Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | High inflation is the current hot economic topic. In June, inflation was running at over 11% in the Netherlands1; for the eurozone it was nearly 9%, which is surely a record. It is also sure that the inflationary bite is being felt, particularly in the purchasing power of lower income groups. The question is, how long will this high inflation last? In recent months, energy…
Spain’s estimated annual Consumer Prices Index (CPI) stood at 10.4% in August, according to an advance of the data from the National Statistics Institute (INE). If this figure is confirmed, it would mean a decline of four-tenths of a percentage point from the 10.8% recorded in July. INE said the trend in inflation in August is mainly due to the fall in fuel prices, which rose a year earlier. And…
Juan Pedro Marín-Arrese | Blaming Putin for the current inflationary bout no longer holds. No one disputes that sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy following the aggression on Ukraine have made the prices of vital commodities skyrocket, mainly due to wild speculative movements. Nowadays, we are witnessing sharp falls in raw materials while prices gather further momentum. Thus, claiming we only face a cost shock from such products seems…
The European Commission has not corrected its forecasts with respect to May: growth remains at 4%, close to the Government’s April forecast of 4.3%. The blow comes in 2023, with one of the biggest downward revisions in Europe, of 1.3 percentage points: growth of 2.1%, after the Commission itself estimated months ago that it would be 3.4%. For this period, the government had estimated 3.5% growth three months ago. The…
The CPI shot up 1.5 points in June, closing at a year-on-year rate of 10.2%, according to the INE’s leading indicator. This is the highest inflation in 37 years, since 1985, surpassing both the 8.7% figure recorded in May and the previous high of 9.8% in March. Gasoline and food products were responsible for the rise in prices, according to the INE, which, as this is a first estimate, does…
The package of measures – valued at 9 billion euros and approved last Saturday by Pedro Sánchez’s government – to contain the impact of the inflationary spiral, comes into force today. The Royal Decree, with measures ranging from pensions to the butane cylinder, electricity generation and the gas market, was published in the BOE yesterday, Sunday. This was just hours after being announced by the Prime Minister following an extraordinary…
Eurostat | The euro area annual inflation rate was 7.4% in April 2022, stable compared to March. A year earlier, the rate was 1.6%. European Union annual inflation was 8.1% in April 2022, up from 7.8% in March. A year earlier, the rate was 2.0%. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The lowest annual rates were registered in France, Malta (both 5.4%) and…
Unemployment rose by 70,900 people between January and March, up almost 2.3% from the previous quarter, while employment fell by 100,200 jobs (-0.5%). This is the smallest decline in a first quarter since 2019, when 93,400 jobs were destroyed. At end-March, the total number of unemployed people stood at 3,174,700 and the number of employed at 20,084,700, the National Statistics Institute (INE) reported on Thursday. The increase in unemployment in…
Simon Harvey, Head of FX Market Analysis at Monex Europe | On the one hand, core inflation moderated in March with a sequential slowdown from 0.5% m-o-m to 0.3% m-o-m, while on the other hand, headline inflation beat expectations. Headline inflation rose by 1.2% month-on-month, in line with expectations, while the annualised rate exceeded expectations by 0.1 percentage point to 8.5%. The slowdown in the month-on-month core CPI to the…
Miguel Navascués | Although there seems to be no awareness of it, the current problem in the world economy is of cosmic proportions, a problem for which we have no close antecedents. We have huge pockets of liquidity, originated to alleviate the contraction of the pandemic, now that inflation is rebounding with great vigour, and a recession that is already being announced in some indicators; what some translate as an…