Economy

I caught this FT graphic via David Wessel yesterday. It shows you that while the labour force in the Euro Zone as a whole generally continues to grow, the labour force in Germany has shrunk. During the euro era, Germany's labour force…

A recent ECB household-wealth survey was interpreted by the media as evidence that poor Germans shouldn’t have to pay for southern Europe. This column takes a look at the numbers. Whilst it’s true that median German households are poor…

My quick take is that the leadership is saying all the right things, but they have been saying these things for quite a while – nearly two years in the case of Li Keqiang, the new premier. The constraints they face, however, have neither…

By Sober Look As European banks find some private sources of capital to fund themselves, they continue to repay their ECB loans - particularly in the 3y LTRO program. FoxBusiness: - Next week, nine banks will repay just over 4 billion euros…

I am still on vacation here through Monday but the jobs number in the US was so ugly I had to comment briefly. The unemployment rate came in at 7.6% and 88,000 jobs were added to non-farm payrolls. The consensus estimates were for 7.7%…

By Marc Chandler The shockingly disappointing non-farm payrolls growth of 88k has sent the dollar reeling. The 61k upward revisions to the Jan and March figures and the smaller than expected trade deficit were not sufficient offsets.…

Cyprus has imposed temporary capital controls. This column sheds light on how temporary and how damaging they are likely to be, based on Iceland’s experience. The longer controls exist, the harder they are to abolish. Icelandic capital…

By Sober Look As discussed earlier (see post) the French economy continues to struggle. The nation's consumer recession is now thought to be worse than Italy's. Markit (Trevor Balchin): - “France has overtaken Italy as having the worst…

The Cyprus bailout deal has the following terms as approved by the Eurogroup:

According to an analysis by Reuters, small and medium-sized banks in the US have started to take on risk as the squeeze in net interest margins is beginning to hurt profitability. The goal is to boost returns despite the low-interest rate…