Eurozone GDP growth in Q1 arrived in line with a GDP tracker at +0.4% on a quarterly basis estimated by AXA IM strategists (versus a consensus of 0.6%) and reflected “the weakness in industrial production in several member states during January and February.”
Eurozone banks are currently keeping 690 billion euros at their central bank, according to the ECB’s last figures. While the European Commission aims to achieve by end-2018 a completed banking union, this an evidence of a more fragmented market. Are lenders suspicious of their refinancing capability in order to honour their debts? And why is Ewald Nowotny asking to cut them some slack?
Just a couple of years ago, deflation was a concern for US economists. And, although it’s true that this threat has almost disappeared, rises in prices have shown themselves to be surprisingly elusive.
Athanasios Dimadis and Pierre Moscovici | President Trump’s election marked a new turn in the US-EU relations. EU commissioner for economic affairs, Pierre Moscovici, did not shrink from using harsh language in the past to respond to President Trump’s comments about potential EU collapse. During the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Moscovici suggested that the isolationist tendencies inherent in Trump’s “America First” approach could be countered by what he calls a “European way.”
After twenty years of similarity between 10-year rates in the US and Germany, for the last six years there has been a growing decoupling of the US rate, reaching a spread of 2%. So what are the macroeconomic differences justifying such behaviour? Germany’s huge savings play a big part.
Today we will have Eurozone CPI data, without any surprises on the horizon. The average EMU CPI rate will come in at 1.5% in 2017 compared with 0.2% in 2016. This is after a year when the annual inflation rate actually reached 2% in February when the increasing effect of energy prices was at its most aggressive.
While the EU statistics office Eurostat said on Tuesday GDP in the eurozone rose 0.6% quarter-on-quarter in the three months to September and 2.5% year-on-year, the EC revised yesterday its growth forecast for the region to 2.2%, markedly higher for this and next year. Therefore, this Commission’s expectation in 2017 is well justified, based on published data from Eurostat.
The IMF has just upped its forecast for global growth by one-tenth of a percentage point to 3.6% and 3.7% respectively for this year and the next. The message from the supranational organisation is relatively positive: over 75% of the world is seeing an acceleration in its rate of growth.
ACF | The ECB is proposing a tightening up of the provisions required from the European banks to cover loans which are classified as doubtful from January 2018, according to today’s press.
The latest set of September PMIs published yesterday showed that global economic growth momentum will remain very strong until year end, with the US, Europe and Japan set for even higher growth in Q4 2017 and only a minor cooling of economic growth in China. This bodes well for a continuation of US rate normalisation in December 2017.