is now preparing in earnest to confront the groundbreaking changes in their relations with Trump’s America. Last week, both the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Federal minister for Finance Wolfgang Schauble, made direct and indirect statements about the policies now needed for Germany and the European Union. On […]
The US Department of Justice settled its claims against Deutsche Bank, the biggest German lender, for packaging and selling toxic mortgage securities to uninformed customers prior to the 2008-2010 financial crisis. Initially, the Justice Department had asked for $14 billion, but it seems it settled for a fine of $7.2bn. However, this is not the […]
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 […]
Last Wednesday, Deutsche Bank’s shares fell by 4.5% in the first hour of trading in Frankfurt, after the bank released its second quarter results, showing a measly profit of €20 million, in comparison to €818 million last year. The percentage fall of this stock is the biggest ever in such a brief time in the […]
Last Thursday morning the International Monetary Fund and the American central bank, the Fed, simultaneously but in the face of it independently, issued warnings about the health of the largest German lender, the long ailing Deutsche Bank. A few days before that the US rating agency Moody’s had degraded the creditworthiness of the bank close […]
What happens in China is more important for the European economy than a meagre fall of unemployment in the Eurozone. Last Tuesday, China said its February exports dived by a record 25.4%, fuelling new fears for a bigger slowdown in the world economy. At the same time, a Press release by Eurostat, the EU statistical […]
On Thursday 25 February, this newspaper concluded that “the other major central banks in Europe, China, Japan and elsewhere appear ready to fill the gap that the Fed plans to leave in the ‘money for nothin’ game”. This week’s developments completely justified this prediction. The immediate result is a new appreciation of the dollar with […]
Last Tuesday, a new steep fall of the price of crude oil by almost 5%, triggered another selloff in all the major capital markets of the world. The New York and the European stock exchanges lost anything between 2% and 3% of their capitalization. One may observe that this development is one of many of […]
The descent of prices in the world capital markets continued almost unhindered this past week and only last Friday financial, oil and commodity values gained some limited grounds. Altogether however, the major stock markets have erased trillions off their capitalization since last June, when the dark clouds gathered above the Chinese mega-cities of Shanghai and […]
Every time Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, tries to fight very low inflation and indirectly support growth and job creation in Eurozone with monetary measures, the Germans stand in his way. Last Thursday 28 January, Jens Weidmann, the governor of the German central bank the Bundesbank, did it again. In an […]
The major central banks of the world are currently in the middle of a precise but of dubious results surgical operation on capital markets. On the one hand, the monetary authorities aim at supporting the real economy by injecting more cash into the financial system. On the other, they try to mitigate the risky super […]
On Thursday 7n January this newspaper commented that behind the capital markets selloff, which shook the financial world in the first week of this year, were the financial moguls who want to impose their terms to central banks and mainly the American Fed. Since then stock markets keep losing a lot of grounds every day. […]
Amidst the historically worst first week of a year since stock exchange records exist, the Eurozone economy remains stagnant and appears clearly unable to offer itself and the rest of the global economy a sigh of relief. All along the first week of the New Year Eurostat kept airing quite disappointing statistics for the Eurozone […]
The wild selloff in the major capital markets of the world that culminated last Monday, the first working day of the New Year and continued on Wednesday for a fifth day in row was not just an overreaction to the anticipated slowdown of the Chinese economy, as almost all chief analysts assumed in mainstream media. […]
During the days ahead of last Thursday’s 3 December meeting of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, financial markets and market oriented media had been pressing for a stronger monetary accommodation (easing), than what President Mario Draghi finally announced in the afternoon of that day. As a result, the euro appreciated markedly with the dollar […]
The European Commission released last week its “Autumn 2015 Economic Forecast”, advertising ‘moderate recovery’ for the European Union and the euro area. Understandably, the Commission wouldn’t dig deeper in the economy, to highlight the negative aspects of the present status and the subdued prospects for next year. For a number of important reasons the executive […]
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 […]
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