The biggest economic threat today is not the interest rate, nor the exchange rates, nor the possible trade war fuelled by Trump: it’s the debt accumulated by countries across the world. This has increased 12% of GDP since the crisis, totalling 225% of global GDP. Starting with China, followed by Europe and ending up with the US, the threat from the current and future debt is terrifying.
Yesterday, April 19, after being flat for months, with no pulse, the Euribor finally showed signs of life. It moved from the range of -0.190% (average for April) to -0.189%. One basis point.
Javier Arce | The ECB does not get the banks to move their money, interbank market is still broken and eurozone lenders are accumulating the ECB’s liquidity injections (almost 700bn) at the central bank itself.
Ewald Nowotny, a member of the ECB Governing Council said recently he was comfortable with the possibility of an increase in the deposit rate, from -0.4% to -0.2%, “as a first step” before any change in the official interest rate. At April 6, European banks kept 690, 384 million euros in the ECB. It’s the first time, since interest rates have been at a record low of 0%, that an ECB member has talked so clearly about a rise.
Morgan Stanley believes Spain and Italy are going to dominate Net Interest Income growth in 2019. They flag that Unicaja, Bankinter and Caixabank are amongst the banks which improve their ROTE more with every 50 bp rise in the Euribor. Furthermore, they have very efficient cost structures.
It seems obvious that the most sensible thing to do with respect to retirement is to try to save something and invest it well to complement the meager pension which, foreseeably, the State will give us when we retire.
Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has been chosen by euro zone ministers on Monday afternoon to replace ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio. Ireland withdrew the only other candidate, central-bank governor Philip Lane, at the start of the meeting.
The Spanish government has this week officially announced the candidacy of Economy Minister Luis de Guindos for the Vice-Presidency of the ECB, substituting the Portuguese Vitor Constancio. De Guindos already tried to move to Brussels as a substitute for Dijsselbloem at the head of the Eurogroup. But the bet didn’t turn out well.
Draghi is nervous because the dollar has begun to fall, messing up his plan to withdraw stimulus from an economy which is increasingly more dynamic.
Spain’s government bond rating has been upgraded by Fitch to A- from Baa+, Greece has also seen the rating lifted by Standard &Poor’s, and the US once again experiences a shutdown of non-essential government operations. The biggest topic for the bond market, however, will be the press conference of the European Central Bank (ECB) scheduled for Thursday.