EBA guidelines for fair mortgage lending come too late
MADRID | By JP Marín Arrese | Banks should enforce the sooner the better these EBA guidelines if only to avoid transforming their credit portfolio into real estate heavily undervalued.
eurozone
Poland, a new promised land
WARSAW | The tables have now turned for job seekers in Europe. As austerity and unemployment drives young people from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece in search of work, Poland is rapidly becoming an attractive destination for international job hunters.
Bundesbank’s criticism of ECB’s bond-buying scheme
MADRID | By Luis Martí | What is worrying is the Bundesbank attitude of permanent and frank opposition to the initiatives of the ECB to overcome the crisis, being against any flexibility and realism that the economy is needing.
The Constitutional Court of Germany set to judge the Eurozone
LONDON | By Victor Jimenez | Governments in Berlin must speak up their minds, instead of using the national judiciary system and some probable legal ambiguities to delay the urgent steps of more integration.
ECB Monetary policy: would cash trickle down or is there a liquidity leak?
It seems like the million-dollar question: what if the ECB stopped sitting on its hands, change its monetary policy and pump some cash into the suffering euro peripheral countries? George Mason University Economics professor Tyler Cowen wonders about the consequences in his blog Marginal Revolution.
Wednesday’s chart: ECB negative interest rates
LONDON/MADRID | ECB negative interest rates might fail to re-activate credit activity because of a too cautious Germany.
Spanish banks reduce their dependence on ECB’s funding
MADRID | By José Luis Marco at Capitalmadrid |The Bank of Spain considers that liquidity is no longer a problem and detects a greater international confidence on the country’s financial groups.
Cyprus bailout effects: Eurozone integration remains vulnerable
With the great amount of debate, chatter, and serious analysis about the EU’s financial rescue of Cyprus from insolvency and potential departure from the eurozone, many wonder if the EU policy emerging from the Cypriot “bail out” will have a lasting impact on the political and economic integration of the Europe. In John Sydney Hopkins view, the EU rescue of Cyprus will be seen as a milestone event with a lasting impact on the EU’s ability to manage the process of integration.
Real estate investment in the Eurozone increased by 6pc
Despite the continued uncertainty in the Eurozone, total real estate investment volumes grew in 2012 with €118bn invested, up from €112 recorded in 2011.
Italian government says andiamo, Europa!
MADRID | By Antonio Sánchez-Gijón (Capital Madrid) | What is on stake for the new Italian government? The country is living in a contradiction: on one hand it has debt and risk premium under control, but on the other it is struggling with a deep economic crisis. Moody’s has corrected its 2013 GDP forecast set so far at -1%, and has placed it at -1.8%.