Francisco Vidal | The emphasis put on the Federal Reserve’s actions and the US’ economy’s favourable performance over the last few years led to the debate over the possibility of the euro and the dollar reaching parity, which gained momentum at end-2016 and at the start of 2017. But the euro’s fundamentals are currently better than expected and, in the future, can count on the support of the ECB.
The Laffer curve, named after Arthur Laffer, demonstrates, in a conceptual and educational way, that from a certain level of tax onwards, revenues fall because people don’t have any incentive to work. And the Supply Economy originated from this.
The CNMV and the government have been trying for years to get the big companies and Spanish banks to issue debt in Spain. But despite some reforms having been made, Spanish companies continue to head for Europe and even farther afield to ask investors for money.
Argemino Barro | The Conference Board is a non-profitable organisation set up just over half a century ago by 12 big corporations to soften their public image during a time of social unrest. Nowadays it offers analytic tools for different sectors of the economy and has 1,200 companies from 60 countries as partners. Its chief economist, Gad Levanon, analyses here the situation of the US economy in the Trump era.
The US stock market represents 54% of the MSCI world markets’ index and 60% of the MSCI for developed countries, according to The Economist. It’s another indicator to add to those we have mentioned before which point to the US market being overvalued.
Steve Keller via Atlantic Sentinel | Last week, I wrote about Donald Trump’s soft support among Republicans. Democrats already strongly disapprove of his bigotry, buffoonery and right-wing ideology. In order to dip down to Nixonian or Bush ’43 levels — high 20s, low 30s — he will have to lose support from conservatives and Republican-leaning independents.
In the US and other parts of the world a phenomenon has occurred which partly explains the differences in income: the different levels of success which different companies have. But it seems that companies were more uniform in the past. The salary differential happened within a company and could be translated into expectations of promotion or a better job like in the age of the “American dream”.
James Alexander | Scott Sumner wrote an interesting blog post on his vision of macro. It is a useful way of seeing where Scott stands today. However, we were puzzled. Should unemployment really be the centerpiece variable or should it be stable nominal spending growth at an appropriate level?
Iberdrola has warned of the risk Donald Trump’s administration poses to renewables’ growth plans in the US. Iberdrola says Trump could freeze or eliminate the CPP (Clean Power Plan) designed by Obama. This envisaged investments of $8.5 billion a year until 2030. But for now, these changes in US policy have not altered Iberdrola’s growth outlook.