By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Merkel, Hollande, Monti and Rajoy. Four names for another crucial meeting in the euro zone, the one held today at Rome to smooth the path of next June 28-29 Summit. Christine Lagarde will not participate in this conversation but her name will surely loom large in the four European leaders’ minds. The International Monetary Fund’s managing director is raising the pressure for the European…
BEIJING | China is very good at persuading the international community. Current Chinese leaders had a great master: the strategist Sun Tzu who left a legacy on the art of seducing and wining. No matter what kind of cooperation Beijing has in mind, their main aim is to ensure that a win-win resolution is reached. Cooperating at the expenses of loosing some advantages is not an option. Therefore, one should not…
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…
buy cheap cigarettes By CaixaBank Research team, in Barcelona | In its World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts a slowdown in 2012 that should be followed by a weak recovery in 2013. The good performance of the US economy and the implementation of urgent policies in the euro area have lowered the risk of a sudden relapse and mean that the slowdown will be less than had…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Report and counter-report, this seems to be the general trend in talking about the Spanish economy’s health. Wednesday it was the CEEC’s occasion to present a report. The nation-wide competitiveness council integrated by presidents of the big Spanish multinationals assured that “expected losses in the the banking sector are limited. Since 2007, the industry has assumed €190 billion of them, including implications from last…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | The idea of a suffocated Spanish banking sector spreads like fire throughout the markets: Bankia’s nationalisation, Moody’s cut, the French president François Hollande advising to recapitalise the sector… But the International Monetary Fund will publish next week a report that assures 70% of Spain’s financial entities are already restructured. This news should help tame and perhaps even extinguish the flames. Analysts at Madrid’s financial City also…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Spain is the word. Everybody looks at Spain with suspicion because it could be the source, not the cause, of the next and penultimate euro crisis. The premium risk goes up, Argentina prepares a takeover on YPF, and the King breaks his hip and his grandson shoots himself in the foot. The rumours I hear tell me that the nation’s government does not expect any help…
A curated selection of links we hope can enlighten us all; some come from our corner, some do from other corners of the net. And as always, our comment widgets are anxious to get your suggestions. A weird US town teaches a lesson on small business survival La Camorra never sleeps European banks and capital reserves: never enough? Arguments inside the IMF Ha. Traders protest the system is not fair US…
By Begoña Castiella, in Athens |Yorgos Peristeris is CEO at the Greek construction company Gek Terna and chairman of Terna Energy, specialised in renewable energy. Peristeris smiles from his desk at the top floor of the company’s headquarters, an interesting building designed by Michael Hopkins in Athens. Gek Terna is a renowned construction company, while Terna Energy is the first Greek renewable energy company working outside Greece, although both are listed on…
By Carlos Díaz Güell, in Madrid | Portugal has gained the confidence of the Troika (staffers from the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank), as one could infer after reading the note published at the end of their visit last week to Lisbon for the third quarterly review of the adjustment programme. The group acknowledged the progress in correcting imbalances and gave the approval for disbursement of the fourth…