The EU27 external current account recorded a surplus of €13.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with a deficit of €14.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010. This is the first current account surplus recorded for the EU27 since the third quarter of 2002, Eurostat said in its Wednesday’s data release. In the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with the fourth quarter of 2010, there was a fall in…
LONDON | The UK’s Coalition government launched Tuesday a new joint enterprise capital fund that will invest at least £40 million in high-growth potential small and medium sized companies in the country. The fund is called Notion Capital and is the eleventh and largest finance support programme for SMEs in the European Union. According to the official press release, a total of £62.9m has already been committed to it from the…
LONDON | Ambitious property buyers hoping to pick up a European bargain despite economic turbulence pose a challenge to forecasts of a never-bottoming peripheral real estate market. The ongoing sovereign debt crisis is doing little to deter home buyers as Spain and France remain the firm favorites for those seeking to buy a place in the sun, currency specialists HiFX said on Tuesday. Its Property Hotspots Report crowned France and Spain as the top…
The first estimate for the euro zone trade in goods balance with the rest of the world in February 2012 gave a €2.8 billion surplus, compared with a deficit of -€2.8 billion in February 2011, the statistical office Eurostat said on Monday. The January 2012 balance was -€7.9 billion, compared with -€16.1 billion in January 2011. In February 2012 compared with January 2012, seasonally adjusted exports rose by 2.4% and imports by…
In February 2012 compared with January 2012, seasonally adjusted industrial production grew by 0.5% in the euro area and by 0.2% in the European Union. In January production remained stable in both zones, said Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. Year on year, though, industrial production dropped by 1.8% in both the euro area and the EU27. In February 2012 compared with January 2012, production of energy grew by 7.7% in the…
LONDON | The cost of too many layoffs made during a steep crisis could leave a wide range of businesses unable to board the pick up economic train. So either it is optimism in the medium term or an honest belief in the coalition government’s mantra ‘we are all in this‘, but research from insurance firm More Than revealed Wednesday how small business owners are going to extraordinary lengths to…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | The ECB has lost all his monetary gunpowder, as this has become fragmented. In this graph I saw recently on the Greek money supply, monetary aggregates M1 M2 and M3 have collapsed. Deposits are falling, like savings accounts and time deposits. However, the monetary base or the money issued by the ECB is the same for everyone. What happens is that in normal countries the banking sector does not experience problems to expand its assets (loans), what results in an increase in deposits. The multiplier effect works. But what happens…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | John Authers, in Trends That Don’t Seem to Make Sense, have some pertinent questions to share. The one that has attracted my attention is: Why is the euro still so strong when at all other times a currency with so many risks would be certain to weaken? Resilience of the euro is startling and damaging. The eurozone’s crisis has been driven by balance of payments problems…
MADRID | Spain seems crippled by mounting economic woes. It faces a steep rise in risk premium fuelled by plunging confidence on its ability to reverse the bleak outlook ahead. Recession takes its toll in terms of higher unemployment, budgetary deviations and extensive deterioration in the banking sector. Reforms undertaken so far have failed to deliver any tangible benefit. Labour market overhaul has only helped to accelerate lay-offs, with no impact…
Many economists and the Anglo-Saxon financial gurus have been killing the euro month after month since early 2010. But, even if their doomsday predictions have miserably failed so far, their negative influence over the markets can not be neglected. By Fernando Barciela, in Madrid | PART 3 | Some banks, especially in the UK, were not far behind the panic wave and at that time announced that they had intensified their contingency plans before the more than probable failure of the euro. After…