ATHENS | Op-ed via The Agora | The European Parliament’s inquiry into the troika and its record in eurozone bailouts sounds like a welcome effort to hold Europe’s crisis managers to account. Unfortunately, the inquiry’s report is likely to miss the bigger picture, because of the European Parliament’s institutional navel-gazing and narrow focus on the troika – a team of civil servants – rather than its political masters.
MEXICO CITY | By David Brunat | Mexican government is ready to invest more than $3bn in Michoacan state, which has been rampaged by extortion and assassination in the last years. It has been the raise in arms by civil self-defense forces the fact that has driven Federal authorities to search for a solution. But is it money the recipe to tackle violence?
THE CORNER TEAM and Álex García | As expected, the ECB left interest rates at a record low on Thursday, the way its main shareholder, Germany, wanted. But what about the rest of the EU members?
MADRID | By Francisco López | As lower provisions, sale of assets and gains from financial operations enable big names such as Santander, BBVA, Caixabank, Bankia, Popular and Sabadell to multiply profits by four, the FT encourages to invest on Spanish banks, especially on medium size entities. However they have an unfinished business: profitability.
ASIA-PACIFIC COMMENTS by Ray Kwong | If China’s biggest PC maker gets the nod to buy Motorola’s handset unit and IBM’s low-end server business for a total of US$5.2 billion, it will become the world’s 800-pound gorilla of information tech. If it doesn’t, only CFIUS will know why.
WASHINGTON | By Dean Baker via Caixin | While Britain is lavished with dubious praise for its austerity policies, Japan has made real progress with its experiments in stimulus.
WASHINGTON | By Areeba Kamal via The Next New Deal | Unless the [U.S.] Federal Communications Commission takes a stand, American consumers stand to lose their open access to the Internet, while providers will rake in even greater profits.
MADRID | The Corner Team | Investors are most likely to hear the ECB repeat (again) how prepared it is to act and use all kind of unconventional devices on next Thursday meeting, after inflation in the euro zone fell to 0.7% in December, its lowest level since the common currency was born. “As fears of deflation increases, the central bank cannot remain unable to act,” analysts say.
LONDON | By via Sigrún Davíðsdóttir’s Icelog | So far, there is no solution in sight in matters that need to be solved in order to abolish capital controls in Iceland. The government blames creditor of the estates of Glitnir and Kaupthing but unresolved dispute in Landsbanki matters as well though hardly ever mentioned. The government seems to play a waiting game, perhaps to make creditors more forthcoming. Ministers maintain the government cannot interfere in a process of private companies and yet they seem to be contemplating interfering via laws, which would directly expose the government to being sued by creditors. The creditors mostly remain silent but might have more cards up their sleeves than the government seems to believe.
MEXICO CITY | By David Brunat | América Móvil, owned by the wealthiest person on earth, Carlos Slim, has set its eyes on the European telecommunications market. Indeed, it has been trying to approach Central and Eastern Europe for a year now, a move not exempt of sour experiences. But it is now when Slim obtains his first relevant victory – Austrian government said on Friday it is open to let América Móvil become the largest shareholder of Telekom Austria.