MADRID | By Francisco López | The market has changed their perception about the ECB’s monetary policy and it’s now anticipating a possible reduction of interest rates in the eurozone before end of the year or early 2014. The first consequence has been the depreciation of the euro, which has gone from 1.38 dollars, a two-year-maximum, to 1.35. The European currency suddenly depreciated, yet it still overvalued against the dollar.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | Markit´s PMI survey is a favorite of central banks and financial institutions. The panel below shows both the global (comprised of 32 countries) and the Eurozone and Japan PMI´s. Trichet´s rate increase ‘folly’ of April and June 2011 as well as Draghi´s “ECB will do whatever it takes” of July 2012 are marked. So is the “Abe effect” in Japan.
MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | Those who have already celebrated the euro comeback might be deluding themselves: investor confidence has changed gear because European peripheral risk at this point looks safer than some emerging economies’.
By Ignasi Meda, via One Europe | Rethinking the EU “democratic deficit”: Can we start now building a better and more credible Europe through the rapprochement between North and South?
MADRID | By Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, analyst at XTB | valenciaplaza.com | Has the Japanese experiment failed? Under the stress of some political pressures, Japan may have rushed into an expansion of its monetary base without all the due protections.
MADRID | By El País | A total of €6bn for 6 million unemployed young Europeans. The plan presented by Germany and France is a response to an absolute emergency. But for it to work, it must be supported by a collective will.
By Skip Worden | In trying to have it both ways—an economic regime and a political union—Hollande was being political at the expense of his own proposal.
SOFIA | By Ivan Krastev | Amnesia, recession, the failure of political elites, divided societies… The free and caring Europe that was the dream of oppressed peoples no longer exists, it is just that European leaders lack the courage to admit it, says a Bulgarian political analyst.
LONDON | “It is not about how much an hour of work costs but how much value produces an hour of work if we add technology to the equation.”
MADRID | The European Central Bank must change course, too, so market credit costs drop to a range at which peripheral governments will not suffer as much as they do now. Brussels and Berlin may stubbornly be strangling the eurozone because they cannot see the wood from the trees.