This was Wolfgang Munchau writing in the Financial Times a week ago:
“The pre-announced interest rate rise that the European Central Bank is due to agree this Thursday must rank as one of the most bizarre monetary policy decisions of recent times. The economic recovery in the eurozone remains fragile, as last week’s German confidence indicators [...]

The Turner Report is about to appear. The Turner in question is the UK peer Lord Adair Turner, and the subject of the report the future of the UK pensions system. Although the final report is not due till the end of the month, the FT has been ‘ leaking’ some of the possible contents.
The [...]

US Economist Arnold Harberger once asked what Thailand, the Dominican Republic, Zimbabwe, Greece, and Bolivia had in common that merited their being placed in the same growth regression analysis. I can’t help having the same feeling about Germany, France, Italy and Spain. As I indicated in a post on A Few Euros More yesterday, [...]

The general impact of the French riots is, I feel, being ably covered by others here, what I am curious about is how financial markets reach their opinions. According to headlines in many newspapers, the euro is falling aginst the dollar as a result of what is happening in France (or see here). This [...]

Well with all due apologies to the beatles Rita isn’t exactly as lovely as she seemed. Now she’s past her prime the insurance companies amongst others are busily counting the cost.
And on top of the obvious comes news that Rita really is number one: according to the FT she “has caused more damage [...]

As I keep indicating the French economy - although not a spectacular success - continues to outperform the German one. This is interesting, since the French political system has been much more laggard than the German one in implementing reforms. That is why I place emphasis on the demographic differential.

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Chief OECD economist Jean Philippe Cotis wasn’t only proferring recommendations to the Federal reserve yesterday. He was also not backward in coming forward with his opinions about future growth in the eurozone. Even if Cotis isn’t exactly my favourite economist I feel here he may be a little nearer the truth.
The occasion for M. [...]

The reference here isn’t to the actual hurricane (which was far from that if you were black, poor, and lived in downtown New Orleans) but to the economic ‘near miss’ I think we are watching, and to the difficult decision Alan Greenspan and his team will now have to take on 20 September next.
The blogs [...]

While the debate rages about who are what has been ultimately responsible for the plight of all those poor, largely black, people who got left behind when New Orleans went ‘under water’, this reuters article raises some fascinating points.
“If refugees end up building new lives away from New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina may prompt the [...]

Bloomberg’s Mathew Lynn has the German enigma more or less right: it’s a toss up.
“Flip the coin one way, and Germany may be about to enter a sustained period of growth, after some painful structural change, which would boost exports further and give consumers more confidence. It would be a re-run of the “Wirtschaftswunder,” or [...]