“I don’t think ultimately that the Europeans will let the Euro unravel, but they are going to have to take some decisive steps,” US President Barack Obama said in a fundraiser event Monday night held in a New York high end hotel. Only four months before the U.S. election, Euro worries are inevitably playing a major role on this side of the Atlantic. Any worsening in the Euro zone situation…
NEW YORK | It is a battle that started about two years ago. Samsung and Apple’s endless dispute over intellectual property arrives to court this Monday in California. Together the two companies account for more than 50 percent of all the world’s smartphone sales. A jury will have to determine if any of them has infringed copyright laws against the other. On one side of the ring, Apple, that filed…
Economist Ricardo R. Reis expects “better policymaking from the European authorities now.” Originally from Portugal, Reis teaches at Columbia University, he is a former graduate from the London School of Economics and Harvard Ph.D and has worked extensively on inflation dynamics and monetary and fiscal policy, including evaluation of fiscal stimulus programs. He gives his take on the current economic turmoil for our readers in the first of a summer…
By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | The US economy is leaving behind its vigorous start to the year and is on way to a weaker scenario than the consensus had expected at the end of April, after the publication of the gross domestic product (GDP) flash estimate for the first quarter. The main reason for this weaker tone lies in the loss of dynamism in the labour market’s recovery….
An unwritten rule seems to warrant that US defence spending is kept immune to the ups and downs of the nation's GDP. The extraordinary dimensions of the current economic downturn, nevertheless, is testing its past resilience to any sort of moderation. Public investment in military affairs has largely been the result of foreign policy and global strategy, government cabinets since 2001 would surely protest from Washington. But a federal deficit…
NEW YORK | Times are tough for pensions. Retirement plans are not golden anymore. After the crisis, U.S. companies started to get rid of many pension funds or are allocating less money for them. And while the market has substantially recovered from the 2009 low, pension funds portfolios as well as supplemental savings and retirement accounts for individuals remain significantly smaller than they were at their peak. Last year, Standard…
NEW YORK | Federal Reserve’s chairman Ben Bernanke attended his semi-annual monetary policy report to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, insisting that the Fed remains in close contact with European authorities but the alarms of spillover are still on. “I don’t think they [Europe leaders] are close to having a long-term solution that will solve the problem and until they find those long-term solutions, we’re going to continue to see…
By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | The worsening climate in peripheral Europe has affected the corporate bond markets. Whereas, during the previous months, this market stood out for its remarkable ability to resist the adversities of the euro area crisis (from the point of view of issuances and the extent of capital flows), in May investor mood and the issuance of corporate bonds had been fully infected. In addition,…
WASHINGTON | “Show me the factories, then!” Before the audience at the School for International Relations of the John Hopkins University, Adair Turner, or Lord Turner, put in these terms his rebuttal to those who defend that financial innovation betters the real economy, a selected group where we would find the former chief economist at JP Morgan and once FMI’s deputy managing director John Lipsky, who happens to strongly dissent…
European consortium Airbus said it will establish a manufacturing facility in the United States for assembly and delivery of A320 aircrafts. Located at the Brookley Aeroplex in Mobile, Alabama, it will be the company’s first US-based production facility. The Alabama complex will also assemble A319 and A321 aircrafts. According to Airbus' schedule, the site construction will begin in mid 2013 and it is planned to start production in 2015, with…