THE CORNER | ECB executive board member Jorg Asmussen has said there are “pending risks” for Ireland as it prepares to exit the EU-IMF 85 billion euro bailout on December 15. Dublin is launching its seventh austerity budget in six years on Tuesday, under pressure to deliver a €2.5 billion package of more cuts and taxes without compromising the fragile recovery. Investors are watching closely.
BUCHAREST | By Ovidiu Nahoi at Dilema Veche via Presseurop| Life in the European Union appears better than in many other parts of the world. Yet, this well-being is undermined by the euro crisis combined with a loss of confidence by citizens in their institutions. This trend will be one of the major issues in the upcoming EU ballot.
Markets have started the week in a relatively directionless fashion amid slow-moving progress in Washington, Barclays analysts point out. That lack of decision could make the Fed delay the tapering until 2014, keeping downward pressure on the USD.
SHANGHAI | By Andy Xie via Caixin | A minority enraged at another expansion of the U.S. government will eventually cause a default, ending the dollar’s dominance and making gold dearer.
MERRILL LYNCH | Powerful global trends — economic, political, environmental and social — are reshaping our lives and creating new investing opportunities as well as unanticipated risks.
PARIS | By Anne Feitz at Les échos via Presseurop | This week, France confirmed its ban on shale gas exploitation and the European Parliament demanded environmental impact studies before all test drilling starts. More obstacles for a resource that may yet not be the solution to Europe’s energy problems.
THE CORNER | As China moves towards consumer-based growth, the key to unlocking its economic potential lies in raising productivity. But until it protects intellectual property rights, it will face an uphill battle, says Dong Tao, Chief Regional Economist, non-Japan Asia at Credit Suisse.
MADRID | By Tania Suárez | The Spanish consumer prices index (CPI) dropped to +0.3% from August to September, its lowest level in 45 months, due to the statistical effect of the increase in VAT of the same month of 2012.
CAIXIN | By George Soros | The euro crisis is now over but the visible uncertainty within markets lies in the fact that the system is still far from satisfactory.
WASHINGTON | By Mike Konczal via The Next New Deal | There was a fantastic piece in The Atlantic back in 2000 about psychiatrists dealing with people who wanted to have their limbs cut off because it would make them feel more like themselves to be amputees. The doctors’ big dilemma was whether or not to treat “apotemnophilia” as a diagnosable mental illness. If they engaged with it as a mental illness that existed and was recognized by the medical community, they ran the risk of encouraging more patients to identify with it.