As Manuel points out in the accompanying post, Romano Prodi’s resignation as Italy’s Prime Minister is a rather sudden and dramatic, but scarcely unexpected, development. The immediate political crisis may be resolved as rapidly as it appeared, but again as Manuel indicates it may only serve as a prelude for further things to come, and [...]

As we have noted on Afoe in recent weeks Hungarian society seems badly divided and faces daunting economic adjustments (and here). This weekend’s municipal elections seem to have resolved nothing, with both sides seeming effectively able to claim some sort of victory:
Preliminary results released by the election office, with some nearly all the votes counted, [...]

The results of the latest GfK’s consumer confidence survey are just in. The results are hardly a surprise. (Btw there is a good discussion of consumption in Germany in this post and comments):
Consumer confidence in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, fell for a second month in three as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government decided to raise [...]

I’m starting a new post for the latest information as the old one was starting to get a bit long. The session in Parliament has broken up as there were 191 deputies there, but 226 (50%+1) were required for a quorum, so no action could be taken. However, the Kyiv Post reports that Yushchenko has [...]

Italian consumer confidence has remained near a 10-year low in March in the wake of the Madrid terrorist bombings. In fact the bombings may have hurt sentiment in Italy more than the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. according to a statement from the government-funded Isae institute. The confidence survey, which [...]

OK I’m on a roll, so I’m going to stick my neck out. This slide in the Italian confidence index apparently surprised the ‘experts’. Well it shouldn’t have surprised Fistful readers who have been following what I have been saying. Clearly these confidence indexes are not the last word in sliced bread. But [...]