NEW YORK | Being bearish about the European Union is not fashionable anymore. Despite some shocking unemployment rates and debt loads, the old continent is still the world’s largest economy, around 30% bigger than China. Something US firms should take into account, the AmChams advices in a report recently released in New York.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo. In July the American GDP will go up, although the economy won’t even feel it. Nor the so-called sequester or the Fed massive debt purchases have anything to do with it. Oil prices and the dollar are also out of the equation. The key: R&D will be considered as an investment.
BARCELONA | By CaixaBank analysts | There are still a large number of medium-term risks for a global recovery: the absence of credible fiscal consolidation plans in the United States and Japan is one of them.
After a Chinese teenager defaced a stone sculpture in an ancient Egyptian Temple, an intense debate has sparked about travelers misbehavior and national shame. Chinese tourists increasingly are the main target for the world’s biggest hotels and tour companies. And they are big spenders: $102 billion on overseas trips last year, a 40 percent jump over 2011 spending. However, as some experts tell Ray Kwong, many consider a trip abroad more like a Spring Break to wildly indulge than a museum visit.
BERKELEY | By Carola Binder | The author compares the fiscal crisis in the 1840 in the US with what happened in the euro zone. Back in the XIX century state governments in America saw infrastructure projects fail and land values and tax revenue fell further, eroding their fiscal positions, making it harder for them to issue bonds and forcing them to pay higher interest rates. Something similar to what Greece is suffering.
While the US enjoy an economic confidence recovery, euro zone members have to put up with a failed mix of austerity measures and monetary expansion. The strategy must be changed since there are few signs of improvement in the real economy, none in the case of Spain.
MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | It is a grave mistake to stubbornly defend the application of the same strict rules whether the economy is growing or in recession, and social unrest and missed fiscal targets are testament to how wrong the current European policies are.
LONDON | by Alex Biddle | A British Investment Bank would not stop boom and bust as such, but would be able to ensure that productive businesses get credit in the most difficult of times.
MADRID |By Carlos Álvaro at Capital Madrid | Latin America’s Pacific Alliance is meeting this week in Colombia. For Spain, it might be a gateway to Asian markets that could bring some hope in times of crisis. Many analysts also consider it “the new Brazil”, the best option for foreign investors who want to enter the juicy Latin American market.
MADRID | By Irene Matías | The world’s largest payment networks asked a federal judge in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan to rule that their practices for setting fees paid by merchants who accept credit and debit cards aren’t anticompetitive. Large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores, Starbucks and Gap refuse any settlement and may bring additional lawsuits against the payment networks. But on top of all of this the real loser are the consumers.