Posted on Friday, November 18th, 2011 at 1:25 pm.
The UK saw a surprise rise in retail sales in October with a 0.6% monthly increase from Septembers figure. Although this was a positive sign for the UK economy it is expected that shoppers would be cautious with their spending for some time yet. In the Eurozone, a Spanish debt auction produced the highest borrowing [...] Read More...
Posted on Monday, November 14th, 2011 at 11:19 am.
Markets have taken positively the appointment of Mario Monti as a Prime Minister of Italy yesterday night. Monti puts an end to the “era Berlusconi” and is expected to deliver the necessary reforms to save Italy from the deepening crisis. The euro had already gained some ground last Friday after Lucas Papademos took over [...] Read More...
Posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at 2:18 pm.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has taken a leaf out of Papandreou’s book and handed in his resignation after losing a vote of confidence. However he will not step down until parliament has approved another austerity package. The prospect of fresh guidance in Athens and Rome has been enough to persuade investors that all is [...] Read More...
Posted on Monday, November 7th, 2011 at 12:39 pm.
This is the only news we are likely to hear from Athens today. Now the bonfire is out, it’s time for a new coalition government to rise from the ashes… The referendum is off and Papandreou is out. The EU has given Greece 24hours to explain how it will form a unity government before they [...] Read More...
Posted on Friday, November 4th, 2011 at 1:08 pm.
The EU leaders participating in the G20 meeting have openly admitted that it might be necessary for Greece to leave the eurozone; this comment was released despite the Greek minister George Papandreu’s decision to abandon the plans to hold a referendum on Athens’s bailout package. If the referendum had gone ahead it would have certainly [...] Read More...
Posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 at 12:05 pm.
Despite yesterday’s turmoil amazingly, the euro, the US dollar, the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc, and the pound start at almost identical levels to yesterday. It is possible that investors never really trusted the viability of the agreement that was announced six days ago and they see the Greek referendum as just one more possible [...] Read More...
Posted on Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 4:24 pm.
Trichet leaves the presidency of the ECB today with Europe still full of unresolved matters. As it has been pointed out by his colleague at the ECB’s Executive Board, Juergen Stark, Trichet has been “the great crisis manager in Europe,” His substitute, the Italian Mario Draghi, will have to deal with the first CPI and [...] Read More...
Posted on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 9:33 am.
Despite the lack of details provided markets reacted positively to the European summit announcements which highlighted that decisive action for tackling the debt crisis will be taken. Banks shares experienced a relief rally and the three largest French banks were up 19% on the day with even Greek bank shares showing a rise. This morning [...] Read More...
Posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 4:33 pm.
In the early hours of this morning the Euro zone leaders failed to find a decisive remedy to the region’s debt turmoil. Instead they merely produced the third leg of what was supposed to be a three part rescue plan. In a summit that lasted for 10 hours another a few key agreements were struck, [...] Read More...
Posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at 4:11 pm.
President Barroso’s speech yesterday to the European Parliament showed the way to further gains for the euro as he set out a “roadmap [that] charts Europe’s way out of the economic crisis”. There were three elements to his proposal: the recapitalisation of banks; introduction of a permanent financial stability mechanism; and better observation of fiscal [...] Read More...