Tag Archives: Greece

Accounts of the financial crisis leave out the story of the secretive deals between banks that kept the show on the road. How long can the system be propped up for? - Click to enlarge It is a decade since the first tremors of what would become the Great Financial Crisis began to convulse global markets. Across the world from China and South Korea, to Ukraine, Greece, Brexit Britain and Trump’s America it has shaken...

In the FT, Mehreen Khan reports about the IMF’s conditional acceptance to lend to Greece. The IMF’s “agreement in principle” (AIP) tool draws on a practice where the fund is able to greenlight its involvement in a debtor country, conditional on the government and its creditors agreeing to future debt relief measures. Of course, the dispute about the merits of debt relief is unresolved. The IMF thinks Greek debt is ‘unsustainable’ and the European creditors should bear more losses, earlier...

After a tumultous week in the world of politics, with non-stop Trump drama in the US, a disastrous for Theresa May general election in the UK, and pro-establishment results in France and Italy, this is shaping up as another busy week ahead with multiple CB meetings, a full data calendar and even another important Eurogroup meeting for Greece. Wednesday’s FOMC will be the main event, with the Fed expected to hike 25bp...

On VoxEU, Myrvin Anthony, Narcissa Balta, Tom Best, Sanaa Nadeem, and Eriko Togo discuss the history of government debt with state contingent coupons and offer some lessons. In the mid-19th century, the Confederate states issued cotton-linked bonds In the late 1970s, Mexico issued oil-linked bonds In the 2000s, Turkey issued revenue-indexed bonds Since 2014, Uruguay issues nominal wage-issued bonds Some other examples (figure taken from the column): Obviously, confidence in data quality...

Summary: Spain’s Banco Popular is scrambling ahead of its meeting with the ECB tomorrow; shares are around 50% in three sessions. Italy has two banks that may see the same deal Monte Paschi negotiated with the EU. Portugal banks are still putting loan loss reserves and provisions aside. Eurozone The eurozone appears to be in rare form. The political threat that seemed so palpable at the start of the year has...

Swiss Franc The euro is lower at 1.0901 (-0.11%). EUR/CHF - Euro Swiss Franc, May 30(see more posts on EUR/CHF, ) - Click to enlarge FX Rates With the backdrop of US interest rates unable to get much traction, despite the strong probability of another Fed rate hike in a couple of weeks, the third since last November election, the US dollar mixed today. The chief story today, though, is not the greenback but the...

Every year Deutsche Bank releases its fascinating index of real-time prices around the world which looks at the cost of goods and services from a purchase-price parity basis, to determine the most expensive – and in this year’s edition, best – cities. As have done on several occasions in the past, we traditionally focus on one specific subindex: the cost of “cheap dates” in the world’s top cities. The index consists of...

Every year Deutsche Bank releases its fascinating index of real-time prices around the world which looks at the cost of goods and services from a purchase-price parity basis, to determine the most expensive - and in this year's edition, best - cities. As have done on several occasions in the past, we traditionally focus on one specific subindex: the cost of "cheap dates" in the world's top cities. The index consists of i) cab rides, ii) dinner/lunch for two at a pub or diner, iii) soft...

In a Peterson Institute working paper, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Eike Kreplin, and Ugo Panizza conclude that the answer to that question depends on your assumptions. The authors compare several scenarios, including scenarios A–C, the baseline scenario of the European institutions and two more pessimistic variants; scenario I which underlies the IMF reasoning and which assumes that “Greece will not undertake the structural reforms needed to achieve higher potential growth”; and scenario D,...

There were no celebrations; no horn or trumpets, nary a sound, but an important shift took place last week. The shift was signaled by two events. The first was the US strike on Syria, and the second was investors’ willingness to look past Q1 economic data. The US missile strike on Syria was significant even if it fails to change the dynamics on the ground. It undermines the Trump Administration’s ability to “reset” the...