ATHENS | May 11, 2015 | By Manos Giakoumis via MacroPolis | Recent Greek budget data showed the huge revenue gap of 968 million euros recorded in January narrowed to 389 million by the end of the first quarter (Q1) of 2015. At the same time, primary expenditure, which was just 53 million better than target in January, displayed a strong outperformance of 1.18 billion by the end of March.
The Corner | May 11, 2015 | As Athens enters a critical week –it has to pay about €750 million euros ($837 million) to the IMF tomorrow and needs some sign of progress at today’s Eurogroup in Brussels–, very few voices are still talking about a Grexit scenario. “Greece will meet its commitment,” analysts at Bankinter stress. “In 70 years of the IMF’s History no developed country has defaulted.”
May 8, 2015 | By Benjamin Cole via Marcus Nunes‘ Historinhas | I have plugged for QE-offset or -financed tax cuts for a long time. I did not know that former Fed Chairman and now multi-millionaire consultant Ben Bernanke also explicitly believed in the same thing.
The Corner | April 29, 2015 | Amid speculations about a Greek deal (see examples of the bipolar opinion landscape here and here), market makers seemed more apeased yesterday but still have their doubts about the post June situation. “The yield on 3-year Greek debt remains very elevated and suggests that ‘market access’ is unlikely to be afforded to Greece at acceptable interest rates any time soon,” experts at BNP commented.
ATHENS | April 28, 2015 | By Nick Malkoutzis via MacroPolis | Such has been the impasse between Greece and its lenders over the last three months (add a few more on if you want to look beyond just this government’s shortcomings) that markets reacted with some joy to the news on Monday that one inexperienced economics professor is replacing another as the central figure in Athens’s negotiations with creditors.
MADRID | April 27, 2015 | By JP Marín Arrese | The Euro-group meeting in Riga ended in bitter acrimony, Greece’s main creditors expressing their dismay at Varoufakis’s refusal to table credible reforms. They voiced deep mistrust on the chances the Hellenic government might escape from a full-fledged bankruptcy. Both Schäuble and Draghi seem ready to throw in the towel, thus triggering speculations on B plans involving a covert Grexit.
ATHENS | April 22, 2015 | By Nick Malkoutzis via MacroPolis | The Greek government made another payment to the International Monetary Fund earlier this month. This time it was just 450 million euros, a relatively manageable amount compared to the 1.5 billion that Greece had to pay back to the IMF in March. Each of these payments brings relief that a possible default has been avoided, but they also bring greater anxiety that a default is getting closer.
The Corner | April 21, 2015 | Markets remain divided about the Greek debt negociations –or rather the lack of them. Time is running out and Athens’ legislative act asking public sector entities to transfer idle cash reserves to Greece’s central bank, in order to deal with a cash squeeze, proves it. That plan could raise about 2 billion euros ($2.15 billion), according to sources quoted by Bloomberg.
PARIS | April 20, 2015 | By Francesco Saraceno | Recently I commented on the intriguing box in which the IMF staff challenges one of the tenets of the Washington consensus, the link between labour market reform and economic performance. But the IMF is not new to these reassessments. In fact over the past three years research coming from the fund has increasingly challenged the orthodoxy that still shapes European policy making.
The Corner | April 17, 2015 | ECB’s Vice President Vitor Constancio put things into perspective by pointing out that Greek banks’ exposure to Greek sovereign bonds is much smaller than other banking sectors’.