Euro Crisis

Car manufacturer Peugeot Citroen (EU:UG) announces a European sales fall of 16.5% 2012. Peugeot Citroen has announced that their European sales are down by 16.5% in 2012, though sales in China were up by 7.2% and 10.1% in Russia. The French based firm saw a worldwide sales fall of 8.8%, down to 2,820,000 units, citing […]

President Barack Obama has said that failure by the United States government to reach an agreement on further raising the nation’s debt ceiling would lead to “catastrophic consequences”. The Democratic president faces the challenge of reaching an agreement with Republican majority in the House of Representatives, with the Unites States Senate currently under Democratic control, but […]

The UK’s service sector has contracted for the first time since December 2010. Research conducted by the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, CIPS, and financial information supplier Markit concludes that the UK’s Purchasing Managers’ Index, PMI, figure fell from 50.2 in November to 48.9 in December in 2012. Any figure under 50.0 signifies negative […]

The Chinese service sector has grown at its fastest rate for four months indicating that the country is set for a period of sustained economic recovery. Newly released results for China’s National Bureau of Statistics shown that non-manufacturing purchasing manager’s index, known as PMI, increased to 56.1 in December from November’s 55.6, with any figure […]

– Breaking News – Following the apparent resolution of the US Fiscal Cliff saga, the FTSE is back above 6000 for the first time since the summer slump kicked off in July 2011. The breakthrough is not solely down to the Fiscal Cliff agreement, as 2012 saw a global rally in equities whilst central banks […]

Euro-area services and manufacturing output fell less than forecast in December, giving hope to a quicker recovery from the debt crisis that is weakening several countries. An index based on a survey of purchasing managers in both industries rose to 47.3 from 46.5 in November, London-based Markit Economics said today, whereas economists had forecast a […]

Inflation Down, Eurozone on the Brink AUSTERITY VS INFLATION Politicians don’t like inflation and current austerity dogmas will curb it in the following years.  Goods and services prices will slightly decrease in the UK, US and EU countries. Cutting interest rates even more will prove to be useless: the percentage of inflation we have now […]

Eurozone financial ministers agreed early this morning on a deal to make the European Central Bank the bloc’s banking supervisor, making a step towards a future banking union. The ECB will monitor up to 200 eurozone lenders from early 2014, but one of the main purposes of the reform – to allow the €500bn of […]

Many developing countries are using exchange rates as their key tool for monetary policy instead of stimulating domestic demand, spreading the risk of a war between currencies in the near future.  The big concern of Sir Mervyn King, Governor of Bank of England, points out the necessity for the G20 group to address global imbalances […]

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is seldom discussed, but when it speaks, we ought to listen. “As an organization of central banks, the BIS seeks to make monetary policy more predictable and transparent among its 58 member central banks. While monetary policy is determined by each sovereign nation, it is subject to central and private banking […]