Data

The technical staff’s promise to do “whatever it takes” to keep the team together gave both players and supporters a lift. And after overcoming question of its legality, the additional stimulus provided by quantitative easing is providing additional confidence that they can cope should the team come unstuck once again. To enhance the team’s overall performance, the ECB has resorted to injections – the €1.1trn (US$1.26trn) quantitative easing programme. This has inevitably raised eyebrows, and a debate continues to rage about the legitimacy of...

After years of humiliating bailouts, dreary data, soaring debt, and endless economic false starts, the eurozone is finally showing signs of life. The European Commission projects Germany’s economy to grow by 1.9% in 2015, with Spain’s set to swell by 2.8%, the fastest rate of expansion in eight years. Consumption is rising in almost every regional member state. Quantitative easing has helped to boost exports by initially suppressing the value of the single currency, and by cutting rates to record lows. Yet now is not the time for the eurozone...

“Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.” The author David Zindell’s take on our struggle to make sense of the world without the application of happy foresight or smug hindsight applies to almost everything we do, from tidying a room to reforming an entire economy. Take the European Central Bank’s attempts to revive the throttled eurozone, by buying €60bn (US$67bn) worth of public and private-sector assets a month until September 2016 – and possibly far longer. Hanging over the entire stimulus programme,...

This year saw the eurozone welcome its newest member: Lithuania. A tiny economy that has long pegged its currency to the euro, the union was never likely to attract much attention. But what attention it did get was universally favourable, with all predicted disruption averted, representing a welcome piece of good news for the troubled currency block. In January, Lithuania became the last of the Baltic states to formally join the eurozone. In doing so it is finally completing a journey it had attempted to take in 2006, when the attempt was...

Spirit of the age, or Zeitgeist, a German word that has entered the universal lexicon – is first recorded as being published in a bizarre novel of 1840, Sartor Resartus. This parody by the Scottish social commentator Thomas Carlyle takes the form of a lengthy book review by a cantankerous editor flummoxed by a German title he is required to read. It forces the reader to confront the problem of where “truth” is to be found – a question that could equally apply to a sudden change in Germany’s economic fortunes and whether this is likely to form a...

For years, talk of a possible Greek exit from the eurozone has refused to go away. Less often discussed are the plethora of other possible outcomes in Greece’s a la carte menu of financial ignominy. “Default is not the same as a missed coupon, and nor is introducing capital controls,” said Alberto Gallo, head of European macro credit research at RBS. “Even unilateral default would not necessarily lead to exit. People automatically jump to Grexit, but a lot needs to happen before we get to that.” Even if Greece does leave the eurozone, that...

The Austrian state has given its postal workers bags of treats to protect them from aggressive dogs. It is not extending such largesse to the Alpine region of Carinthia, which is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy after the Austrian central government refused to vouch for debts left by Heta, the bad bank formed from the assets of failed lender Hypo Alpe Adria. On March 1, the Austrian Financial Market Authority imposed a 15-month debt moratorium on all bond payments by Heta after the Austrian finance minister, Joerg Schelling, said that the...

Can you convince someone to change their view, after their good opinion is formed? It isn’t easy, particularly when dealing with a specialist subject, or an issue close to one’s heart. Try to find someone living in Russia who doesn’t see Nato as a primary threat rather than a crucial defence mechanism. Or a German economist willing to agree with the mounting body of evidence pointing to the failure of eurozone austerity. Our very human denial in the face of clear, untrammelled logic seems to work at any level. Take the impact of the European...

For corporate issuers struggling to access traditional sources of financing in recent years, the private placement market has been a lifeline of sorts, allowing them to gain direct access to institutional investors. In France, the development of standard documentation is giving market participants greater confidence, but recent industry efforts to develop a pan-European private placement (PEPP) market are proving more difficult. “The challenge we have found with the PEPP product is persuading investors to buy unlisted, unrated and illiquid...