SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | Markit´s PMI survey is a favorite of central banks and financial institutions. The panel below shows both the global (comprised of 32 countries) and the Eurozone and Japan PMI´s. Trichet´s rate increase ‘folly’ of April and June 2011 as well as Draghi´s “ECB will do whatever it takes” of July 2012 are marked. So is the “Abe effect” in Japan.
The Corner Team via the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) | Japanese banks have recently become once again the biggest suppliers of cross-border bank credit, as they used to be in the 80s. The severe banking crisis of the 1990s, along with banking deregulation in the archipelago, reversed their expansion, the last BIS report points out. Their market share reached a low in 2007 before rebounding.
BARCELONA | By CaixaBank research team | Our scenario expects this expansion to continue in 2014 since the effects of the Bank of Japan’s quantitative easing should continue until well into the coming year.
By Ray Kwong | Broad strokes, when you’re talking about the 21st century possibly becoming the Asian Century, one thing becomes crystal clear: it’s not preordained and it’s not just all about China. With its varied cultures and emphasis on education, self-reliance and upward mobility, Asia may overtake the West as the world’s economic engine.
MADRID | What is important is that public debt drops and the economy recovers. And to achieve that, Japan has chosen the opposite strategy than the eurozone’s authorities.
By CaixaBank researchers | The markets welcome the central bank’s expansionary policies but the latest indicators are still weak.
After two decades of relative decline, decision makers in Tokyo need to tackle serious reforms to boost Japan’s economic system. This is the first part of a series published by The Fair Observer perusing the country’s economic challenges.
Japan is slowing down and faces a second half of 2012 with weak activity, CaixaBank research shows. The fact that the nuclear switch-off will increase the cost of energy imports doesn’t help.
MADRID | Three years have passed since the US took hold in mid-2009 of something of an economic recovery. The green in the green shoots has been paler than first thought, though. JP Morgan analysts in Spain released today a note saying that, by GDP per capita standards, we are witnesses of the weakest rebound the US has lived since World War Second. In the JP Morgan chart, populations has…
By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | The upswing exceeded expectations with a first quarter GDP that grew by 1.0% quarter-on-quarter and 2.6% year-on-year. This momentarily places Japan at the head of advanced economies in terms of growth. However, the forecast for the whole of 2012 hardly reaches 2.5%, as the composition of the national accounts raises doubts regarding the sustainability of the upswing. Unusually, the growth of the first…