Well, as reported over the weekend on this blog, the EU Commission did in fact demand “more sacrifices” from the Greek people, and in the end Prime Minister Papandreou had to make a last minute TV appearance to explain to his incredulous listeners that the time had come “to take brave decisions here in Greece [...]

According to Spain’s Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO) the ICC-ICO (consumer confidence index) went up in January by 6.1 points from its December value and is now at its highest level since August 2009. This confidence improvement is largely due to a significant rise in the Expectations Indicator (+5.7 points) and to a smaller [...]

The global manufacturing expansion continued to gather momentum in January. Coming in at 56.1, up from 54.6 in December, the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index registered its highest reading for five and a half years. The latest improvement in overall operating performance reflected accelerated growth of production and new orders, while there was a [...]

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, said in Davos this week: “We are a serious country and we will fulfil our promises.”
With these words Spain’s Prime Minister sought, during his visit to Davos last week to reassure international investors that Spain, despite the severity of the recession it is currently suffering, and the major [...]

“British or German taxpayers cannot finance the failures of others,” German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to the Associated Press. “Solidarity also means everybody adheres to common rules.”
France is not working with Germany or other countries on a support package for Greece which is managing [...]

Austro-Keynesianism Rules, OK!

Well, the Spanish government are due to announce their 2009 fiscal deficit number this morning, together with their adjustment plan for reducing the annual fiscal deficit to below 3% of GDP by 2013. This rather distasteful news will be presented to the Spanish people later in the same day on which they opened their morning [...]

Well, it’s not fully official yet, and all the fine print certainly isn’t written and signed, but the will is now clearly there, and where there’s a will, there’s a way, especially when you have the global financial markets breathing down your necks. The first one out of the box was the Economist’s Charlemagne, earlier [...]

Well there certainly is a lot happening out there at the moment. And Monday’s successful bond sale which left the Greek government triumphally proclaiming they could comfortably meet their 2010 borrowing program now seems to belong to a lifetime ago. The sale raised 8 billion euros over a 5-year syndicated bond which attracted total bids [...]

Reuters Jan Strupczewski gives more details of the EU Commission report first leaked by Der Spiegel. According to Strupczewski the “new European Commission report has expressed concern about gaps in competitiveness that could undermine confidence in the euro zone and point to tensions related to wage levels and capital flows in the 16-member club”. The [...]