
Showing posts with label M.Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label M.Press. Show all posts
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Saturday, August 19, 2017

Monday, August 15, 2016
After the countless institutions and committees created on a European level, but also at the level of the EU member states, to ensure financial stability, why is the ECB bringing back the issue of state aid for banks? Doesn't this automatically discredit the central bank in the Eurozone as overseer of the banks of systemic importance? A day after the statements of the ECB officials, it was the turn of the governor of the Bank of Italy, Ignazio Visco, to mention that "in times of high uncertainty, the intervention of the state cannot be ruled out", because there is a risk of confidence in the banking system decreasing, as Financial Times writes. The questioning of the application of the European banking resolution framework, just a few months after its coming into effect, shows that indeed, the situation of the banking system in Europe is much more dire than the authorities will admit. Nevertheless, it is quite unlikely we will see defaults, in the classic sense of the word, among banks of systemic importance, but the escalation of the tensions between the governments of the Eurozone and the "separatist" tendencies is very likely. Until the market is allowed to function and to "clean up" the bank balance sheets, the European crisis will continue, despite the states' interventions, because it is increasingly clear that the printing press of the ECB will not help with financial stabilization and does not resolve the problem of the banks' solvency. Any other "solution" does nothing but impose unbearable costs on European citizens and transform the resumption of economic growth into an impossible dream.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
GERMANY - Timmermans these days is having to exercise his utmost diplomatic skill in order to avoid an escalation of tensions. When, during a visit to Amsterdam on Thursday, Timmermans was asked about the Polish foreign minister's jibe, he could have struck back. But there is already enough tension, so he chose to take a different tack, instead praising the transformation of Eastern European countries from socialist dictatorships to free societies. But, he added, true democracies include two important elements: the protection of human rights and adherence to the rule of law. The fact that Timmermans had to utter something that obvious says a lot about the current state of the European Union -- and developments in Poland. In less than two months, the country's new nationalist-conservative government has succeeded in disempowering the constitutional court, passing a law establishing government control over public broadcasting and installing party-aligned political appointees at the head of its intelligence services. "We want to cure our country of a few illnesses," Foreign Minister Waszcykowski told Germany's tabloid Bild earlier this month.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
The International Accounting Standards Board® (the Board) today issued a new accounting Standard, called IFRS 16 Leases. It replaces accounting requirements introduced more than 30 years ago that are no longer considered fit for purpose and is a major revision of the way in which companies account for leases. Leasing provides an important and flexible source of financing for many companies. However, the old lease accounting Standard (IAS 17 Leases) makes it difficult for investors and others to get an accurate picture of a company’s lease assets and liabilities, particularly for industries such as the airline, retail and transport sectors. Listed companies using IFRS Standards or US GAAP are estimated to have around US$3.3 trillion of lease commitments; over 85 per cent of which do not appear on their balance sheets*. That is because leases to date have been categorized as either ‘finance leases’ (which are reported on the balance sheet) or ‘operating leases’ (which are disclosed only in the notes to the financial statements). This somewhat arbitrary distinction made it difficult for investors to compare companies. It also meant that investors and others had to estimate the effects of a company’s off balance sheet lease obligations, which in practice often led to overestimating the liabilities arising from those obligations. IFRS 16 solves this problem by requiring all leases to be reported on a company’s balance sheet as assets and liabilities. Accompanying the Standard, the IASB has also published a separate Effects Analysis, which outlines the costs and benefits of the Standard. It clearly demonstrates the need for the Standard and that the benefits outweigh the costs. The Board has given careful consideration to feedback received and has introduced several cost-saving measures for preparers, such as exempting ‘small ticket’ items as well as leases of 12 months or less. The publication of a separate Effects Analysis follows on from a report to the IFRS Foundation Trustees in November 2014 by the Effects Analysis Consultative Group. The Effects Analysis can be accessed here. A separate Project Summary, including an overview of the project history and how the Board has responded to stakeholders’ comments during the development of the Standard, can be found here. *Based on a sample of 30,000 listed companies using IFRS or US GAAP, over 14,000 companies disclose information about off balance sheet leases in their 2014 annual reports. The future payments for off balance sheet leases for those companies totalled US$2.9 trillion (on an undiscounted basis).
Saturday, December 5, 2015

GfK analyst Rolf Buerkl said he was optimistic for this year's Christmas sales, as customers might be tempted to shop online if they are concerned for public safety. "It is possible that a few people here and there will avoid going to the Christmas market or visiting a shopping mall," Mr Buerkl said.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
"We are open to a whole menu of monetary policy instruments," Mr Draghi said, noting that further interest rate cuts had been discussed. "The discussion was wide open."" Sounds like he has Yellen's Disease, but printing money is always the solution for the left to fix fiscal abnormalities... “The ECB will almost certainly be delivering an early Christmas present this year,” said Nick Kounis, the head of markets and macro research at investment bank ABN Amro. Draghi is an enthusiastic proponent of “forward guidance”, the strategy of sending strong verbal policy signals in order to shift financial markets – in this case, driving down the euro. His dramatic pledge in the summer of 2012 – in the middle of the Greek debt crisis – that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to save the single currency helped to reassure panic-stricken investors. Jeremy Cook, the chief economist of international payments company World First, said ECB policymakers were likely to have become increasingly concerned in recent weeks about the strengthening of the currency, which makes eurozone goods less competitive on international markets. “Draghi and the executive council couldn’t have been clearer that additional policy easing was coming if they’d had the words ‘sell the euro’ tattooed on their faces,” he said. Euro area GDP rose 0.4% in the second quarter of 2015, a slight slowdown from 0.5% growth in the previous quarter. We must all call attention to the salient fact that the EU, US, UK and Japan are riding along using debt to sustain their economies. QE and other nostrums directly related to money printing thus monetizing the debt must be clearly understood...A number of reasons they do this:
1) kicking the can in the hope some visionary guides us to economic enlightenment before the global economy implodes in it's entirety
2) this is simply a response to the US' decision not to raise rates as well as the Yuan's devaluation a number of months ago. Given the Euro depends on exports, a weaker Euro will prop up the currency. Make no mistake, we're at war, a currency war
3) this is also being pushed as a solution by those who seek to gain the most, ie banks and investment funds. Governments in the aforementioned states are too large and expensive, too inefficient, too prone to spend without consideration of how the debt is affected by the deficits and too prone to call for more taxation in every case where they run short of money.So now it is completely safe to say that the relationship between stocks and underlying fundamentals now NO LONGER EXISTS.
No if's, no maybe's, just absolute fact. Stock valuations are entire fiction. The entire purpose of the Fed / ECB / BoE/ BoJ is to make something levitate. What they cannot do is make anyone with a brain believe a word of it. It is almost game over, pension fund over, banking system over, savings over. Quantitative easing is not the answer, reality is the answer. Let's just accept that our standard of living is going to fall. QE will delay it and make matters worse, facing reality on the other hand will ensure that the fall in our standard of living will happen now, but won't be as painful in the future when compared to the QE option. The reality is - Too much debt
One of the three following options are open to the central planners.
1. QE for as long as possible - outcome - Dreadful economic future.
2. Attempt to reduce the deficit to zero by the end of this Parliament. - outcome - significant reduction of our standard of living and civil unrest.
3. Attempt to reduce the deficit over a long period of time, bearing in mind the paradox of thrift will make this a slow and relatively painful process, but from my point of view, this is the best option open to us. A tipping point passed many years ago, we needed brave politicians dealing with the debt issue. However. I can understand why politicians did not grasp the nettle, a fickle public would not vote for them, after all, who wants harsh reality.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Useless, useless, useless - Germans have "Dachau and such" ready !!!!

EU leaders do actually agree on a number of key issues:
- Cracking down on people smuggling rings
- Getting asylum claims processed faster, so failed claimants can be deported more rapidly
- The need to secure Europe's external borders
- Boosting aid to the sprawling, squalid refugee camps around Syria, so fewer people feel tempted to come to Europe
- Stepping up attempts to try to end the war in Syria
But common resolve is one thing. Effective, immediate action is quite another. And some of the leaders' goals are more realistic than others. At a press conference after the summit, the German chancellor spoke of the need to talk to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad as part of a new European push for peace in his country. The conflict has now reached Europe, and Germany in particular. It is the European country of choice for Syrian refugees. In the past, Germany has joined other Western leaders in calling for President Assad to step aside. So these talks would be delicate and controversial, they will not happen overnight and their chances of success are limited, to say the least. Then there's the question of building what is often dubbed Fortress Europe - or what Donald Tusk described last night as "closing Europe's doors and windows".
Saturday, March 14, 2015

I see the EU and Euro as, say, 25% positive. It is a job in progress, not made easier by the ongoing crisis which did NOT started in the US, but in the "world". For whatever reason, there are 28 democratically elected (more or less) national governments who want their countries to stay in the EU with another half-dozen applying for membership (stupid). To date no-one has left. Can they all be wrong?
Friday, February 20, 2015

Euro-zone countries may have established a functioning bailout fund and made progress on a banking union scheme, but a Greek exit could attract speculators. "International investors would quickly begin asking which country might fall next," Ackermann believes. Markets could gain the impression that the currency union is a club that countries could join or leave as they liked.
Speculators could begin testing just how durable the rest of the euro zone really is and focus on countries like Portugal, Spain or Italy. "Their interest rates would increase drastically, which would thwart the policies of ECB head Mario Draghi, who would like to prevent exactly that," says Jochen Felsenheimer, CEO of the investment firm Xaia.
Greece's departure would also be just as expensive for the remaining euro-zone member states as a debt haircut because Athens would hardly be in a position to fulfill its financial obligations. Its currency would be drastically devalued and its economy would be threatened with collapse.
Friday, January 23, 2015

Monday, June 16, 2014

"Bruelhart wanted a board he could work with and it seems the pope has come down on his side and sent the old boy network packing," said a Vatican source familiar with the situation.
The new board of the AIF includes Marc Odendall, who administers and advises philanthropic organisations in Switzerland, and Juan C. Zarate, a Harvard law professor and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington D.C. The other two board members are Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and senior advisor to that country's president, and Maria Bianca Farina, the head of two Italian insurance companies.
Francis, who was elected in March 2013 after the resignation of former Pope Benedict, in February set up a new Secretariat for the Economy reporting directly to him and appointed an outsider, Australian Cardinal George Pell, to head it.
In January he removed Cardinal Attilio Nicora, a prelate who played a senior role in Vatican finances for more than a decade, as president of the AIF and replaced him with an archbishop with a track record of reform within the Vatican bureaucracy.
He also replaced four of the five cardinals in the commission that supervises the Vatican's troubled bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).
Since the arrival of Bruelhart in 2012, the AIF has been spearheading reforms to bring the Vatican in line with international standards on financial transparency and money laundering. But Vatican sources say he has encountered resistance from an old, entrenched guard.
A report last December by Moneyval, a monitoring committee of the Council of Europe, said the Vatican had enacted significant reforms but must still exercise more oversight over its bank.
Francis, who has said Vatican finances must be transparent in order for the Church to have credibility, decided against closing the IOR on condition that reforms, including closing accounts by people not entitled to have them, continued.
Only Vatican employees, religious institutions, orders of priests and nuns and Catholic charities are allowed to have accounts at the bank. But investigators have found that a number were being used by outsiders or that legitimate account holders were handling money for third parties.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a former senior Vatican accountant who had close ties to the IOR, is currently on trial accused of plotting to smuggle millions of dollars into Italy from Switzerland in a scheme to help rich friends avoid taxes.
Scarano has also been indicted on separate charges of laundering millions of euros through the IOR. Paolo Cipriani and Massimo Tulli, the IOR's director and deputy director, who resigned last July after Scarano's arrest, have been ordered to stand trial on charges of violating anti-money laundering norms.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Friday, October 11, 2013

Slovenia's banks are largely state-owned and saddled with bad loans worth
22.5% of its GDP.
Mr Jazbec's comments are likely to fuel speculation over whether Slovenia
will be bailed out by the EU.
Still hope
Mr. Jazbec said he would consider asking for aid if yields on Slovenia's bonds
remained high.
During a news conference, he said the country was doing everything it could
to bring its funding costs down.
"If that is not successful, then there is a possibility to ask for help
within various programmes," he added.
Meanwhile, Slovenia's Prime Minister, Alenka Bratusek, has admitted to
parliament the amount needed to rescue the banks is "completely unknown".
But Ms Bratusek told STA, the state-owned news agency: "We are very intensely
preparing measures that are needed, so as to avoid asking for help."
The results of the bank's stress-tests, out at the end of November, will
indicate whether or not a bailout is needed.
Eurozone members can ask for help from the European Stability Mechanism, set
up in 2012.
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Sunday, October 6, 2013

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Any new aid money would be funnelled towards an expected shortfall in
Greece's public finances in the next two years, according to a Greek finance
ministry official. Athens is also looking at using leftover funds from a bank bail-out programme
to help plug the funding gap. In Frankfurt, the European Central Bank said Joerg Asmussen, one of its most
senior officials, would visit Greece on Wednesday to discuss progress on reforms
needed to ensure more bailout money.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
The only hope for Italy is to leave the EuroZone now - otherwise = bankruptcy!

The rally, organized by the country's three largest unions was the first major protest since Letta's broad, left-right coalition took office following an inconclusive election in February.
Italian unemployment rose to 12% in April, the highest level on record, and joblessness among people under 24 is at an all-time high above 40%.
Union chiefs, speaking before a flag-waving crowd estimated at more than 100,000 by the organizers, criticized Letta for what they called a lack of action on an urgent problem.
"We can't accept these continuous promises that aren't translated into decisions that give a change of direction," said Susanna Camusso, leader of the country's largest union CGIL.
Luigi Angeletti, head of the UIL, said the country could not afford the piecemeal approach to policy adopted so far, especially when the ruling coalition is so fragile...The unionists called on the government to intervene to prevent plans by white-goods manufacturer Indesit to lay off 1,400 workers in one of the most recent labor disputes....
Big deficits in time of recession are nothing new. They are not desirable, but calling them "dangerous" is ridiculous. The only way to reduce them is through growth, which isn't going to happen with taking so much money out of the economy. Growth has got its own problems, I don't think a society can run for ever on people/states buying stuff they don't really need with money they have really got, but the present "solution" isn't going to work. It is indiscriminate cutting, with no thought for the cost this "cutting" is storing up for the future. The present crew hasn't got the skills, imagination, intelligence to think out of their narrow ideology. They still think putting state services to tender to private businesses is going to solve all. It isn't....
Mediobanca, Italy’s second biggest bank, said its “index of solvency risk”
for Italy was already flashing warning signs as the worldwide bond rout
continued into a second week, pushing up borrowing costs.
“Time is running out fast,” said Mediobanca’s top analyst, Antonio Guglielmi,
in a confidential client note. “The Italian macro situation has not improved
over the last quarter, rather the contrary. Some 160 large corporates in Italy
are now in special crisis administration.” The report warned that Italy will “inevitably end up in an EU bail-out
request” over the next six months, unless it can count on low borrowing costs
and a broader recovery. Emphasizing the gravity of the situation, it compared the crisis with when
the country was blown out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 despite drastic
austerity measures. Italy’s €2.1 trillion (£1.8 trillion) debt is the world’s third largest after the US and Japan. Any serious stress in its debt markets threatens to reignite the eurozone crisis. This may already have begun after the US Federal Reserve signaled last week that it will begin to drain dollar liquidity from the global system.
Friday, June 21, 2013

"I'm on your side to serve you and serve your projects for France," she said
in the letter.
"Use me during the time that suits you best and fits your action and your
cast....If you decide to use me, I need you as guide and supporter: without
guide, I might be ineffective, without support I might be implausible."
She signed off: “With my immense admiration, Christine L.”
She also claimed that she does not have "personal political ambitions" and
remarked she does not want to become "an ambitious servant", referring to some
members of Sarkozy's entourage.
The letter was leaked to French newspaper Le Monde, and its
publication has caused acute embarrassment for the head of the IMF.
Ms Lagarde was finance minister during Mr Sarkozy's term as President, before
stepping down to become managing director of the Washington-based IMF in 2011.
Her Paris flat was raided as part of an investigation into her handling of a
2008 compensation payment to a businessman supporter of ex-president Nicolas
Sarkozy, her lawyer said.
Police are investigating claims that Lagarde, when French Finance Minister
under Sarkozy, acted illegally in approving the €285m arbitration payout to
Bernard Tapie. Ms Lagarde denies any wrongdoing.
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