The Corner | March 20, 2015 | There may be some volatility on European markets in the day ahead, as late night talks between the Greeek government and members of creditor nations, the European Commission and the European Central Bank failed to unlock funds for Athens’ faltering economy.
MADRID| Sean Duffy | Nobody knows how the Greece debt negotiations will turn out, but aren´t we all getting a little tired of the saga?
LONDON | By Barclays analysts | The Japan macro trade has been off the radar in 2014, but that should change (for better or worse) in the coming few months. US yields have likely bottomed, while the effect of Japan’s VAT increase appearsmanageable. More important, PM Abe has unveiled more details of his 3rd Arrow (the structuralreform program), including a long-anticipated cut in the corporate tax rate.
BERLIN | By Alberto Lozano | It’s not all about the deficit. If the eurozone wants to achieve the goal of sustainable growth, Germany also needs to shorten its chronic current account surplus, the world’s largest, which has led the country to accumulate capitals abroad amounting 100% of its GDP. Although this means dismissing one its economic miracle recipes -wage moderation-, Merkel will increase public workers’ salaries by 3% this year, +3X inflation.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Seldom a book has made such a big splash in the financial markets as Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys. In just a matter of days, and partly to a superb segment in CBS’s 60 Minutes, Mr. Lewis has put something as arcane as High Frequency Trading (HFT) in the front page of American newspapers, and even to force the suspension of the IPO of one of the industry’s giants, Virtu.
Iris Mir |Chinese brand Haier went from a disastrous inefficient brand to the world’s biggest household appliances manufacturer thanks to its CEO, Zhang Ruimin, innovative entrepreneurial thinking. The ideal scenario for China would be that many local brands could achieve Haier’s reputation and capacity for innovation. And thus they’d become Ambassadors of a new made in China, most sophisticated and exclusive. A substantial consolidation of domestic demand and the development of a new industrial structure may be paving the way for this dramatic transition to happen.
MADRID | The Corner Team | Exports are pumping fresh air into the Spanish economy. The recession-hit country’s trade deficit plunged by a further 53.5 per cent in July, officials said on Friday. The government is banking on foreign trade to be an engine of the recovery.
Roderick Parkes| If the free trade agreement between the US and Europe remains so appealing, it’s because nobody has actually shown that the EU could flourish without it.
“The Spanish trade balance shows that Spanish companies have the capacity to find alternative markets when the usual domestic clients slow down their demand,” Bankia Bolsa explained in a report.
By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | The rise of prices below the government’s target of 4% has created further room for expansionary policies. Hence the government cut the official interest rate by 25 basis points, down to 6.31%, at the beginning of June, and reduced the cash reserve ratio by 50 basis points in mid-May. For the remainder of the year, we predict further reductions in the cash reserve…