Lagarde discusses the European Central Bank’s policy revamp with MEPs

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament. ECB President Christine Lagarde, on Thursday fielded questions from the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee on the review of the bank’s monetary policy. In her opening remarks, Ms Lagarde set out the ECB’s outlook for the Euro area characterised by sluggish growth and sought […]

European Parliament gives green light to Christine Lagarde

This article is brought to you in association with the European Parliament. Christine Lagarde obtained Parliament’s approval to be the ECB’s next President, in a plenary vote on Tuesday. In the secret vote, MEPs voted 394 in favour, 206 against and 49 abstentions to recommend Ms Lagarde to head up the European Central Bank. The European […]

Is Europe ready to cooperate with the rest of the world? Can Germany change its selfish policies?

For a long time now the European Union is accused by the rest of the world for the severe austerity and recessionary economic policies it follows, also imposing them on crisis stricken euro area member states like Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal. This is so despite the fact that the Eurozone economy as a whole […]

Greece to stay in the euro area but the cost to its people remains elusive

The frantic search of the Greek government – pressed at home by an accelerating bank run which culminated last Friday with €1 billion withdrawals in a few hours – to achieve an agreement with its Eurozone partners ended up in an almost total retreat of Athens in front of its creditors. The Greek minister of […]

How close is the new financial Armageddon? IMF gives some hints

Six years after the Western financial system collapsed under its immeasurable greed for easy money expressed as an insatiable thirst for risk, the American and European banks and governments are 30% deeper in debt. Few of them can duly repay without major problems of the most dangerous political kind. It is even more alarming that […]

War of words in Davos over Eurozone’s inflation/deflation

During the last two days, Friday and Saturday, of this year’s Davos gathering of the rich and powerful, an intense debate about Eurozone’s inflation or rather deflation, divided once again the Old Continent between Germans and…anti-Germans. Ollie Rehn, the Finn European Commission Vice-President and Commissioner responsible for finance and the euro, said that the currently […]

IMF to teach Germany a Greek lesson

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, in a Press conference held yesterday in Washington, ahead of the 2013 annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF set to take place this weekend, chose to directly confront Germany over the Greek Gordian knot. She repeated three times that the Greece’s Eurozone partners have reiterated on […]

Preparing for developing countries the ‘Greek cure’

IMF economists, Kalpana Kochhar and Roberto Perrelli, in their study entitled “How Emerging Markets Can Get Their Groove Back”, posted yesterday by iMFdirect, give a rather frightening response to this question. They conclude that “we estimate that emerging market’s “potential” growth needs to be revised down”. IMF Economic counsellor and director of the Research Department, […]

Lagarde: Keep feeding the banks cut down wages and food subsidies

Lagarde to the world: Keep feeding the banks with zero interest rate cost money, further trim down workers’ rights in the developed world and reduce subsidies on foodstuffs and utilities in developing countries. This was in short what the managing director of IMF had to say, ahead of the 2013 World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings, when […]

What is the IMF telling Eurozone about fiscal and banking unification?

The International Monetary Fund questions the efforts of the European Union to establish effective fiscal discipline policy instruments and a smoothly functioning banking union in the euro area. In a survey entitled “More Fiscal Integration to Boost Euro Area Resilience”, the Fund analysts observe that “Crisis exposed important gaps in architecture of the euro area”. […]

IMF’s Lagarde to Peoples of the world: You have to work more for the banks!

  Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, delivered a speech recently during this year’s Jackson Hole Symposium, praising the Unconventional Monetary Policies (UMP) followed by the central banks to save the world from a great depression, similar to the one of 1929. The risk was real as Lagarde noted but she didn’t […]

Eurogroup: IMF proposes Germany disposes

In yesterday’s Eurogroup, Eurozone’s policy setting council, the 17 ministers of Finance had two important items on their agenda; IMF’s recommendations for the European economy under Article IV Consultation with the Euro Area, and the approval of the next loan trance to Greece. On both accounts the opinion of Germany weighed a lot. In this […]

Eurozone governed by an obscure body and gray procedures

The Eurogroup, the crucial European decision-making body, regrouping the 17 EU ministers of Finance of the countries using the euro, which has led the south of Europe to the worst economic recession after WWII and introduced the haircut on bank deposits, the until this week most secure financial asset, is an informal forum, who’s decisions […]

Cyprus tragedy reveals Eurozone’s arbitrary functioning

Monday’s night statement by the Eurogroup President, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, on Cyprus was the perfect field for a full PhD research, on the way decisions are made in the European Union. The problem is that until some years ago this kind of decision-making when wrong, and it usually was, had negative consequences only on subsidies paid […]

Paris, Washington, IMF against Berlin and ECB on money and interest

Inflation in Eurozone is steadily following a downward path for months now, having already reached levels below the ECB benchmark of 2%, being estimated by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, at 1.8% in February. At the same time, the euro area is bound to be announced in technical recession by 31 March, for having recorded […]

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