Britain’s summit price for backing treaty change was a financial services protocol packed with half-a-dozen complex, arcane regulatory fixes that left most European leaders “baffled”, according one official at the summit. Contrary to widely believed French claims, the protocol was neither a demand for a general veto, nor a manifesto for light-touch regulation. Instead it [...]
By Ralph Blake The public debt crisis that is currently at its deepest in the Eurozone has its roots in the general crisis of capitalism. To attempt to solve capitalism’s crisis of the 1970s and the dynamic path it has followed since then vast amounts of credit were made available over the last three decades. [...]
Greece will default soon: either under the coercion of the European Union; involuntary or through the will of the people It is clear to most in Europe think – both financial experts and lay people – that the punishment being inflicted on Greece is not sustainable. Only the Greek government, the European Union (EU) leaders, [...]
Spain has had an extreme property bubble before the crisis and unlike Ireland and the US, house prices have fallen moderately. They rose 106% from the start of monetary union to their peak in 2007 and have only to the end of 2010 fallen 18%. There are no artificial or natural supply constraints. There are [...]
A full financial bailout of Portugal involving the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) looks set to happen in the first half of 2011. This will involve severe austerity conditions being imposed on the Portuguese people by the ECB and IMF. The indications are clearly there as at the end of [...]
What’s the difference between Ireland and the UK? Probably about two years! When Ireland’s property and credit bubble burst the Irish government poured tens of billions of Euros into the banking and building industries to stop them going completely bankrupt. They endured a deep recession which saw tax revenues decline dramatically. To pay for this [...]
As it currently exists the Euro as the single European currency is highly unstable. Ultimately it can only succeed if backed by a single European state power and the unification of existing national currency reserves. The latter is not the case but the former is only partially true. A single European state can only be [...]
The European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have put together a 750 Euro billion bail out package to try and avert what would be the second leg of the great financial crisis and a double dip recession which could lead to a depression world wide. The package was [...]
Fears of a second so called double dip recession are emerging. The rate at which banks lend and borrow to each other has started to rise for the first time in months as everyone starts to get concerned about each others’ exposures to Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, the UK and Spain. An already weakening recovery [...]
Eastern Europe has borrowed $1.7 trillion abroad, much on short-term maturities. It must repay – or roll over – $400bn this year, equal to a third of the region’s GDP. This will be difficult because most lenders wish to rein in high risk debts and need the loans to supplement their diminishing capital. Not even [...]
