Icelanders are catching their breath after an eventful week that it started with an infamous interview where the then PM Gunnlaugsson failed to tell the truth. The question is what more the Panama papers will expose of Iceland, the most offshorised country in the world. The political effects aren’t yet clear but the popularity of the Pirate party has grown.
UBS | Il Messaggero published yesterday a draft memo with some details of Atlante, the system -wide fund that has been created to secure banks’ recapitalisations and purchase NPLs.
Despite the ECB’s rigid protocol with respect to public declarations, its influential German chief economist, Peter Praet, broke ranks a few weeks ago by saying that the central bank could not just continue to lower lending rates, but also “print new money” and give it directly to households, presumably to increase consumption.
Whilst many issues are being discussed in relation to the forthcoming European Union (EU) referendum in the UK, the issue of “sovereignty” is the one that divides the remain and leave camps. The highly respected think tank Open Europe, which is backing neither side, has made it clear that the economic effects of the two options are marginal in this report.
The ECB could end up with a new headache if the euro continues to appreciate as it has done over the last few weeks. In a short space of time, the eurozone currency has gone from 1,08 dollars to 1,14 dollars. Analysts believe Draghi will have to take some kind of action if it goes over 1,15 dollars.
Peter Lundgreen via Caixin | My best guess is that more than 99 percent of all economic analyses from the end of 2015 predicted a higher GDP growth in France this year. I myself have since long been skeptical about the economic growth prospects for the Eurozone, including that of France.
BoAML Research | The German government has not been overly active in investment expenditure over the last couple of decades. The average share of gross government investment spending in GDP stood at 2.1% in 2015 – private investment was worth roughly 18% of total GDP.
Yiannnis Mouzakis via Macropolis | Following Saturday’s leak of the exchange between the IMF’s European Department director Poul Thomsen and the head of the mission to Greece Delia Velculescu, PmAlexis Tsipras’s reading of the situation and his reaction to the WikiLeaks publication were puzzling.
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.