Time is moving on. After the more than satisfactory agreement reached by Prime Minister David Cameron after renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the European Union, the countdown to the June 23rd referendum has begun. And as happened with the Scottish referendum, the British government is ready to bring out all the big guns.
What do Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson have in common? Both have recently tried some pre-emptive damage-control measures before the material from a leak, administered by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ICIJ, is published.
UBS | The 2016 stress test is the first of the more standardised, cyclical annual exams intended to help set sector capital requirements. These incorporate a broad downturn at home and abroad which compares with a domestically -focussed 2014 test and an EM -driven downturn in 2015’s.
Citi | ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeuré gave an interview to Politico on March 23, published on 30 March and featuring on the ECB’s website. Mr. Coeuré begins by explaining that the package announced on March 10 was “very potent, both in intensity and sheer volume”. On the subject of monetary policy tools at the ECB’s disposal, Mr. Coeuré notes that “negative interest rates are not our main instrument, they just support our overall policy. And looking ahead, we’re not short of instruments – our choice is quite large. We will be able to deal with adverse situations if necessary”.
BofA Merrill Lynch | Rome has designed a comprehensive strategy, in which reforming the institutional and economic structures is made politically manageable by loosening fiscal policy. This comes at an external price – more tense relationship with Brussels and potentially Berlin – but at least the brief is clear. It remains a narrow road though, with political and cyclical risks abounding.
Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis | Greece’s Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas could find himself out of a job or demoted soon because he slipped up in an interview. That his position is in peril for a verbal faux pas when others are going about their jobs unperturbed despite helping running the country into the ground is a pretty succinct statement on the interminable absurdity of Greek politics.
The Chancellor’s latest Budget saw the cumulative forecast for government borrowing over the next five years revised up by close to GBP 40bn. This reflects both weaker cyclical growth and also the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) taking a gloomier view on UK trend productivity growth.
Brexit supporters do not need to make any noise. They have been decades using the EU as a scapegoat for their problems of excessive regulation, arbitrary taxation, lack of transparency… Now it’s Cameron who must prove the opposite.
Spain is the third most attractive European country for property investment in 2016, while Madrid is the continent’s second favourite city to invest in after London, according to the CBRE report “Global Investors Intentions.” The report also highlights the increasing sustainability of the European property sector, in comparison with last year’s performance and with other regions across the globe.