Lincoln Liz and Dave on the Fed pumped markets
http://t.co/w6vvHRdAto
10 minutes ago
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Euro Area Portfolio Flows
Today the ECB released the Euro area balance of payments for December. This is a statistical release that is worthy of only the biggest data geeks – but it is quite interesting, especially in forming relationships between FX and capital flows. I’ll demonstrate what’s been going on in EA bond, equity, and money markets in one [...]
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Unfounded Obsession With the Greek Minimum Wage
The Greek minimum wage is apparently a point of contention between the Troika (ECB/EU/IMF) and the Greek government. The NY Times cites competitiveness gains as a rationale for the minimum wage cut: The goal of any pay cuts would be to help make Greek workers, who are generally less productive than workers elsewhere in Europe, [...]
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Temporary Employment: A New Ugly Rearing its Head in Europe?
Last week Clive Crook opined on some fallacies of labor reform, specifically related to the unions and through the Spanish experience. Labor reform is a highly contentious subject, given its close ties to welfare and politics. Based on Clive Crook’s article, I delved into global temporary employment using OECD data and noticed two things: (1) [...]
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Which Economy Is Pursuing Procyclical Fiscal Policy?
Today the BLS reported that the US unemployment rate dropped to 8.3% in January 2012. This is the lowest measured rate since February 2009 – a local trough. Also this week, Eurostat reported that the Euro area (EA) unemployment rate stabilized in December at 10.4%. This is the highest level since inception of the euro [...]
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I Still Don’t Get Why the ECB Hiked Rates
I still don’t get why the ECB hiked rates in April and July of 2011. I questioned this using bond market pricing back in August 2011. Now I question it once more using the ex post trajectory of mortgage rates. Across the Euro area, 43% of total home loans are made on a variable rate [...]
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Is the ECB/EU Achieving Stated Objective of Balanced Growth?
The primary objective of the European Central Bank is to maintain price stability; however, as a compliment to its primary objective, the Eurosystem “shall also ‘support the general economic policies in the Union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Union’. These include inter alia ‘full employment’ and ‘balanced economic [...]
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Core Euro Area Banks Still Very Exposed to Contagion from a Greek Exit
Today Megan Greene (@economistmeg) wrote a rather insightful post linking this weekend’s German proposal to Greece’s eventual exit from the EMU – the leaked proposal is to (1) make Greek debt service a top priority, and (2) for Greece to rescind national fiscal sovereignty to the European level (links included in her post). At the [...]
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The ECB Is Plugging Holes
Today the ECB released its monthly data on monetary developments in the Euro area (EA), as measured by M3 and its components. The market usually focuses on the marketable assets portion of M3, M3-M2, as a representation of funding access – here’s an FT Alphaville post highlighting as much. In December 2011, M3-M2 declined 0.2% [...]
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European Daily Catch: Know Your Consumers
Today’s European Daily Catch compares the aggregate implications of the reported January 1-point rise in French household confidence to the reported January stabilization of Italian consumer confidence. Specifically, French consumers could be ‘happier’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re spending more, while Italian household confidence translates rather directly to aggregate spending patterns. Domestic demand is a large contributor to GDP growth [...]
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Japan’s Lopsided Financial Balances
Tim Duy and Paul Krugman discuss the merits and failures of Japanese policy. The sectoral snapshot of the economic financial balances shows that Japanese policy was indeed a success but also a failure. First, policy was a success, given the private sector was recuperating from the bursting of a credit and investment bubble. The chart [...]
