Top Stories

Articles by The Corner

About the Author

The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.
No Picture

In Europe 10th April 2012

The European Central Bank is dead

By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | The ECB has lost all his monetary gunpowder, as this has become fragmented. In this graph I saw recently on the Greek money supply, monetary aggregates M1 M2 and M3 have collapsed. Deposits are falling, like savings accounts and time deposits. However, the monetary base or the money issued by the ECB is the same for everyone. What happens is that in normal countries the banking sector does not experience problems to expand its assets (loans), what results in an increase in deposits. The multiplier effect works. But what happens…

No Picture

World economy 10th April 2012

UK commercial real estate as depressed as the economy

LONDON | The retail property market in the UK continues to struggle, as demand for retail premises stuttered again in the first three months of 2012. This lack of interest in the sector combined with growing availability resulted in a further drop in rental expectations, the latest RICS UK Commercial Market Survey showed on Tuesday. Interest from potential tenants of retail space continued to fall in the first quarter of the…

yasaman

World economy 10th April 2012

A conflict with Iran is in no one interest

By Carlos Días Guell, in Madrid | In the Middle East, drums of war have for months now been sounding and this has triggered potential risks that could push oil prices higher than ever seen before. The worst scenario, though the least likely, would be one in which the tensions between Iran and the West rise to such an extent that the Strait of Hormuz is closed and oil supplies cut. The last…

hhd

In Europe 9th April 2012

Germany is the problem

By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | John Authers, in Trends That Don’t Seem to Make Sense, have some pertinent questions to share. The one that has attracted my attention is: Why is the euro still so strong when at all other times a currency with so many risks would be certain to weaken? Resilience of the euro is startling and damaging. The eurozone’s crisis has been driven by balance of payments problems…

No Picture

In Europe 8th April 2012

Easter read (4) | Two years digging an empty grave for the euro

Many economists and the Anglo-Saxon financial gurus have been killing the euro month after month since early 2010. But, even if their doomsday predictions have miserably failed so far, their negative influence over the markets can not be neglected. By Fernando Barciela, in Madrid | PART 3 | Some banks, especially in the UK, were not far behind the panic wave and at that time announced that they had intensified their contingency plans before the more than probable failure of the euro. After…

No Picture

In Europe 7th April 2012

Easter read (3) | Two years digging an empty grave for the euro

Many economists and the Anglo-Saxon financial gurus have been killing the euro month after month since early 2010. But, even if their doomsday predictions have miserably failed so far, their negative influence over the markets can not be neglected. By Fernando Barciela, in Madrid | PART 2 | Euro mayhem? The fall of Brussels? Russian domination? German isolation? An article like this has already been published by a serious magazine, The American Spectator, supposedly devoted to calm, profound analysis. Flipping through the pages of Fortune,…

No Picture

In Europe 6th April 2012

Easter read (2) | Two years digging an empty grave for the euro

Many economists and the Anglo-Saxon financial gurus have been killing the euro month after month since early 2010. But, even if their doomsday predictions have miserably failed so far, their negative influence over the markets can not be neglected. By Fernando Barciela, in Madrid | PART 1 | We heard Noel Roubini prophesying the end of the euro early in 2010 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in a somewhat evanescent fashion (“an increasing risk and an approaching…

kxzc

In Europe 5th April 2012

Easter read (1) | Two years digging an empty grave for the euro

Many economists and the Anglo-Saxon financial gurus have been killing the euro month after month since early 2010. But, even if their doomsday predictions have miserably failed so far, their negative influence over the markets can not be neglected. By Fernando Barciela, in Madrid | In one of his recent and terrifying articles  about the euro and the sovereign debt crisis in the Financial Times, ‘There is no Spanish siesta for the eurozone‘, Wolfgang Münchau found that many…

lkj

World economy 4th April 2012

What do GDP rates matter without happiness?

MADRID | A calm breeze in the midst of so much economic shock and just-about-fine Spanish bond auctions, whose effects will probably still ripple beyond Easter with the usual euro contagion talk. Let us pause for a moment and read a list of the happiest and satisfied peoples in the world. It is a huge report, a pile of 158 pages full of charts, notes in fine print and details on…

438219833 8afac8efd1

World economy 4th April 2012

Wenzhou, China’s liberal experiment

BEIJING | The rise and fall of the entrepreneurial community in the Chinese city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, is an example of the consequences attached to moves such lowering the GDP growth under the 8% without coupling this measure with an strategy that ensures a sustained level of growth. Known by its entrepreneurial society, the city’s businessmen panicked when they couldn’t repay the money they borrowed in the first hand to…