BARCLAYS | The bank’s overall assessment of the economy was unchanged (‘recover moderately’), while it expects inflation expectations “to be rising on the whole from a somewhat longer-term perspective,” adding that “some indicators have shown relatively weak developments.’
James Alexander via Historinhas | The inflation doom-mongers are out again with US Consumer Price Index numbers and, to a lesser extent, in the UK where, headline inflation really is just too low for most hawks to shout too much about steady core inflation.
The chairman of CLH, Spain’s leading petroleum products’ storage and transport company, recently made the comment that the demand for fuels “is increasing as never before,” around 4-5%, compared with a decline of a similar amount during the crisis years.
Ofelia Marín- Lozano | The close to 40% drop in raw material prices over the last year has been taken as an unmistakable sign of a strong slowdown in China, auguring a very negative outlook for producing countries. But the market has seen that the alarm bells sounded over China have been clearly unfounded, as major global companies like Apple are still seeing high levels of sales in the country.
Barclays | Both ECB’s Vice President Constancio and Chief Economist Praet warned of a potential macroeconomic impact of Paris terrorist attacks last Friday although the noted that these types of events generally have a transitory effect on the economy.
Fed President Janet Yellen has pointed out very politely that the law to reform the central bank is “a serious mistake.” She believes monetary policy cannot be linked to indicators like in a mathematical formula.
The Industry Ministry revealed that the tariff surplus for 2014 will be over €600 million (the result of the last available liquidation, number 14, was a €460 million deficit).
Wang Xiaoqing via Caixin | The huge e-commerce day is a windfall for Alibaba, but a headache for sellers and brand names, not to mention the economy.
The major economies are now characterised by desynchronised economic cycles, with divergent policy regimes. This complicates the equity investment decision. Europe may be a relative winner, but too much of the globe is seeing financial conditions tighten, against lacklustre growth, to be optimistic on directional trends. We see downside risk through the opening months of 2016. The European economy is moving in the right direction and further ECB action promises…
Eurozone inflation for October has been revised slightly upwards. Underlying inflation has rebounded to 1.1% basically due to periphery countries’ prices.