BEIJING | By Li Junjie via Caixin | Those who study the overseas investments of Chinese enterprises are starting to get jitters. Japanese companies went on a foreign real estate buying spree in the 1980s that ended in serious losses, and the question now is whether China will repeat the same mistake.
ATHENS | By Jens Bastian via MacroPolis | The reprofiling of Greece’s sovereign obligations makes any future debt restructuring an exercise that would almost entirely impact the official sector of Greece’s international creditors. Among these creditors, European institutions such as the ECB, the EFSF and eurozone member states would be affected most prominently.
MADRID | By Ana López-Varela | The Spanish labour market is bearing it´s teeth towards temporary workers by penalising them excessively. That is the verdict of the European Commission, who highlight concerns in a recent report titled “Wage Adjustment in Spain: slow, inefficient and unfair?” published by the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs.
Located in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe, Finland shines as one of the most successful democracies in the world, coming first in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. The Nordic country has very good economic indicators and was classified by The Heritage Foundation as the world’s 16th country in terms of economic freedom.
MADRID | The Corner | Euro area industrial production, the BoE Inflation Report and UK labour market data will be watched closely today. Barclays analysts expect euro area production to rise 0.7% m/m in September, partially offsetting August’s sharp drop. The Inflation Report is likely to shed light on recent BoE policy decisions, including possible downward revisions of its inflation and unemployment forecasts. UK consumer inflation fell to 1.2 per cent in September, a hefty 0.5 percentage point lower than the BoE expected just three months ago.
MADRID | By Sean Duffy | This weekend´s controversial “non-binding consultation” has caused quite the stir in international media over the past number of days. Reports asserted that 80 % of Catalans had voted in favour of Catalonia becoming an independent state. Yet that figure ignores almost 60% of the electorate who chose not to take part in Sunday´s vote. Those numbers point to a rather more nuanced narrative than the one currently being posited by the Catalan independence movement and many reporters.
VIENNA | By Keith Weiner via Truman | I proposed seven drivers of financial implosion in my dissertation. My recent writing has focused on two of them. One is the falling rate of interest on the 10-year government bond. As interest falls, the burden of debt rises. Since the falling rate incentivized more and more people to borrow, the number of indebted people, businesses, corporations, and of course governments is large. When the rate gets to zero, the burden of debt becomes theoretically infinite.
BEIJING | By Qin Min via Caixin | Companies like Huawei and Lenovo are using Facebook and sponsorship deals with sports teams to introduce devices to foreigners.
By UBS Global Macro Team | Our proprietary surprise indices for growth and inflation are still enjoying very tight correlations with the prices of a wide range of global financial assets. The gyrations of our global and regional growth indices for instance closely track equity markets, both developed and emerging. Global growth surprises (excluding the US) closely track – and often lead – the US dollar and oil prices. Eurozone growth surprises closely track – and often lead – the euro. And global inflation surprises closely track the price of gold.