This week’s G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany is expected to become a battlefield from the very first gathering. Chancellor Angela Merkel is to attack the US President Donald Trump, about his rejection of the Paris Climate Agreement. The American will reply with a demand for ‘free and fair trade’ as he ventures it, especially for […]Europe to turn the Hamburg G20 Summit into a battlefield
July 3, 2017 by Leave a Comment
This week’s G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany is expected to become a battlefield from the very first gathering. Chancellor Angela Merkel is to attack the US President Donald Trump, about his rejection of the Paris Climate Agreement. The American will reply with a demand for ‘free and fair trade’ as he ventures it, especially for […]Trump’s denial of Paris climate agreement; the US Republicans lash out against the world
June 5, 2017 by 1 Comment
Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the UN Paris Climate Agreement is a major foreign policy step, rather difficult to understand. For one thing, the American environmental industry technologically spearheads the world in this domain. The US is a global leader in electric vehicles production, where mainstream vehicles are one of the major contributors to air pollution. […]Trump enrages the Europeans and isolates the US in G7
May 29, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Last Thursday, Donald Trump, at a superb hall in the new glass and steel NATO building in Brussels, delivered an unruly speech, after having pushed aside Prime Minister Dusko Markovic of Montenegro (the related video has become viral) while walking towards the rostrum. He came out with a blatant and derogatory account aimed at 23 […]Who can compel Wallonia to unlock CETA, the EU-Canada free trade pack?
October 24, 2016 by 1 Comment
No, it wasn’t just the tiny Wallonia region of Belgium and its 3.6 million French speaking inhabitants who blocked CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement). This is an EU-Canada free trade and investment pact that took eight years to the Brussels Commission and the Canadian authorities to draft. It was also the Brexit and the […]Mario Draghi didn’t do it but Kim Jong-un did
September 12, 2016 by Leave a Comment
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 […]Are the G20 leaders ready to curb corporate tax-avoidance?
September 8, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Last Monday, the G20 meeting in Hangzhou – the capital of China’s eastern Zhejiang province – the first gathering of the 20 world leaders to be held in the vast country, was not marked by the determination to face up to economic misery and the pitiless wars in Syria, Libya, South Soudan, Yemen, Mali and […]Eurozone’s central bank leadership prepares for shoddier prospects
May 4, 2016 by Leave a Comment
It has become commonplace to state that the European economy still doesn’t fare well after six years of recession or practical stagnation. For good reasons however in the past few days the horizon looked particularly darkened. Negative statistical evidence and meandering statements by key people are indicative of that. Inflation or rather disinflation statistics, persistently […]Who is to pay the dearest price in a global slowdown?
March 10, 2016 by Leave a Comment
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 […]2016 crisis update: the year of the Red Fire Monkey burns the world’s markets down
February 10, 2016 by Leave a Comment
The Chinese New Year began two days ago and has brought already significant turbulences and volatilities to the global financial markets and economies. Luckily for the world’s second largest economy, Chinese stock markets are closed due to New Year’s festivities and haven’t experienced, at least yet, the losses of the European, U.S. and Japanese markets. This […]Capital markets selloff: The financial moguls send messages to monetary authorities
January 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
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. […]A Sting Exclusive: China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on South China Sea issue at the ASEAN Regional Forum
August 11, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Written speech made by Mr Wang Yi, Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China at the ASEAN Regional Forum on 06/08/2015 On 6 August local time, during the Foreign Ministers’ Meetings of the East Asia Summit (EAS) and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Philippine Foreign Minister attacked China on its South China Sea policy and […]A few, or rather two, trade and economic alliances may rule our brave new world
June 1, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU Commission President together with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a Press conference following the 23rd EU-Japan Summit which took place in Tokyo on 29 May. The focal point of the meeting was supposed to be the free trade agreement (FTA) between the two sides. However the EU dignitary spoke […]Why the West supports the yen’s devaluation and Japanese over-indebtedness
May 13, 2013 by 1 Comment
While the ministers of Finance of seven major industrialised countries making up the G7 council agreed pompously last weekend that monetary devaluations should not be used as a home economy revitalisation tool, Japan doing exactly that got a pat on the back and was given the green light to continue on the same path. The […]Recession: the best argument for growth
May 1, 2013 by 1 Comment
A cascade of negative Eurozone statistics yesterday wouldn’t let the euro area social partners celebrate at ease today the 1st May labour day, because it is now proven beyond reasonable doubt that the seventeen member state euro money area is heading fast, towards a new and long recession, unless the applied austerity policy mix is […]EU car manufacturers worry about an FTA with Japan
March 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), had expressed reserves over the EU Council and Commission initiative to start negotiations with Japan in order the two sides to conclude a far reaching Free Trade Agreement (FTA). ACEA was founded in 1991 and represents authentically the interests of the fifteen major European car, truck and bus manufacturers […]EU threatens Japan to suspend FTA negotiations if…
March 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The two Presidents of the EU, José Manuel Barroso of the Commission and Herman Van Rompuy of the Council couldn’t fly yesterday to Tokyo for the EU-Japan Summit, due to the ongoing developments around the Cyprus issue. This was not enough however to impede the beginning of negotiations for the conclusion of a Free Trade […]Is ECB helping Germany to buy cheaply the rest of Europe?
March 5, 2013 by 1 Comment
Next Thursday 7 February the Governing Council of the European Central Bank will gather in Frankfurt in its regular monthly meeting, to discuss monetary policies and take the relevant decisions. Presumably there will be no change of ECB’s main interest rate, which is pegged at 0.75% as from 11 July 2012. Nor any other major […]Commission goes less than mid-way on expensive euro
February 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Olli Rehn, the EU Commissioner for the Economy took the floor yesterday, over the euro exchange rate market developments. As he usually does, Rehn wanted on this issue too, to be seen as going mid-way between Berlin and Paris. The question to be answered is of course, if the euro is expensive or not? However […]Does the EU want GMOs and meat with hormones from the US?
February 11, 2013 by 2 Comments
The prospective drafting of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Union and the United States is developing into a major issue and as things evolved last week, it seems that this may lead the EU into a new division, between France on the one side and the free trade lovers Britain and […]Everybody against Japan over yen’s devaluation
January 28, 2013 by 2 Comments
Yesterday, Jörg Asmussen, Member of the ECB’s Executive Board speaking in an interview to a Greek newspaper said, that the issue of the Japanese yen devaluation should be referred to the G7 and the G20 councils. He added that if each-one goes for himself with national currency competitive devaluations, the outcome will be catastrophic for […]The developing countries keep the world going
January 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The developing countries, led by the industrialised nations of Asia, are playing a fast growing role in the world economy and may soon overshadow the developed triangle of US-EU-Japan. Actually they have already overtaken them in key sectors. According to the UNCTAD’s Handbook of Statistics 2012 the share of emerging countries in “the most heavily […]Eurozone’s sovereign debt not a problem anymore?
January 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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 […]The European Parliament fails to really restrict the rating agencies
January 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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 […]Japan to invest in euro values
January 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
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 […]EU to negotiate an FTA with Japan
November 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
On 29 November 2012 the European Council decided to give the Commission ‘the green light’, to start trade negotiations with Japan, aiming at the conclusion of a Free Trade Agreement between the two sides. As Sting has already noticed the EU has embarked over the past few years on a huge operation, to conclude FTAs with […]
