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?
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.
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.
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.
Anna Pivovarchuk | As Western media focuses on the Crimean crisis, Russia intensifies its assault on civil society. At the end of January, TV Rain, Russia’s independent news channel, was taken off air.On February 24, over 200 people were detained for protesting the verdict in the Bolotnaya case that saw seven antigovernment demonstrators sentenced for assault. One of them publishes a blog about investigations of money laundering and theft by government officials, It was recently blocked.
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | “We come here to get rid of capitalist friends of EU’s Troika”, some demonstrators shouted last Saturday in Madrid. The international organization is back in Spain this week to review the country’s economic developments after January’s finalization of its bail-out, as an European Parliament’s inquiry unfolds over the triumvirate’s working method, its internal dissagrements and mistaken measures.
THE WEEK FROM LONDON | By Victor Jiménez | “Preposterous!,” said –wait for it, yes– minister for Education Michael Gove, who found this remote Latin-built-in word the perfect match to describe most of the cabinet to which he belongs. He might have intended to upset colleagues without letting the rest of the country understand…
BERLIN | By Alberto Lozano | Germans are worried, with good reason. Germany is the second fastest-aging country in the world, and between now and 2030, Germany’s population is forecasted to decrease from 81 million to around 77 million, and fall a further 12 million to 65 million by the year 2060, according to a recent study by Berenberg Private Bank and Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI). How can Europe’s engine face this challenge?
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Accounting is a changeable economic science. The result of a specific rate can vary depending on the items one put inside. Spaniards are used to manage different unemployment figures coming from different statistical data with different components, so that jobless population numbers can go from 5,98 to 4,72 million in the same quarter. The EU has just agreed to modify the methodology for calculating the region’s structural public deficit, which not only will relax peripheral countries’ efforts of austerity but also figures of Spain’s natural rate of unemployment.
MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller discusses the issue of the so-called “animal spirits” and what should be done in order to pump trust. He uses a visit to Japan as a base to show how effective the politics by Mr. Abe were. Japan is the country that has reduced the gap with the potential GDP.