luxembourg

Ralph Atkins Luxembourg lobbying at the ECB

November 24, 2010 10:38 am by Ralph Atkins

The European Central Bank governing council goes into “purdah” on Thursday ahead of next week’s interest rate setting meeting. So Yves Mersch, Luxembourg’s central bank governor, has seized a last chance to sway the debate.

Action to stabilise Ireland’s banks “will allow us to continue on our gradual and prudent exit strategy,” he told CNBC on Wednesday. “I would not take issue with the expectations that are presently in the market.”

That suggested at least Mr Mersch favoured another step to restrict the liquidity the ECB is pumping into the eurozone financial system. Read more

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Posted in European Central Bank |

Limited reassurance from Luxembourg stress tests

August 25, 2010 4:21 pm by Emma Saunders

Breathe easy: Luxembourg’s banks have performed well in a national stress test. The two larger banks, Dexia and KBC, performed well in Europe-wide stress tests earlier in the year, so you’ll be forgiven for having been quite unconcerned about the small state’s banking sector.

The scenarios were concocted a while back, it seems. Of the four shocks, falling property prices or falling EU GDP have the greatest negative impact on the banks’ capital ratios. The good news is that the ratios remain comfortably above 4 per cent in each case. The bad news is that the shocks are independent, and it is more than plausible that house prices would fall and growth reverse at the same time. After all, we’ve seen that before, quite recently. Read more

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Ralph Atkins Luxembourg attacks Germany

August 17, 2010 3:47 pm by Ralph Atkins

When Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, next meets his European counterparts, will he be heaped with praise – or brickbats? Germany’s economy is on a roll. It grew by 2.2 per cent in the three months to June, its best quarterly performance since reunification in 1990. But that has not necessarily gone down well with colleagues in other European capitals.

Unnoticed beyond his tiny country’s borders, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, earlier this month launched an extraordinary attack on German economic policy, according to the Luxemburger Wort. Germany’s success was based on “wage and social dumping,” Mr Juncker is reported as having said. “The way Germany went about improving its competitiveness, I would not like to see in our country.” Since the launch of the euro in 1999, German workers had seen a meagre 12 per cent rise in wages, whereas his countrymen saw a 41 per cent rise, he went on. Read more

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Fiscal saints swell ranks

July 7, 2010 3:05 pm by Emma Saunders

Are Bulgaria and Luxembourg unsung heroes of the global recession? Estonia has received wide praise for its fiscal position, and Poland’s economy is likewise admired for its refusal to contract. But this useful graphic from the Economist shows two additional players for the fiscal saints.

Public debt in Bulgaria and Luxembourg is between 0 and 19 per cent of GDP – a distinction shared only with Estonia. Both countries also share low deficits, as proportions of their GDP. But unlike Estonia, Bulgaria and Luxembourg enjoy below-average unemployment rates: 9.7 and 5.2 per cent respectively, compared to 19 per cent for Estonia. Read more

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Posted in Uncategorized |