ATHENS | Op-ed via The Agora | The European Parliament’s inquiry into the troika and its record in eurozone bailouts sounds like a welcome effort to hold Europe’s crisis managers to account. Unfortunately, the inquiry’s report is likely to miss the bigger picture, because of the European Parliament’s institutional navel-gazing and narrow focus on the troika – a team of civil servants – rather than its political masters.
MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | The appreciation of the euro, in a deflationary context as the current one, may be the last push so as to cross the ECB’s red line and reach a Japanese style deflation. Macroeconomic variables don’t encourage optimism, especially because inflation in the euro zone is getting closer and closer to the ECB’s zero red line.
WASHINGTON | By Dean Baker via Caixin | While Britain is lavished with dubious praise for its austerity policies, Japan has made real progress with its experiments in stimulus.
MADRID | The Corner Team | Investors are most likely to hear the ECB repeat (again) how prepared it is to act and use all kind of unconventional devices on next Thursday meeting, after inflation in the euro zone fell to 0.7% in December, its lowest level since the common currency was born. “As fears of deflation increases, the central bank cannot remain unable to act,” analysts say.
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and Mario Draghi ECB’s president were in the same Davos panel on Saturday. Both talked about signs of recovery across the world and the euro zone. However, as she said that deflation potential risks in the euro zone must not be ignored, he minimized danger and insisted once more that the bank is prepared to deploy a QE’s policy if deflation appeared.
SAO PAOLO | By Marcus Nunes | Shinzo Abe was elected in December 2012 on a promise to revive growth and put an end to deflation. How have his promises ‘performed’ one year after taking power? The ‘performance’ of the so-called Abenomics will be illustrated by a set of charts.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | According to Alan Goolsbee, as Mr. Bernanke prepares to depart at the end of January and the Fed has initiated the exit-strategy countdown with the start of tapering, it is time to take stock of the QE Era—and time for the critics to admit they were wrong.
MADRID | By Francisco López | In the midst of the markets’ euphoria thanks to the sharp fall in the risk premiums of peripheral countries, the big commander came and ordered to stop. The president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, appealed to investors to be cautious facing the risks of a “fragile and weak” recovery in the Eurozone and about an inflation whose expectations on the medium-term have worsened.
LONDON | By Barclays analysts | The ECB left monetary policy unchanged as expected and strengthened the downside bias of its forward guidance somewhat. Mario Draghi insisted on the fragility of the economic recovery and repeated that the ECB would be ready to act should downside risks materialize. We still think that monetary policy should be kept unchanged at least for the next two years, but we acknowledge the risk of further easing should inflation and inflation projections fall further. Besides, liquidity measures could be introduced to support the financing of the economy.
FRANKFURT | By Lidia Conde | The oldest German private bank, Bankhaus Metzler, was founded in 1674 and is managed by Friedrich von Metzler. Emmerich Müller is partner and member of the Executive Board, and he believes that private banking and heritage conservation for generations are key questions in a country with a rich heritage and a large number of wealthy people.