Monthly Archives: August 2004

Anyone Feel Like Hiking?

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At the time of writing the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England is busy deliberating as to whether to raise the base lending rate (currently at 4.5%). The consensus view is that the rate will go up a quarter point. Others speculate on a half percent rise (the National Institute of Economic and Social Research – NIESR – is even advocating this). Of course there is always the possibility that the rate will remain unchanged.

Whatever the speculation about the final decision, there is little mistaking the key factor in the decision: the Uk housing market. The centre of debate is really whether the UK housing market has peaked, or whether more rate raising is needed to bring the market back into line with reality. This is a classic bubble bursting situation.
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Who is Elga Bartsch?

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Apart from the fact that she is German, aged 37, and works for Morgan Stanley, perhaps, until recently, little more of any importance would have been known about her. But you try a ‘search news’ click on Google, and you will see how many times the name of ‘our Elga’ shows up in connection with what we might choose to call the ‘German disease’. (In reality the German economy has expanded by an average of only 1.2 percent every year since 1992, which is the same as the Japanese one – and less than half the growth achieved in the U.S. and the U.K. over the same period – so why don’t we say Germano-Japanese disease? This might help us get a bit nearer to the underlying causes). The reason for this: Elga is fast becoming the best known champion of the view that the key problem facing the Germany economy is the high cost of German labour.

“The reason that we go more to India and those countries is we get highly skilled young people in a flexible labor market for cheap prices,” said Henning Kagermann, 56, chief executive officer of SAP, in an interview at the Cebit fair in Hanover, Germany. “This is highly competitive against our home market.”
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A Tale of Two Search Engines

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With Google all set to start their IPO this Wednesday, many analysts are busy scratching their heads trying to work out whether the numbers add up.

One little detail that is exercising their minds is the recent fate of the once acclaimed Lycos. Terra Lycos announced this week that it will sell U.S.-based Web portal Lycos, which it bought just four years ago in a deal variously valued at between 7 billion and 12 billion dollars, to South Korea’s largest Internet company – Daum – for just $105 million.
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Italy: Pay Now Live Later?

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The Italian government appears to be making plans to get to grips with the mounting burden of its debt. This is a move which is being widely welcomed. Under the latest plan, the deficit is forecast to be 2.7% in 2005, down from the 2004 target of 3.2% of GDP.

Without the changes, experts were suggesting the deficit could rise as high as 4.4% next year.

Apparently the only remaining tricky problem appears to be that of the promised tax cuts. Bloomberg today cites Bank Governor Antonio Fazio as joing the ranks of those questioning the viability of these cuts:

Bank of Italy Governor Antonio Fazio urged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to focus on lowering debt and eliminating bureaucracy to boost economic growth rather than making tax cuts the country can’t afford.

Berlusconi’s government Thursday approved plans to cut taxes and adopt deficit reduction measures worth 24 billion euros ($29 billion) in 2005 to keep Italy’s budget from breaching European Union limits. The document didn’t say how 13 billion euros ($15.6 billion) in promised tax cuts for 2004 and 2005 would be funded.

As is not uncommon I have a different question: what will happen to economic growth in Italy if these cuts are implemented. Italy’s economy is projected by the IMF to grow at a rate of 1.2% this year. The previous two years were also extremely ‘lacklustre’. So the problem is that if you can only obtain a growth crawl when you are increasing the deficit, what are you likely to get when you start reducing.

Of course the attempts to get to grips with the problem – however inadequate they may be – are to be welcomed, but what will be the consequences? That is the uncomfortable question which noone seems to be facing up to at the moment.