ECONOMY

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Georgia judges his ex-president and lifts the economy

MADRID | By Ángel Maestro | August arrived with the positive outcome that the IMF Executive Board will support the economic reform program in Georgia with 154 million Stand-By dollars. Among the economic measures, paradoxically, to reduce the dollarization in favour of the home currency and the euro, in order to accelerate its economic and political stabilization process. Concerning the second is the macro-judicial processes that will begin this Saturday against its former President Mikheil Saakashvili in relation to abuse of power charges which have driven numerous concerns by several worldwide institutions and non-governmental organizations.


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UBS: Data support acceleration in US real GDP growth

MADRID | The Corner | From the macroeconomic side, US data are showing a clear improvement in the economy, with the labor market growing at similar rates to those seen prior to the financial crisis and consumer confidence surging in July to the highest level since October 2007. The business results also show a positive trend with growth in earnings by 12.0% (ex-financials) and +10.0% inc. financials.


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German investors lose their confidence in Europe’s growth engine

MADRID | By J. J. Fdez-Figares (LINK) | After the rises experienced by the European and American stocks on Monday, these markets showed yesterday certain weakness, leading to a mixed closing in the major indices in Europe and negative in US. Thus, and since the beginning of the day in Europe some profit taking by the short-term investors were observed, who profited from the rebound that many values experienced on the day before. As there was a lack of relevant developments in the three main geopolitical conflicts (Ukraine, Iraq and Gaza), the investors’ attention turned to macroeconomic data, particularly towards indices released yesterday by the German institute ZEW.


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US & UK: Siamese twins? Up to a point

SAO PAULO  | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | NGDP and RGDP trends are rather similar in both countries. The main question is: Why is the UK´s labor market so much more exuberant?


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China optimism lifts Asia equities

LONDON | By EM Asia Rates Strategy analyst Rohit Arora | Asian equities continued to march higher, with stocks in Korea and Japan outperforming on the day. The Nikkei’s outperformance, despite weaker-than-expected readings on retail sales and jobless data, was counterintuitive and likely reflects increasing market expectations of BoJ easing. In FX, the NZD was a notable underperformer after Fonterra lowered its 2014-15 milk price forecast to NZD6/kg from NZD7/kg.


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Growth and inflation outlooks diverging

LONDON | By Antonio Garcia via Barclays | Stronger-than-expected July PMIs suggest that the growth outlook is likely to improve in Q3 and are consistent with our forecast of 0.4% q/q. EA public debt levels have reached a new peak in Q2 14 at 96.4% of GDP, with three of the four largest EA economies above the EA average. We now expect July HICP inflation (next week) to edge down to 0.4% y/y and August inflation to decline further, to 0.3% y/y.


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In some cases the central bank cannot control inflation…

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | …while in others it cannot promote it! Japan falls in the latter category. According to this article in the WSJ “Japan´s price target looks difficult.” The nationwide core consumer price index rose 1.3% from a year earlier in June, after adjustment for a recent sales-tax hike, below a 1.4% increase the previous month, according to government data released Friday. Inflation moderated in May and June due to falling energy prices and a stable yen, which has put the break on growth in import costs.


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UBS Analysts Expect Further M&A Activity

ZURICH | By The Corner | Based on the results of the 20th quarterly survey of the UBS Global Equity Research department, UBS analysts expect M&A activity in the second half of 2014 to remain strong. 50% of respondents believe M&A will increase and 45% believe the pace will remain unchanged. Only 5% of analysts expect the pace of deal activity to slow in Q3 and Q4.


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Q2 Earnings preview – easier FX, sequentially a bit better growth and hurdle rate has come down

MADRID | By The Corner | Yet again this year equities have moved higher despite negative EPS revisions. While JPMorgan started the year with a constructive outlook on equity markets, they believed that for the 4th year in a row IBES projections would need to be downgraded. The investor concern now is that negative revisions could continue into H2, similar to the trend observed in Europe in each of the last three years.


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What if we are in a 2% growth world?

MADRID | By The Corner | Experts at JPMorgan are less worried about near-term disturbances and flows and more about the medium-term outlook for economic growth. Over the past three years, the world economy has grown only at a 2.5% pace, below potential and thus not able to make up for what we lost in the recession. Each year, they keep forecasting that growth will rise to a 3% handle, but have been steadily disappointed.