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…
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…
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 is Christmas time and we do not have for you so many stories. But if somebody thinks that nothing is going on is definitely wrong. The IMF predicts that France will miss its 2013 target for a budget deficit of 3% of GDP. It is much more probable that France will have 3.5% deficit…
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 low levels and the BoE maintained bond purchases. Monetary theory teaches us that once the rates are low central banks…
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 Merkel is willing to create a strong big coalition with German socialist and as it is in politics it means…
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 franc is too strong and more depreciation is needed. Swiss franc is still 9.1 % stronger than its five year…