We had two announcements of central banks in the Europe. First was Bank of England with a new boss Mr. Carney. Second was ECB. The Bank of England mentioned that forward guidance and intermediate thresholds would likely be considered at the August assessment which means some change of monetary policy but otherwise there were no…
When there are no good news in short term let´s create them in the long term. This is definitely slogan of all politicians. European commission for example predicted very slow growth for the EU and 0.3 % contraction for the euro club. BUT we should expect better tomorrows as usually in the long term. The…
It is still working. Mario Draghi just explained what ECB board council was discussing and markets jumped on this verbal game. ECB let basic rates unchanged and board had just discussion about unconventional measures as QE. Draghi also explained that it does not mean that it will be used in a short term period but…
The Governing Council of the ECB decided that main interest rates will remain unchanged. The reasons behind the decision were facts as repayment of 22% of the LTRO program which reflects to improvements in financial market confidence, weak GDP outcomes in 2012 and anchored inflation with estimation of 1.8 percent in February. The Bank of…
The rescue package for Cyprus finally consists of a 10 billion euro bailout from the ESM and it has one crucial condition of taxation all deposits larger than 100,000 euros inflicting significant losses for depositors — possibly up to 40 percent. EU officials have stressed that this measure was a „unique step“ in Cyprus. But…
Index of Economic Freedom was released last week. Slovakia was 57th down 15 places from previous year. The main reason behind decline of economic freedom in Slovakia was higher taxation, non-flexible labor market regulation and slow and inefficient judiciary system. We belong among other 59 countries where economic freedom decreased this year. On the other…
European Commission President Barroso started to criticize the austerity measures that the EU has imposed on the mainly Southern European members states in economic crisis. He stated that while the policy may be „fundamentally right,“ it had „reached its limits.“ In the short-term, „a stronger emphasis on growth“ is needed. Look at the beauty of…
I think that the Cyprus situation was a dominant one during the last week. I do not want to bother you with the same information you already read somewhere else and which are not probably accurate because the situation is changing every minute. I would like just to make some small comments. First, Cyprus has…
After the optimistic version that everything is solved in the EU the economy of euro group shrank by 0.6% and EU 27 area was down by 0.5 % in the fourth quarter which was worse than forecast. Germany, France, UK, Portugal, Spain, Italy. All of them were down. The export data fell 1.8% in December…
It was a Bitcoin´s week. Everybody was talking about bitcoins. Last week we had some records concerning bitcoins. First, bitcoin surged to new USD record high when it added 100 % gains only in 7 days. Then it overcame 1000 USD; fact is that on three important exchanges. And it was traded for a while…