Crisis

Negative interest rates here, there, everywhere. What used to be taught as “impossible” in textbook is now a reality throughout the EU. And for the first time it even affects corporate bonds, not just “safe” sovereign ones. Why would anyone lend more than they receive, when they can just hang on to cash? We explain.

Is the standoff between the ECB and Greece in any sense subtle, or simply a car crash waiting to happen? We explain why being the first to defect may in fact
benefit Greece. With low sympathy for formal (fiscal) debt forgiveness, we expect pressure to increase further on the ECB.

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Deutsche Bank’s CEO hails the new banking regulations. His counterpart at JP Morgan denigrates them. This, and further misconduct news just confirm that banking is still in worse shape than nearly all commentators and regulators appear to recognise.

WP 2015-03. Executive Summary During the past five years, emerging markets have experienced a significant rise in the credit to the private sector. In the countries that have recently joined…

Greece is said to be suffering under crippling burden of debt servicing. However, the official debt servicing is already lower than in other EU countries with much smaller debts. Furthermore, the actual interest payments payable by Greece are close to those that Germany is having to make on its incomparably healthier debt. When the general public learn about these relations, political support for any renegotiation of Greek debt is likely to fall even further.

The Greeks have voted and the left-wing Syriza emerged as the clear winner. There will now follow intensive discussions about Greek reforms and the relationship between Greece and the rest of the world. The labour market is one of the core battlegrounds in Greece. It is very difficult for the country’s unemployed to re-enter the labor market. This is borne out not only by the high unemployment rates but also by data on duration of holding current job. In no Eurozone country has the average employed worker held his or her job as long as in Greece. It is not clear whether the new government has either the incentive and/or the means to adjust the privileges of labour market insiders for the benefit of current outsiders.

WP 2015-02. Executive Summary Western central banks have been pursuing unconventional monetary since at least 2008. Is there a way of ending them? The authors identify the winners and losers…

For several weeks Greece has been, once again, at the centre of European economic policy. Grexit, Greece’s withdrawal from the Eurozone, is being debated again, in light of the forthcoming Greek election of 25 January. Proponents point to the opportunity after such withdrawal for a massive devaluation of Greek currency which would lower the price of Greek goods and services and make them competitive again.

However, a quick look at different measures of economic freedom in the Eurozone countries suggests, that strong devaluation alone would not shuffle Greek problems off this mortal coil.

Despite the attention offered by the media to Russian banking and foreign exchange markets, tensions are growing in the ECB. Some ECB Board members are unconvinced of the stance the ECB President is taking, doubting that the introduced policy would be effective, let alone constitutional. We explain the economics behind these tensions and review in this light the road how we got here in the financial crisis.

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Our November Newsletter’s analysis has been echoed by other commentators. Banks continue to be undercapitalised and a new Leverage Ratio cannot help. Governments continue to borrow heavily and the financial market seems to be in another bubble.

Free movement of people, capital, goods and services across national borders. Those are, allegedly, the pillars of European integration. One of them, the free movement of capital, crossed swords twice…

According to several reports, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is planning to introduce a 300 billion-euro investment package this Wednesday (November 26th). The idea is to establish a European fund that will assume liability risks on behalf of private investors. Only profitable projects would be eligible for the guarantee; the profitability of individual projects is to be pre-determined by EU bureaucrats. This presupposes too much of President Juncker and his team. They purport to possess knowledge that they cannot possibly have. Unprofitable investment projects do not become socially profitable just by being financed by the state. When the bureaucracy starts acting like a bank, it transfers risks from real banks onto ordinary citizens. Once again.