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 […]

Banks, insurance giants are free again to abuse the real economy

Not many years after the financial meltdown of 2008-2010, the main culpable parties for that global catastrophe, the big banks and the gigantic insurance companies are now commandingly asking the world to forget that. They demand to be again left completely unchecked, free to repeat what they did then; inflate all and every market to […]

The Americans are preparing for the next financial crisis

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 […]

No end to Deutsche Bank’s problems: new litigations in the US and frailty in EU stress test

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 […]

The Brits are not an exception and that’s why they voted to leave

The choice made by a bit more than half of the adult Britons to exit the European Union has already triggered financial and political turmoil. In a short while the direct impact on people’s lives will start to materialize. Let’s count the most important adverse effects: the financial markets turmoil, the international trade fallout, the […]

The EU Parliament and the ECB unknowingly or unwillingly fail to protect our financial assets

This week the European Parliament and the European Central Bank rather unknowingly or unwillingly failed to protect the European citizens from the attacks of ‘money sharks’. In two different occasions the two most important European institutions secured the bankers reign on peoples’ money. Let us take one thing at a time. When the average hard […]

Bankers don’t go to jail because they are more equal than us all

How come and despite the fact that bankers systematically and quite openly cheat hundreds of millions of people, usurping trillions from them, and the only ones of that trade that have been locked up in a penitentiary are the bosses of the three Icelandic banks Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, which went bankrupt in 2008? All […]

What can stop the ‘too big to fail’ bankers from terrorising the world?

Last Monday 10 November the Financial Stability Board, an international non-binding body based in Basel which comprises government and central bank officials from G20 countries had a bright idea for the lenders. They admitted that the 30 “too big to fail” major world banks should retain at least 20% of their risky assets in own […]

Eurozone: Bankers-politicians rig keeps robbing taxpayers

Last week the European Commission ruthlessly wrote the last chapter of the Slovenian financial tragedy. In it, this nation of only two million people was forced by Brussels to save with around €7 billion of taxpayers’ money (a bit less than one tenth of GDP) the overgrown, reckless, aggressive even fraudulent banking system of this […]

The ECB still protects the banks at the expense of the EU taxpayers

In a courageous decision, Emily O’Reilly, the European Ombudsman, condemned the decision of the European Central Bank not to disclose a letter the central bank’s then President, Jean-Claude Trichet, wrote to the Irish Finance Minister in November 2010. O’Reilly stated: “I regret that the Governing Council of the ECB has wasted an opportunity to apply […]

Poor Greeks, Irish and Spaniards still pay for the faults of German and French banks

Government deficit decreased substantially in the third quarter of last year and reached -3.1% of the GDP in Eurozone. This is just one decimal point away from the 3% benchmark, set by the Treaty of Maastricht and the strict EU economic governance Regulations (the famous ‘two’ and ‘six’ packs). The gap between government income and […]

Berlin ‘orders’ the EU Parliament to compromise

As expected the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz  strongly criticised  the agreement reached in the European Council by the 28 EU leaders, on the plan for the enactment of the Banking Union. He said, “The slower and inefficient a system is, the more expensive it will be”. However the Federal Minister for Finance […]

More taxpayers’ money for the banks

Within 24 hours, after the European Sting published on Thursday an article entitled, “Fair completion rules and the law of gravity don’t apply to banks”, and the responsible EU Commissioner Joaquín Almunia, Vice-President of the EC blessed as legitimate the rescue of the Dutch bank and insurance company SNS REAAL by the country’s exchequer with […]

EU Commission indifferent on Court of Auditors’ recommendations

Only a few days after the European Court of Auditors, the independent audit institution of the Union, said that EU money is spent with “little interest in the results achieved”, the Commission published its own assessment on the effectiveness of EU spending, alleging that the “EU budget (is) increasingly an investment tool”. The ECA is […]

Eurozone guarantees all banks with…taxpayers’ money

Last Friday the ECOFIN council made up by the 28 EU ministers of finance, confirmed that a permanent arrangement for the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) and the single resolution fund (SRF) meant to deal with failing banks, will be agreed on before the end of the year covering the period after 1 January 2015. In […]

EU Banks still get subsidies from impoverished citizens

Five years after the melt down of the western financial system, triggered by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and the European taxpayers still pay the price. According to European Commission’s estimates the cost of government (aka taxpayer and all citizens) support to failing banks in Eurozone reached €4.5 trillion during the first […]

The banks dragged Eurozone down to fiscal abyss

For a long time now economic analysts and commentators have been arguing that government support to financial institutions was the main culpable party of excess fiscal deficits in the Eurozone and the European Union as a whole. Those are direct subsidies under the form of capital injections, quite different from the support to lenders from […]