The Corner | March 3, 2015 | Retail sales in Germany beat expectations in January: they rose by 5.3% instead of the forecast 3.0%, and up from the December’s upwardly revised 4.8% rise. Spanish and German consumers are seemingly much happier about the state of the economy.
The Corner | March 2, 2015 | Concerns about the impact that the ECB’s quantitative easing programme will have persist ahead of monthly purchase of €60 billion in sovereign bonds.
The Corner | March 2, 2015 | The engine of Europe’s economy outperformed expectations in 4Q2014, and that is good news for all the eurozone. Germany is increasingly depending on internal demand, which was the main contributor to the 1.6% GDP growth last year: 0.4 basis points.
The Corner | March 2, 2015 | The weekend decision of the Chinese Central Bank to cut benchmark lending and deposit rates by 0.25% is geared towards staving off deflation in the country´s slowing economy.
MADRID | March 1, 2015 | By Sean Duffy | With positive figures being returned on a weekly basis from the Spanish Finance Ministry, Spain appears to have turned a corner in its quest for financial recovery. Yet while the figures are good news for policy makers, the lingering pall of high unemployment continues to cast a shadow over growth prospects.
The Corner | February 28, 2015 | The fall in oil prices may yet push the Bank of England to raise rates, which it has been keeping at 0.5% since March 2009. It currently owns the equivalent of 25% of UK’s nominal GDP (see graph above).
The Corner | February 27, 2015 | Inflation edged up in January, but the figures are unlikely to stop increasingly confident Spanish consumers from spending.
MADRID | February 27, 2015 | J.J Fernandez-Figares| Link Securities | Efforts by the ECB to inject money into the euro zone are already showing signs of impact as positive M3 figures offer encouragement ahead of March purchases of sovereign bonds.
MADRID | February 27th, | The Corner | Negative inflation is likely to be of more concern to German policy makers than it is to their Spanish counterparts today, with low prices being seen as good news for Spanish consumers and the economy as a whole. Elsewhere, attention will focus on Greek GDP, with the possibility that the latest data may underline some of the lingering difficulties between Greece and its EU partners.
The Corner | February 26, 2015 | Markets will be closely observing a swathe of data from the EU after positive figures from Germany and Spain. The consumer and business confidence indexes and the industrial and economic sentiment surveys are due to be published later this morning.