I just put up a post on the economic situation of Finland. Now I am putting another. Why the sudden interest? What is there about the Finnish economy which could be of interest to more people than the five million or so who actually live there?

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I am trying to follow developments in the Finnish economy. This isn’t always easy since I am linguistically challenged, and the english language press doesn’t have a lot of info. One thing is clear: growth since the start of the century hasn’t been spectacular. Of course drawing any clear conclusions is difficult since the economy [...]

NTC research is reporting that investor confidence declined sharply in Germany in September. The research - by think tank ZEW - was carried out between September 5 and Monday at 1500 GMT. So the reading is weighted to pre-election (but post Merkel slump) answers:
German investor confidence fell in September due in major [...]

Both New Economist and MacroBlog seem very upbeat about the prospects for the German economy. Macroblog cites Bloomberg and says “Things are definitely looking up“. New Economist is rather more guarded, pointing to the IMF forecast, and the recent Federal Statistics Office announcement that second quarter growth came in at 0%. But New Economist find [...]

France has just clocked up a record trade deficit for the first six months of this year: 11.193 billion euros. This now adds the French to the eurozone BoP sick room along with Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal. Of course oil imports form an important part of the picture, but that doesn’t make [...]

The UK economy showed its weakest year-on-year performance for 12 years during the second quarter of this year, and manufacturing seemed to enter recession. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth on a 12-month comparison stood at 1.7 percent during the second quarter — the weakest 12-month performance since the first quarter of 1993.
The annual growth rate [...]

The latest EU25 trade data from Eurostat highlight the competitive challenge some European companies face from the fast-growing Chinese economy:
Imports from China in the first four months of this year, at ?45.3bn ($54.5bn, ?31.5bn), were 19 per cent higher than the same period a year before. Imports from the US remained almost flat [...]

Spain’s current account deficit doubled in April from a year earlier to 6.01 billion euros according to info given out by the Bank today. Currently imports are growing at 15.6% and exp?rts at only 8.5%. Sustainable dynamic?

Bloomberg (didn’t I once promise not to have anything more to do with them, oh well, needs must) have obtained a copy of German Finance Minister Hans Eichel’s budget plans for 2006. The problem is a serious one since the big problems are structural not cyclical:
“Given the availability of financial resources, an adequate public infrastructure [...]

I don’t know how many of you have seen the film The Insider, but Caesar Alierta, boss of Spain’s telecommunications near-monopoly Telefonica, has always seemed to me to fit the bill perfectly. Now the Financial Times announce that he is finally to be charged with an old insider-trading scandal:
“C?sar Alierta, executive chairman of Telef?nica, the [...]