Regular readers will know that the articles published here are but a small subset of the detailed work I undertake to analyse economic and political developments and their effects on markets. In order to give some idea of the scope of this, presented below is an archive of past issues of the Austrian School-informed, in-depth […]
Category Archives: Europe
That the artificial interest rates in evidence in our hugely distorted capital and money markets can be made negative in nominal as well as in real terms is, alas, the curse of the modern age. Though entirely at odds with natural order – as we have repeatedly tried to make plain – they are also […]
Not only is he a man who does not seem to understand how banks actually, not only is he dominated with the idée fixé of his blessed inflation mandate instead of paying more regard to what his institution should—and more importantly—should not do as a contribution to the material well-being of those under its sway, […]
In the midst of all the recent uproar, one anonymous Twitterer seized his chance to have his Uber-Warholian, 140-characters-of-fame moment and thundered: ‘Central banks are losing control of this market!’ no doubt eliciting whatever the social media equivalent of a cry of ‘Hear! Hear!’ and an approbatory nodding of the head might be from among […]
Please read on for a little light Christmas cheer, with apologies to the spirit of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Seemingly oblivious to the idea of ‘purdah’ – a period of dignified silence to be observed in the run up to the taking of policy decisions—the ECB’s Chief Economist, Peter Praet, felt able to give AFP a wide-ranging interview this week and truly remarkable it was, too.
Since the spring of 2014, the euro has lost around a quarter of its value, Mario Draghi has finally joined the Big Boy’s League by launching his own, decidedly belated version of QE, and—everywhere but in poor, benighted Greece—the growth of the money supply has been bordering on the explosive.
In order to give some context to the disparities which so bedevil relations between countries in the Eurozone, one thing we can consider is the tally of net private indebtedness to banks (i.e., the sum of household and private, non-financial corporation loan balances less their deposits). To make these truly comparable, we take into account […]
It is now largely overlooked, but the 19th century had its own precursor to EMU in the shape of the Latin Monetary Union, set up principally to try to solve the hoary problems of silver:gold bimetallism. But, if much of the Union’s history was dogged by the narrow technical issues of how, firstly, to structure […]
With last week’s report of monetary developments in the Eurozone, we again have evidence both of Draghi’s monetary monomania and of the sheer futility of his constant refrain that the ECB is just buying time until member states undertake the ever-promised, but never-delivered ‘structural reforms’ which they all so patently require.