Week of Weak Announcements
It was the week of central bank announcements – Japan (we will describe it below), Britain and ECB. Bank of England and ECB policy remained unchanged which means that interest rates are at the same…
The tragic story of our declining competitiveness
In the most recent ranking of the World Economic forum, which compares the competitiveness of 140 countries around the world, Slovakia ranked 67th. Since we ranked 8 places higher the year before, the media presented…
Indefensible superstate
I had an interesting and long discussion about the United States of Europe. Meeting with a high ranking official of the European Commission in Brussels was originally on another topic, but his incidental remark „I…
We Intentionally Created Bubble
The hearing in front of the German Constitutional Court about the legality of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) scheme of the ECB was on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the final verdict is not expected before…
Merkel won but reforms failed
German elections – actually the most important EU election – ended by the victory of Angela Merkel. On the other hand the election ended with the defeat of strong right wing policy. It seems that…
French diary: Francois Hollande, the president of companies?
Nowadays, the French president, François Hollande, is called the president of employers. However, he calls himself the president of companies. Thus, the decision of the government to raise the corporate tax, next year, is rather…
ECB´s words over reality
ECB´s declaration to buy any bond on secondary market or Dragi´s “whatever it costs” is still strongly rooted in the minds of investors. Otherwise it will not be so positive for Italy which is again…
We all earn little – but teachers even less
OECD published its study Education at Glance also this year. It gives an exhausting comparison of its Member States’ education. Slovakia finished at the end of this chart in several statistics again. Total expenditure on…
Spain is a real ticking time bomb.
It seems that currency wars are heating up. The US dollar has been depreciated by FED activities and Japan confirmed depreciation of yen last week. Now Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told reporters that Swiss…
UK and Germany Were Downgraded
Fitch Ratings has downgraded the United Kingdom to ‚AA+‘ from ‚AAA‘. The outlook is predicted as stable. The rating action reflects a weaker economic and fiscal outlook and possibility of higher UK budget deficits and…