Eurozone

Smart Reads May 31, 2013

May 31, 2013 1:23 pm by Amie Tsang

♦ All change in Europe? French labour market reforms start to bear fruit, with signs of movement in industrial relations and eurozone austerity might be on its way out.
♦ India’s economy grew at the slowest rate in a decade – hampered by electricity shortages and poor infrastructure.
♦ Mexico’s highest-grossing film is still filling multiplexes 10 weeks after its release. The NYT looks at whether audiences just want to see rich people humiliated, or whether they are actually looking for a form of middle class catharsis.
♦ Neal Ascherson reports on the state of German politics: “They are pissed off with Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, but reluctant to let go of Mutti’s hand. In short, the public are in one of those sullen, unreasonable moods which make politicians despair.”
♦ Ethnic strife in Xinjiang, northeast China, is worsening with the growth of immigrant-dominated settlements – Uighurs are resentful of such powerful entities dominating the region and employing so few of their own ethnic group.
♦ And here’s something to chew on this weekend. When you’re having your morning pastry spare a thought for New Yorkers who have been lining up at 6am, or paying as much as $40, for a delectable new pastry – the cronut, a croissant-donut hybrid. It seems the bakery has a scaling problem, which is driving cronut-craving customers to the black market. Read more

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Foreign affairs, Smart Reads |

Gideon Rachman Europeans take a look at each other – and at themselves

May 16, 2013 11:28 pm by Gideon Rachman

The Germans: rated trustworthy but lacking in compassion (Getty)

The Pew poll on European attitudes came out this week and drew plenty of attention because of the remarkably negative attitudes it revealed towards the European Union. But to my mind, some of the most amusing and intriguing findings came when the pollsters probed nations’ views of each other, and of themselves.

The Germans were widely rated as both the most trustworthy and the least compassionate people in Europe – which says something about the complexity of European reactions to the euro crisis. The Italians rated themselves as the least trustworthy people in Europe. Do we call that self-knowledge or self-loathing? Asked to choose from a list of several countries, the French rated themselves as the most arrogant people in Europe. But they also rated themselves the least arrogant people in Europe. Maybe they are just the most self-obsessed? Read more

Tags: ,
Posted in Europe |

Smart Reads May 8, 2013

May 8, 2013 12:50 pm by Amie Tsang

♦ Martin Wolf argues that forcing the eurozone to mimic Germany’s path to adjustment makes stagnation likely.
♦ US intervention in Syria becomes more difficult with time because of sequestration. “If you ask me today, we have forces that can go,” says General Ray Odierno, the army chief of staff. “I think it will change over time because the longer we go cancelling training and reducing our training, the readiness levels go down.”
♦ Researchers have identified two dozen 15,000-year-old “ultraconserved” words, which suggest the existence of a proto-Eurasiatic language that was the root of about 700 contemporary languages.
♦ Film director Ann Shin discusses her film about the human smugglers who extract people from North Korea and why so many of them are women. Read more

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Foreign affairs, Smart Reads |

Global austerity: a primer

April 29, 2013 12:24 pm by Lindsay Whipp

(DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty)Austerity appears to be an increasingly dirty word in Europe. The past week alone has seen European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, Bill Gross of Pimco and Italy’s new prime minister Enrico Letta calling for an easing of austerity.

Spain’s surpassing of the 6m unemployed mark on Thursday added fuel to the debate. But even in Germany, the austerity police of the eurozone, cracks are beginning to show ahead of the elections with the emergence of an anti-euro party.

a) Are there any austerians left? Yes. Here are some of them.

- UK: Chancellor George Osborne hit back at criticism over his apparent excessive austerity by claiming there is no other alternative. And after a tough week when he was criticised by the IMF over the excessive pace of his austerity programme, this week has brought better fortunes for his stance as figures showed a lower deficit and the economy expanded 0.3 per cent in the first quarter.

- Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s view as articulated this week couldn’t be clearer: “I call it balancing the budget. Everyone else is using this term austerity. That makes it sound like something truly evil.” Germany is the only eurozone country with a 2012 budget surplus.

- US: The situation here is different because of sequestration, which triggered automatic spending cuts and tax rises. And the White House faces a July deadline to raise the borrowing limit or default on its debt.

- Latvia: The tiny Baltic state is emerging from a state of uber austerity – part of its bid to join the euro later this year – and it could end up being seen as a poster child for successful deficit cutting implementation, with real growth of more than 5 per cent in 2011 and 2012, despite the broader recession in Europe.

- Spain: The push by Europe’s fourth-largest economy to cut spending and raise taxes has led to record unemployment topping 6m for the first time in its recent history. The government of Mariano Rajoy announced economic reforms and structural measures on Friday.

- Italy: The technocrat government of Mario Monti has been steadfast in carrying out fiscal consolidation. All eyes will be on Mr Letta, who has already said: “Europe’s policy of austerity is no longer sufficient”. Read more

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Global economy |

Smart Reads March 26, 2013

March 26, 2013 12:50 pm by Amie Tsang

 Read more

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Smart Reads |
From FT.com March 18, 2013

By Gideon Rachman
European leaders must surely know that they are taking a big risk with Cyprus. The danger is obvious. Now that everybody with money in Cypriot banks is being forced to take a hit, nervous depositors elsewhere in Europe might notice that a dangerous precedent has been set. Rather than run even a small risk of an unwanted financial “haircut” in the future, the customers of Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian banks might choose to get their money out now. If that starts to happen, the euro crisis will be back on again – with a vengeance. Read more

Tags: ,
Posted in Europe, Financial crisis |

Gideon Rachman Hollande and anti-austerity rhetoric

February 21, 2013 6:40 pm by Gideon Rachman
French President Francois Hollande after a press conference with Greece's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on February 19 (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis, Pool)

(AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis, Pool)

Listening to François Hollande’s comments on his flying visit to Greece earlier this week was like hearing a reprise of his electoral campaign, in which he promised to lead a European-wide fight against austerity.

In Athens, Hollande praised the Greek government and said that, for Greece – “The next phase is one of growth and creating jobs, not more sacrifices.” Sadly, although there are signs that private-sector investment in Greece is picking up, there is also certainly more austerity and more job cuts to come, in the public sector.

President Hollande was only in Athens briefly, and so is hardly likely to be held to account for his remarks in Greece. What is more problematic is that the latest figures suggest that he will be unable to hold off the drive for more austerity back home in France. Economic growth is down and the French economy may even shrink in 2013 – compared to the Hollande administration’s initial projection of growth of 0.8%. Partly as a result, France is going to miss its target of getting the country’s deficit below the EU-mandated 3%. Read more

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in France, Greece |
From FT.com February 11, 2013

By Gideon Rachman

A rare beast has reappeared in Europe. In recent years, there were no confirmed sightings. But in the past few weeks, this shy animal – known as “good news” – has been spotted in various European locations. Read more

Tags: ,
Posted in Europe, Financial crisis |

Ferdinando Giugliano Is Italy’s economic crisis fuelling euroscepticism?

February 7, 2013 3:15 pm by Ferdinando Giugliano
(Getty Images)

(Getty Images)

I have just spent a few days traveling across Veneto, Italy’s industrial heartland in the north east of the peninsula. One of the tasks I had set myself for this trip was to understand whether Italy’s economic crisis is fuelling euroscepticism.

Italy has traditionally been among the continent’s most europhilic countries. To the astonishment of outside observers – particularly those from the Anglo-Saxon world – Italians have seemed relatively at ease with the idea of handing more and more powers over to Brussels.

One of the reasons behind this attitude is their deep lack of trust in their own political class. The euro is seen as a bridge to modernity and progress, rather than a drag on national sovereignty.

After the wave of austerity which has recently hit Italy, and which Brussels was at least partially responsible for, I expected this attitude to have become somewhat less positive. Veneto was an excellent testing ground for its resilience. This wealthy region is governed by Luca Zaia, from the Northern League, the most eurosceptic among Italy’s mainstream parties. Veneto has a strong export-oriented manufacturing sector, which can no longer rely on competitive devaluations as it did in the 1980s and 1990s, before Italy entered the euro.

This point was made to me by Roberto Brazzale, a food entrepreneur from the province of the city of Vicenza, who has off-shored much of his production of parmesan cheese and mozzarella to the Czech Republic. “We must exit the euro,” Mr Brazzale said. “And do it before our industrial base is completely wiped out”. Read more

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Europe, Italy, Italy elections |

Tom Burgis Live: eurozone crisis

December 13, 2012 8:14 am by Tom Burgis


Welcome to our live coverage of the eurozone crisis. We’ll bring you all the developments. By Tom Burgis and Ben Fenton in London with contributions from FT correspondents across the world. All times are GMT.

 

 

17.37: As the EU’s political leaders get down to talks, we are closing down the live blog for today, but it will be up again bright and early tomorrow to pick up on whatever is decided overnight. Meanwhile, elsewhere on FT.com you’ll be able to find coverage of the summit kept fresh by our sleep-deprived Brussels team.

17.29 More bleak news for the UK’s Triple A credit rating, via FT markets editor Chris Adams:


Sterling tumbling on reports S&P has put UK AAA on negative outlook
December 13, 2012 6:22 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@chrisadamsmkts
Chris Adams

17.24 More twists and turns in this tale of what said what to whom about the Italian elections at the centre-right EPP’s pre-summit meeting today (see 15.49 and 17.06).

Antonio Tajani, the Italian EU commissioner and a Berlusconi ally, is quoted by Italian news agency Adnkronos as saying that none of the leaders of the EPP “expressly asked Monti to be a candidate”.

“Everyone spoke well of Monti but no one wants to interfere.”

 Read more

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Europe, Financial crisis, Foreign affairs |
BackOlder entries