European economy

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Eurozone crisis: “Everybody´s talking” (except about money)

SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | In “What caused the great recession in the Eurozone? What could have avoided it?” Philippe Martin and Thomas Philippon begin thus: There is a wide disagreement about the nature and cause of the Eurozone crisis. Some see it as driven by fiscal indiscipline, some emphasise excessive private leverage, while others focus on external imbalances, sudden stops, or competitiveness divergence due to fixed exchange rates, as the following quotes illustrate.


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Daniele Nouy: “We are ready to assume EU banking supervision”

BRUSSELS | By Alexandre Mato | The head of the ECB’s financial watchdog, Daniele Nouy, asserted her belief before EU legislators that entities will arise stronger in the near future. Moreover, on the eve of the Single Supervisory Mechanism taking control of financial supervision, the French official expects that most of the capital shortfall will be filled by an influx of fresh private money.


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A significant step forward in the global fight against tax evasion

BERLIN | By Alberto Lozano | While European media focus their attention on  low inflation across Europe, concerns about the budgets of France and Italy, as well as the  need for investment in Germany, more than 50 countries are about to take a crucial step in the fight against tax avoidance: the signing of the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on implementing a new international standard in the automatic exchange of information (AEOI).


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There, but for the grace of ECB, go spreads

LONDON | By Soren Willemann at Barclays | Credit spreads (here, iTraxx Main) have a strong relationship to the ZEW survey of eurozone expectations for economic growth (Figure 1) over long time horizons. In the past months, however, this relationship has shown a significant disconnect: the ZEW survey reveals a material worsening of sentiment, whereas credit spreads have been largely unchanged.


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IN DEPTH: Is low inflation the greatest problem for the European economy?

MADRID | By J. L. Martínez Campuzano (Citi) | I beg your pardon, I meant to say “persistently low” inflation. If it is not (and here we are in agreement), then why is the ECB repeating the same argument over and over to justify its decisions? Non-existent official rates, negative deposit rates, unlimited liquidity provision for banks, and the latest invention: the purchase of securitised corporate paper for credit operations. 


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The decline of nearly 40% of BES shares hampers the European financial sector

MADRID | The Corner | The Western stock indexes closed yesterday with prominent drops, reaction for which there was not a single trigger, but the sum of the various concerns that have been accumulating in recent days. The negative tone was maintained throughout the day, closing both European and U.S. stock markets near daily lows. It is important to emphasize the volatility increases, measured by the VIX index, which has reached its highest level of the last three months.


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Will banking go well in a stagnant economy?

MADRID | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | There is a problem with the European stress tests: they focus on solvency but forget about profitability, which is essential for the future of banks. The system doesn’t work properly and in a context of stagnant economy, banking faces a difficult future.


EU recovery loses steam

EU recovery loses steam

MADRID | By JP Marin Arrese | One day after the European Commission put Germany under close scrutiny, blaming its fat trade surplus of curtailing other countries’ growth, figures released on economic performance in the third quarter came as a nasty surprise. Exports had stalled in the biggest partner, bringing growth rate to 0.3% down from 0.7% three months before. Resilience in internal demand had saved it from shrinking, openly contradicting Brussels’ claims against Berlin.


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Spanish and Italian inflation wrap-up: Services and food driving inflation down

LONDON | By Barclays analysts | Taking into account today’s downward revision in Spanish HICP, we now revise our October French HICP forecast from -0.2% m/m (0.6% y/y) to -0.1% m/m (0.7% y/y). The Italian final October HICP inflation rate was revised up by 9bps to 0.76% y/y. We note that historical subcomponents indices have been revised since the beginning of the year (although not the headline index). This nonetheless does not alter our view that euro area HICP inflation rate should come in unchanged at 0.7% y/y. If anything, we see slight downside risk to our 116.99 HICP ex tobacco projection.


Mortal disagreement in and for the euro

Mortal Disagreement In and For the Euro

MADRID | By Miguel Navascués | There is a harsh disagreement in the euro zone: when Mario Draghi tries to do something, he finds the opposition of Germany and its allies. It seems obvious that Europe won’t get out of the hole with such travel companions.