First reactions to the ECB’s non-move
MADRID | By Juan Ballesta.
In Europe
ECB likely to bet on inaction again
MADRID | By The Corner | Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann shift, more inclined to consider bonds purchases, basically reponds to pure economic policy. Although it could anticipate those are closer than ever, it does not mean that ECB is to take action in today’s meeting. Most of analysts at Madrid’s financial place agree that Draghi would be more explicit regarding eventual tools to fight deflation- or low inflation as European authorities prefer to call it now-. He could announce some kind of corporate financing support such as securitization’ buyings at most.
Shale and European Energy Security
What does the shale revolution mean for European energy security? An increase in localized production would shift dependence and decrease the exorbitant prices that European consumers pay for energy. Currently, electricity costs in Europe are roughly triple American prices and double Japanese prices.
Abertis mirrors Spanish economy’s take-off
BARCELONA| By Julia Pastor| In present Spain’s context of timid recovery, any positive sign in any sector is more than welcome. Abertis, the world’s largest toll road operator running more than 7,300 km, announced the country’s 2014 road traffic figures increased for the first time since 2008. The firm also forecasts a global spending of more than €1.3 bn in the current year. Yet Abertis partly reflects the Spain of bankrupcies and bail-outs. The company is major stakeholder of some recently collapsed motorways expected to be saved by the authorities.
SPECIAL REPORT: Are minijobs a solution for Europe?
BERLIN | By Alberto Lozano | Europeans never stop listening to ideas for economic reforms. One potentially successful option, with support from Europe’s leading institutions for smaller economies, is the ¨minijob¨.
But are these atypical jobs the solution to move Spain’s 26 percent unemployment rate closer to Germany’s 5 percent?
How Weidmann confounded currency market investors
LONDON- THE WEEK THAT WAS | By Victor Jiménez | Did Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann just had a Mario Draghi-like moment? In July 2012, while bets against the survival of the Eurozone community of countries remaining whole piled up to stress levels that presaged a self-fulfilling prophesy, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, let go in his now famous London speech a “we’ll do whatever it takes” to protect the common currency whose deterrent consequences have rippled to today: we might be messy, the message conveyed by Draghi came to mean in the British City and Wall Street, but we know how to make the anti-euro speculative bubble burst; and it is an easy thing to do.
Investors bet on Europe despite the deflation risk
MADRID | By Francisco López | Investors keep betting on European actives, even though the eurozone economies are facing some serious problems: deflation risk, unemployment records and even a possible war in Ukraine. Why does the European stock exchanges dominate analysts’ recommendations?
Greece: come back Cleisthenes, all is forgiven
ATHENS | By Nick Malkoutzis via The Agora | Over the last few weeks, several members of Greece’s 2004-2009 government have basked in the same Attica sunlight as the ancients, while displaying the carefree abandon of people who don’t feel responsible for the country’s dire financial state or its shattered reputation.Had public officials done the same in other European countries, their careers would have been destroyed. In Greece, these men claim their absolution and rehabilitation almost unchallenged.
Is ice between ECB and Bundesbank melting?
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | The Bundesbank must be really worried about euro zone’s economy evolution. The German central bank’s chairman Jens Weidmann, paradigm of the country’s economic orthodoxy, opened the door to an ECB’s eventual bond purchase program for the first time in order to fight against common currency’s appreciation and the ghost of deflation. Furthermore, the German economy, strongly linked to Ukrainian interests, could suffer a downturn in the 2Q14, according to Bundesbank’s estimations. Meanwhile, the ECB could be studying some operational and legal points to start the stimulus program.
Achtung: German businessmen express doubts on growth and labor reforms
BERLIN | By Alberto Lozano | German Council of economic experts (‘the Five Wise Men’) upgraded its forecast for the country’s GDP growth in 2014 to 1.9 percent from its previous expectation of 1.6 percent in November last year. However, the last Ifo’s data show that global events like Crimea crisis and a slowing Chinese GDP growth can badly impact the euro zone’s engine.