In Europe

No Picture

Morgan Stanley: “Portugal is now a good buying opportunity”

MADRID | By The Corner | Experts at Morgan Stanley consider that Portugal is now a good opportunity due to its current technical levels. Since the Espirito Santo incident, the PSI20 has plummeted by 17.5%, but these analysts see a potential technical recovery of 10-12%. The Portuguese treasury has covered its entire financing needs for 2014 and is now raising funds for 2015.


BES

Sovereign implications of the Espirito Santo saga

LONDON| By Barclays’ analysts | From the point of view of the banking system as a whole, the sovereign financial implications of Espirito Santo’s affair are rather limited. 
The sovereign has a relatively comfortable cash position and sufficient bank recapitalization funds. Specifically, the government estimates gross funding needs for 2014 of EUR13bn. At the same time, economic activity in Portugal is to expand by nearly 1% this year.


greece

Greece: Public deficit and democratic duty

ATHENS | By Nick Malkoutzis via MacroPolis | A newspaper article on Sunday, quoting an allegedly secret report by officials at Greece’s General Accounting Office and the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), claims that the country’s deficit figure in 2009 was “over-dramatised” (or “sexed up” if you prefer) by the PASOK government that took over in October of that year. 


No Picture

Industrial Production: Will there actually be an acceleration in 2S14?

MADRID | The Corner | After France and Italy’s (second and third most important countries in the single currency bloc) poor industrial production data of -1.9% (vs previous -0.51%) and +1.4% (vs previous +0.2) respectively, expert at Barclays Alberto Vigil wonders why analysts are so sure that there will be an acceleration in the 2S14.

*The green line is the Eurozone’s GDP, whereas the other two are Italy’s and France’s industrial production.


No Picture

Euro crisis turning point: Two years of banking union

Europe’s leaders avoided their usual muddling through complacency to do something radical — and it worked. Europe’s banking union, constituting a supranational pooling of most instruments of banking policy, was established over two years ago, in the early hours of June 29, 2012. To a greater extent than was initially realized by most observers, this step marked a watershed in the European crisis by making it possible for the European Central Bank (ECB) to stabilize sovereign debt markets.


victorian

The mirage of the British economy

LONDON | By Víctor Jiménez | The image of the Bank of England’s monetary policy Committee, which met in early July to not issue any decision on interest rates, was at the same time historic and false.




No Picture

Spain: internal devaluation progresses and employment improves

LONDON | By The Corner | The Spanish Tax Agency published on Monday its monthly statistics on large enterprises. Experts at Barclays explain that among others, the May data show that wages dropped 0.3% y/y (sa and wda) for these firms. The average monthly wage increase in Jan-May period was -0.2% y/y, which coincides with the average monthly salary growth increase since the main 2012 labour market reform in Spain.


No Picture

Where is the success of the painful internal devaluation policy?

MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | The Spanish government has the statistics of the major firms in Spain, whose turnover amounts to more than €6 million, and uses the data to figure out where the economy is going. I don’t think this is a trustworthy source –although it is interesting- because businesses have a bigger self-financing capacity: they are not in need of banking credit to survive.