Expectations show inflation/growth trade-off worsening in Brazil. BCB likely to only hike timid 25bps in May http://t.co/u5lPOu5Oum
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Category Archive: Europe
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The Eurozone’s Woes in One Big Chart
The latest data from Eurostat shows that fewer than half of the eurozone’s economies are now growing. Real GDP in the EZ as a whole was 0.4 percent lower in the first quarter of 2013 than a year earlier. The worst news came from the bloc’s biggest economies: Germany’s growth fell from 0.7 percent Y-o-Y [...]
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Boosting Growth to Restore Confidence
The eurozone has entered a vicious circle feeding on consolidation measures that weigh heavily on growth, hampering deficit reduction and requiring new adjustments to be made. Since the countries caught up in the crisis do not have the option of depreciating their currency, all they can rely on is structural reform to make their economies [...]
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Central Banks Drive the Stock Market Boom
My regular column is available to subscribers on www.thesundaytimes.co.uk This is an excerpt. Spring has sprung with a vengeance for stock market investors. In recent days we have seen the Dow Jones industrial average close above 15,000 for the first time, Germany’s Dax hit record levels and the MSCI world equity index reaching its highest [...]
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Does Portugal Have Its Own “Shortage Of Japanese” Problem?
In a number of posts recently I have highlighted the impact of declining workforces on economic growth (here, for example, or here, or here) and the way the policies persued to address the Euro debt crisis are having the impact of accelerating the movement of young people away from the periphery and towards the core (here, [...]
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BoE On Hold as Manufacturing Perks Up
The Bank of England left monetary policy unchanged at its May meeting, as expected, Bank rate remaining at 0.5% and the size of the asset purchase programme at £375 billion. No statement was issued, though the Bank will publish its quarterly inflation report on Wednesday May 15. Assuming Sir Mervyn King continued to vote for [...]
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The Road to Liikanen
On 6 May 2013, the EU Commission published a roadmap regarding a proposal for a structural reform of EU banks (i.e. the Liikanen reforms). This followed the publication, on 2 October 2012, of the final report of the High-level Group on reforming the structure of the EU banking sector, chaired by Erkki Liikanen, a summary of which [...]
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The Suitcase Mood
Suitcase mood is a Russian website with travel and tourism content. The term is also a popular expression widely used within Russian culture to describe the state of mind which grips a voyager on the brink of a journey. The mood is often associated with a ritual which involves the departing person sitting, sometimes accompanied by family [...]
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Some Spring in the Economy’s Step
The service sector purchasing managers’ index completed a trio of better than expected surveys, and suggested the economy had some momentum going into the second quarter after the 0.3% first quarter rise in gross domestic product (which was also better than expected). The service sector PMI rose to an eight-month high of 52.9 in April, [...]
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The Evolution of the ECB’s Thinking on Negative Deposit Rates
The OECD has been telling the ECB to cut rates since November last year; today, after nearly half a year, the tortise-like ECB acted, cutting two rates that don’t really matter much. The ECB opened up two more doors today, though it hasn’t walked through them: first on securitization of SME loans into ABS, and second, to lower [...]
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Private Equity and the Turkish Zuckerberg
You don’t need to be an economist to know that Turkey is small and medium enterprise (SME) country; spending a weekend in the country would be more than enough. Unfortunately, only 20 percent of these companies last more than a decade, according to Kamil Yılmaz of Koç University. In his welcome speech to the conference [...]
