NEW YORK | You are going to hear it more than often. It is called individual mandate: citizens required to purchase health insurance, or face a penalty. It is the Gordian knot of Obamacare, the new US Health law. And it is also the essence of both the Netherlands health system (it has been since 2006) and the Swiss (since 1994). In that regard, the US is trying to imitate…
MADRID | Morgan Stanley published a report that analyses the implications of the banking deleveraging process for the commercial real estate sector in Europe. The bottom line is that it will generate a gap in financing estimated in €400 to €700 billion during the coming years and that this is a structural trend. “We believe that the winners may be the venture capitalists. In our view, Blackstone and Partners Group are well positioned to step in that section of business once banks leave. Financing activity in commercial real estate has an…
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, released Thursday data on hourly labour costs in the euro zone and in the EU. In both instances, the records indicate a very small increase but enough to strengthen the argument of those governments introducing wide-reach labour market reforms. Hourly labour costs in the euro area rose by 2.8% in the year up to the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with 2.6%…
NEW YORK | Officials from the International Swaps and Derivatives Association have stated that Greece has not had a ‘credit event’ and credit default swap payments will not be triggered, at least not yet. The body’s decision has reignited the debate over the usefulness of CDS. CDS are a US$32 trillion market, which is more than twice the US gross domestic product and more than twice the national debt. They…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | Greek politicians’ sheer incompetence and the stiff resistance of its population to renounce living beyond its means are branded as evidence of that country unavoidable failure. Yet it only shows European leaders’ blindness in grasping how a monetary union should work. Their diagnosis on where the problem laid has proved to be utterly wrong. Obsession about budgetary targets, they knew beforehand to…
NEW YORK | The US are anxious over Greece. Wall Street fell on Wednesday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its biggest one-day decline this year. Treasury 10-year note yields traded below 2 percent as European leaders work on an eventual €130 billion financial bailout for Athens at their next meeting on February 20. Investors did not hide their worries: “As much as we’d like to ignore Greece and…
NEW YORK | It’s a catastrophe, experts say: about 1.2 million US students drop out every year and this imposes a huge cost on the whole economy. “Many of these schools [with high dropout rates] are in the inner-city and are made up of blacks and Latino students who are not graduating at great rates. This increases the level of poverty, it increases crime, it increases the incarceration rate. 80…
AEW Europe has announced the merger of its three existing logistics funds, creating a €1bn pan-European logistics platform. The new Logistics Fund will own one of the largest logistics investment portfolios in Europe. The logistics market has been undergoing structural change and consolidation in recent years as logistics providers seek to increase market share and geographical coverage. Third party logistics providers and retailers are increasingly seeking to work with fewer partners…