how to get your ex girlfriend back in a month LONDON | In came this week the numbers of German industrial production, and those who stir up the threat of an approaching euro area-wide recession saw its arguments confirmed: from March to April, Germany registered a 2.2 percent decline, a whole 1.2 percent under market expectations. The figure, 2.2 percent from 2.8 percent in March, placed that month's industrial production…
MADRID | All of the sudden, the feeling things might be spinning out of control has cast a gloomy mood in Spain. For a country lavishly living on others savings, finding itself short of cash has come as a shock-horror revelation. It now faces the unsparing rigour of lying in the hands of fickle and merciless markets. The deep-rooted assumption that confidence gap would be bridged as soon as the…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | The solution proposed by the Spanish president Mariano Rajoy to inject capital directly into troubled entities, with no need of intervening the whole of the countries' economy is gaining momentum. It was the International Monetary Fund the first organisation which gave a boost to the idea when its managing director, Christine Lagarde, assured that Spain did not require a rescue. Last week, Mario Draghi’s…
WASHINGTON | “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin, it does not work,” had already said Allan Meltzer in 1969. Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University teacher and author of the monumental History of the Federal Reserve is the same conservative who advised John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Under Clinton's presidency he was in charge of a U.S. Congress committee that essentially claimed the end of the World Bank on the basis…
NEW YORK | IMF managing director Christine Lagarde has denied it. So have U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Spanish government: there is no plan or request for a Spanish bailout. However, stocks pared losses Thursday after the Dow Jones agency published a report that the IMF had started contingency plans on a possible rescue loan for Spain. The reporter quoted “people involved in the handling of the Spanish crisis”….
LONDON | The direct costs of a Greek default and exit would appear controllable after all, analysts at Barclays Capital noted in a report to investors on Friday. But for all the sense markets are supposed to instil into State finances and economic policies, as their champions tirelessly tell everybody, emotion accounts for an awful lot. Let's say, for instance, that yes-all right, Greece's new government would be formed by…
Julia Pastor, in Madrid | In a note to investors, Afi’s analysts affirmed on Thursday that German CDS or swap contracts for bond buyers to protect themselves against losses have been under pressure in the last weeks, consequently increasing by 20%, the most among the euro zone’s countries. “It means a change of credit risk perception about Germany, which could be anticipating, as it happened in July and August of…
MADRID | We have a case for demanding some support in resisting the current run on us, our most solid argument being that something nasty might happen to the euro should we fall in the abyss. The one based on the merits of performing our homework seems less convincing. For all the reforms undertaken, we still have a long way to go in redressing a dismal record. Sheer lack of money…
MADRID | CAPITALMADRID.COM In the years 1992/93 the Spanish authorities struggled for longer than events recommended to keep the exchange rate of the peseta. Something similar might be going now on, but in another dimension, as the government still defends the good health of Spain's financial system. Back then, the stabilisation mechanism in place determined a fixed exchange rate for the peseta, let's say in short, against the German mark….
The IFO business index fell to 106.9 from 109.9 in April, only slightly above its recent low in October 2011 of 106.5. This was worse than the consensus expectations, which fell to 100.9 from 102.7, while the assessment of the current situation dropped to 113.3 from 117.5 in April. The IFO index is a monthly economic report, it surveys over 7,000 companies in Germany to obtain their opinion of the…