So here’s the 5 trillion dollar trick question. In an interesting article on the limitations of central bank monetary policy in the current environment, Reuter’s Alan Wheatly made the following statement which caught my attention. “Central banks are rummaging through their toolkits because, despite slashing interest rates and buying vast quantities of bonds, they have signally failed to revive a global economy hamstrung by heavy debts and weak banks”. But thinking about it for a couple of minutes, you could ask yourself why is this so? Continue reading
Author Archives: Edward Hugh
The Owl Of Minerva
Last week was the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the global financial crisis. Not uncoincidentally it was also the fifth anniversary of continually rising unemployment in Spain , since it was in early summer 2007 that seasonally adjusted Spanish unemployment embarked on its steady upward path. And after it started climbing, naturally it hasn’t stopped since. Indeed we seem to have at least another year of growing unemployment before us, maybe more.
Is The Italian Elephant About To Break Loose Again?
Market nervousness about Italy has been growing in recent weeks, with the Moody’s credit downgrade of the country being only one of the reasons. A bailout is clearly in the offing, with the only real questions being how and when. While the situation inside his country appears to be deteriorating, Mario Monti has been doing the rounds of European capitals in an attempt to drum up support. While in Helsinki he raised an eyebrow or two when he warned that without a serious plan to bring down interest rates disaffection with the euro in his country could easily grow to dangerous proportions. Crying wolf, or a piece of insider information? Probably a bit of both. Continue reading
What’s Up Doc?
According to Wikipedia, Kabuki is a classical Japanese dance-drama known for the stylization of its plot and for the elaborate make-up worn by the key performers. This definition also seems to fit the drama in an unknown number of acts currently being acted out on the European stage by some of the continent’s leading central bank players perfectly.
It all started last Thursday when, as surely everyone but my blind and deaf uncle must now know, Mario Draghi made what is widely though to have been an important speech. We will do whatever it takes, as long as it is in the mandate, he is reported as saying. And since stopping anything which could be life-threatening to the Euro dead in its tracks forms part of the bank’s mandate under any conceivable interpretation, the ECB now have the widest possible brief within which to circumscribe their actions. The only limitation is that it should be enough, just enough, and no more. As Mario Draghi said, “believe me, it will be enough”.
Continue reading
Portugal – Please Switch The Lights Off When You Leave!
The recent decision by the Portuguese constitutional court to unwind public sector salary cuts included by the government in its austerity measures has once more given rise to speculation the country may not meet it’s 4.5% deficit target for 2012. The court – which ruled the non-payment of the two traditional Christmas and Summer salary payments for the years through 2014 was unconstitutional took the view that since the measure did not also apply to the private sector, it was discriminatory. Whatever view we may take on how the Portuguese Constitution defines “discrimination” the important detail to note is that the decision will not apply to 2012, and will hence only have the impact of forcing the government to find additional adjustments for 2013 and 2014, or at least a new formulation which allows them to constitutionally cut public sector pay.
Nonetheless, despite the fact it will not affect this years fiscal effort the coincidence of the timing of the court decision with the appearance of a report from the parliamentary commission responsible for monitoring the execution of this years budget only served to heighten nervousness about the possibility that, with unemployment rising more sharply than anticipated and the economic recession still accelerating, this year’s deficit numbers may not add up as planned. Continue reading
Whom The Gods Would Destroy
The Times They Are A Changin, as the old song goes. Neither in jest nor in total earnest was a truer word ever said in terms of the 2 year old Euro Debt Crisis. The to-ing and frow-ing we have seen over the last few days as commitment to decisions taken at the recent summit started to wobble only serve to underline how hard it is at times to change. These days I have no central “Euro” scenario. Only tail scenarios exist, under which the debt crisis veers in either one direction or the other according to the decisions taken or the absence of them. Naturally this makes the eventual outcome very hard to foresee, which is why the financial markets are having such a hard time of it, and why we see so much volatility.
In the case of the full banking, political and fiscal union scenario the efficient causes which could make it happen are obvious: just keep the various participants looking down into the abyss often enough and long enough. In the case of complete breakup things are rather different, since it is hard to concretise what would actually bring it about, although the risk is evident, and indeed in many ways it seem a more probable end point than the other one.
After thinking about this for some time, the conclusion I have reached is that it is towards political risk, and the progressive destabilizing of Europe’s democratic systems, that we need to look, which is what makes recent events in Romania look like something rather more than a mere historical footnote. Continue reading
Neither Grexit, Nor Spexit, It’s Fixit or Fexit
The aftermath to last weeks EU summit has certainly proved to be a damn sight more perplexing than the actual summit itself. Contrary to earlier experiences, this time round the more the details have been “clarified” the more confused we have become. Continue reading
And Then There Were Six – Is Slovenia Next?
Slovenia is in the news. According to press reports (and here) solving the problems which have accumulated in the country’s banking system may well mean the country is next in line for some sort of EU bailout assistance. Speculation was fueled last week when ECB Governing Council member and Bank of Slovenia Governor Marco Kranjec said that the country may well eventually need assistance, even if for the moment it will not be necessary. Sounds a lot like the other denials we have heard just before the “happy event”.
“We do not exclude anything … but for now this is an entirely hypothetical question,” he told his conference audience,”Conditions (in the Slovenian banking sector) are going in the bad direction, but for now I do not see a reason that Slovenia would need to ask for (international) help.” He also made the point that “Yields on our (Slovenian) debt are very high but poor availability of (financial) resources is even more worrying,” Continue reading
On The Brink Of What?
This weekend I have been thinking quite a lot about what the world is gonna look like on Monday, and have come to the conclusion that it won’t be that different from the way it was last Friday. The big news surprise of the weekend was in fact Greece related – since the national football team qualified for the quarter finals of the Eurocopa, beating the Russia by a resounding 1-0.
Oh yes, they also had elections in Greece, didn’t they? Continue reading
Rescue Me
I guess we will never know whether or not Mariano Rajoy uttered the two magic words so effectively immortalized in song by Fontella Bass that Saturday afternoon in late May as he cruised down the Chicago River in what Spanish media called a “Love Boat” ride, but one thing certainly is now clear, Angela Merkel has finally and definitively accepted Spain into the German embrace. Whether it will be a tender and loving one remains to be seen.
