politics, economy and employment & labour
The narrative about Eurozone problems is often – and rightly – focused on the Italian banks’ troubles, burdened as they are by €338 billion of non-performing loans (NPLs) with little or no chance of recovery owing to the persistent crisis of the Italian manufacturing sector. The Monte dei Paschi drama is just the tip of […]
The process of globalization is in retreat. The latest victim of the global economic slowdown is international trade: after tumultuous growth in the last 26 years, disrupted only temporarily by the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the estimated volume of goods and services traded globally has been stalled for more than 18 months around $13 trillion. […]
Times have surely changed: as little as three years ago, Quantitative Easing was considered a remote hypothesis, EU inflation was well over 2% and only a small fraction of “heretics” (including myself) dared to discuss “helicopter money” as a measure to revive the economy. The “money from helicopters”, dubbed complete madness by Milton Friedman from […]
The Troika is in Athens and will not leave without deep cuts to pensions, even though the country is back in recession. Far from last summer’s media glare, a renewed clash of powers is on course between the Troika and the Tsipras government that could severely impact upon the exhausted Greek economy. Among the controversial 48 points […]
The severe financial crisis of recent years hit Eurozone industrial production; in a bank-centric currency area this resulted in tremendous growth of NPLs (non-performing loans), amounting today to €900 billion. In some countries, banking system issues arose from real estate bubbles and structured finance transactions. The absence of a unified economic policy and of a […]
2015 will go down as the year when the oil price crash did not result in a swift decline in oil output. At a first glance, this seems a very strange phenomenon. Although the price reduction has been massive (-75% in 18 months) it is certainly not the fastest: in 2008, with the crash of […]
For the fifth time in seven years Japan is back in recession, with GDP shrinking by a further 0.2% in the third quarter. Meanwhile, inflation has fallen from more than 2% to zero in just over six months. This is certainly not the first time that Japan has ‘gained’ a recession/deflation status: the growth dynamic of […]
After eight months of continued contraction, the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut is officially stranded. The rollercoaster ride of the summer of 2015 with its market crashes and sudden policy changes has unleashed widespread fear in government offices of losing further points of GDP growth. The latest estimate (probably optimistic) of a 6.9% growth rate appears disappointing […]
The debt crisis may no longer be in the spotlight but the financial situation in Greece remains complex. Greek banks continue to survive at the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat only by Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) from the ECB and by still-enforced capital controls. After the August “agreement”, the Troika has promised the Greek government €25 […]
On September 17, the Federal Reserve postponed again the decision – ‘announced’ many times in advance – to raise interest rates toward “normal” levels after eight years of expansive monetary policy at zero. During this period, the growth of the monetary base has driven long‐term rates to historic lows and thus enabled a recovery to pre‐crisis […]
