UBS | Tracking Europe’s resilience In this report, we aim to shed light on the question we have been asked most frequently in recent weeks: “Can Europe hold up when problems elsewhere are getting worse?” So far, the Eurozone has held up respectably, which we attribute to the fact that European growth is mainly driven by domestic demand, not exports. We believe this should also provide Europe with decent resilience going forward.
Emilio Ontiveros | The Spanish economy grew more than its European counterparts and current tailwinds such as low oil prices also favour it over the rest of the member states. But the country still has a lot to do to become a major league player.
James Alexander via Historinhas | Almost alone among economic commentators we do actually look at Nominal GDP data as it is released. Full Euro Area NGDP data for third quarter 2015 was released this week alongside the 2nd estimate of Real GDP. We have already posted here and here on the good news as three of the “big 4” Euro Area countries, making up 75% of the Euro Area economy, had seen accelerating NGDP. The not so good news is that the little countries saw less acceleration.
James Alexander via Historinhas | While we firmly believe NGDP expectations are the best guide to monetary policy we are still some way from having a proper market measure of those expectations. However, two of the peripheral countries, Spain and Italy have now produced their first estimate of NGDP for 3Q.
Countries in the North don’t even want to talk about creating more inflation to help those in the South. Why should we, they say, if they are the debtors? Could they be persuaded that it is in their interests, given that the alternative could be default and the collapse of the eurzone economy and the euro? For the time being, they have allowed the ECB to work on moving away from zero inflation, but not beyond the 2% limit. And even this limit is not expected to be reached until 2017.
The market has already discounted that the ECB will announce new stimulus measures on December 3rd, modifying the current debt purchasing programme. But monetary policy only goes so far, and apart from the central bank’s measures, the Eurozone needs more public and private investment to recover its growth potential.
The day after Draghi warned about greater than expected weakness in Eurozone inflation data, Spain’s final October inflation number has been published, confirming the -0.7% year-on-year preliminary figure. But despite the fact inflation remains in negative territory, the CPI rose 0.6% month-on-month.
Since the Eurozone’s recovery started two years ago, the number of people in work has grown in all EU member states individually during the last seven quarters. In Q2’15 it expanded by 1.9% on a y-o-y basis.
BARCLAYS | Headline inflation surprised slightly to the downside while core prices increased more than we had expected. At the non-core level, energy inflation remains weak (-8.7%). At the core level, both non-energy industrial goods (NEIG) and services prices increased by 0.1pp, to +0.4% and +1.3%, respectively, and leading the unexpected 0.1pp rise in core inflation.
James Alexander via Historinhas | Yet again today we saw the “zero (long and variable) lags” in monetary policy. Central bankers moving markets and thus changing NGDP Expectations happens all the time. It’s perfectly rational too.