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Category Archive: Europe
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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 [...]
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Slovenia Cut to Junk by Moody’s; Outlook Negative
Editor’s note: Moody’s Investors Service released the following statement in conjunction with a ratings action it took today on Slovenian sovereign debt. New York, April 30, 2013 — Moody’s Investors Service has today downgraded Slovenia’s government bond rating to Ba1 from Baa2. The outlook remains negative. The decision to downgrade Slovenia’s sovereign rating was driven [...]
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CCP Loss Allocation Rules
This is a link to an interesting paper published by the Bank of England relating to CCP loss allocation rules (first spotted over on The OTC Space). The paper explains the reasons why CCPs must maintain a matched book at all times and the process typically followed on the occurrence of a clearing member default. It also provides [...]
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The Turkish Disease
The Economist coined the term “Dutch Disease” in 1977 to describe the decline of the manufacturing sector in Holland after the discovery of large North Sea natural gas deposits in 1959. Here is the opening sentence of my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, where I introduce the Turkish Disease, which is a variant of [...]
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European Depositors Don’t Take Fright from Cyprus
At the end of last week, the ECB reported that bailing in of Cypriot depositors did not scare other euro zone depositors. In fact, the ECB noted that deposits rose in March across the region, including in countries that have been suggested as potential candidates for the next aid package, including Slovenia, Malta, and Luxembourg. [...]
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Chart of the Day: What British GDP Growth Since 2007 Says About Austerity and Reinhart-Rogoff
The chart above shows GDP growth by quarter in the United Kingdom over the past five years. According to preliminary estimates released by the ONS yesterday, Britain eked out a 0.3% increase in GDP, avoiding the over-hyped triple dip. British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had this to say about the results: “Today’s figures are an encouraging sign [...]
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Beyond Their Ken?
Spain’s economic problems now form part of such a complex web of cause and effect, action and reaction, that it is getting increasingly difficult for laymen, journalists and politicians alike to get to the core of what is actually happening. “To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a special [...]
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Spain Update: Running from the Bulls?
There have been three recent developments in Spain: the new record high unemployment, the earnings reports of several large banks, and the government’s new fiscal forecasts and strategy. Spanish 10-year yields continued to trend lower over the course of the week. The roughly 35 bp decline in yield brings the drop since early February to [...]
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GDP Up 0.3% – No Triple-Dip and a Good Start to 2013
A strong performance from the service sector – partly offset by continued weakness in construction – meant gross domestic product grew by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2013, which was better than the 0.1% consensus. The risk was always there that the Office for National Statistics would have surprised us with a really bad [...]
