FT notes that even though China's debt generates fears, more worrisome is the speed it has been accrued at. If it has now reached 237% of the GDP, at the end of 2007, China's debt was 148% of the GDP. "Every major country that has rapid increases in debt has faced either a financial crisis, or an extended slowdown of the growth of the GDP", says Ha Jiming, chief investment strategist at "Goldman Sachs".  The IMF has recently warned that the Asian country is posing an increasingly higher risk to the developed economies, due to the size of its debt and the ties it has with the global financial marketing.  According to specialists, it is difficult for any economy to productively use such a volume of capital over the short term, due to the limited number of profitable projects.   As the investments' returns decrease, even more loans are at risk of becoming non-performing, according to FT.   Economists feel that China's health is at risk, but their opinions on the country's future vary. One of the extreme scenarios is an acute crisis - a "Lehman" moment which will resemble the one in the US in 2008, when that bank collapsed, and other lenders crashed, paralyzing the market. Other economists estimate a chronic slump in China, as has been happening in Japan, where economic growth has been stagnant for years.

 According to data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the total debt of emerging markets was 175% of the GDP in the third quarter of 2015. The BIS estimates China's debt at 249% of the GDP, compared to 270% in the Eurozone and 248% - the US' debt.  Foreign investors are set to remove approximately 538 billion dollars from the Chinese economy in 2016, the International Institute for Finance estimated yesterday, according to Reuters.   According to the IIF, the pace of capital outflows from China has slowed down, as this year's amount will be approximately 20% lower than the 764 billion dollars investors took out last year, according to Agerpres. However, the IIF warns that that capital outflows may pick up speed again, if concerns over a disorderly depreciation of the Chinese Yuan were to appear.  "A sudden drop of the Yuan would spark off new sell-offs of risky assets and a flight of capital portfolios to the emerging markets", a recent report of the IIF states, which mentions: "Furthermore, a sudden depreciation of the Yuan could spark off a devaluation of other emerging markets, especially among those with strong commercial ties with China".  Approximately 35 billion dollars have exited China in March, which takes the total since the beginning of the year to approximately 175 billion dollars, far below the outflows that took place in the first half of 2015.

     

Over the last few weeks, several German politicians have criticized the ultralax monetary policy adopted by the ECB, which cut the policy rate to zero in March. The officials in Berlin are saying that this measure affects those Germans who save money. (A.V.)  Mario Draghi said that the ECB is ready "to use all the available instruments" to stimulate the rise of prices in the Eurozone, but expressed his confidence in the effects of the measures passed by the bank so far.  "Our policies work, they are efficient", said Draghi, and he added: "It just takes time for those measures to produce their effects in full".  The president of the ECB also stressed that aggressive measures, the kind of "money thrown from helicopters", has not even been brought up in this week's meeting of the council of governors.  Yesterday, the ECB decided not to change the interest rate, after it cut it to a historic low in its March meeting, in an attempt to boost inflation.  The ECB kept the policy rate at zero, while the interest on the marginal lending facility was kept at 0.25%, and the interest rate on deposits was kept at - -0.40%. 

The EPP Group has called on the European Commission to strengthen an effective trade defence instrument to guarantee the protection of EU industry from dumped imports from China. The Group's Resolution stresses that as long as China does not meet the five criteria required by the EU to qualify as a market economy, the EU should use non-standard methodology in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations on Chinese imports in the determination of price comparability.  At the same time, during today's plenary debate on China's market economy status, the EPP Group Spokesman in the International Trade Committee, Daniel Caspary MEP, called on the European Council to stop the blockade on the Trade Defence Instruments legislation: "The strategic partnership with China is extremely important to us, regardless of whether China is considered to have a market economy or not, because it obviously doesn't. At the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of European people working in the steel industry who are very worried about their jobs. We must act urgently for them to make sure that EU trade instruments are boosted. Jobs are important for the EPP Group; the European industry is important and we want to protect it", said Caspary.

"I am surprised that the European Commission has not yet presented a solution as to how the EU should comply with WTO rules already agreed on 15 years ago. This is not five minutes to twelve, it is five minutes past and we are still waiting. The big question is if there is any chance of passing new laws before it is too late", stressed the EPP Group's Deputy Spokesman in the International Trade Committee, Christofer Fjellner MEP, responsible for the Trade Defence Instruments legislation.

The European Parliament Standing Rapporteur on China, Iuliu Winkler MEP, stressed that the EU strategic partnership with China must be based on reciprocity and mutual benefits: "Any decision on the market economy status of China in anti-dumping investigations should be in full compliance with WTO norms. Automatic recognition of the market economy status of China is not a valid option, so we ask the European Commission to identify viable trade defence instruments that can be applied to protect the steel industry and other industries against unfair competition and dumping. We believe that dialogue with China and other partners in the WTO will lead to identifying the best solutions to be applied to strategic partners in the mutual interest of the EU and China."

Regulators from some of Europe's biggest markets will take centre stage at this year's EUROMAT Gaming Summit which will take place at the Majestic Hotel in the heart of Barcelona.  The latest programme for the Summit shows that Marta Espasa, the Director General for Gaming in Catalonia will open the programme along with the European Commission's top official Harrie Temmink. Mr. Temmink will then join several other European regulators for a panel discussion including:

     - Peter Naessens from the Belgian Gaming Commission;

     - Elisabetta Poso from the Administration of State Monopolies, Italy;

     - Carlos Hernandez Rivera, Director General of Gaming, Spain;

     - Fernando Prats, Madrid Regional Government, Spain.

Eduardo Antoja, President of EUROMAT and Chairman of the panel discussion with regulators said: "Regulation makes or breaks our industry so having so many top gaming officials from European markets together for one session is a real added value of this year's summit. Operators and manufacturers from across the industry should be there if they want to get a valuable insight into the thinking of the people making decisions that have a direct impact on the industry". Other panel sessions at this year's summit include:

     -What does convergence mean for the land-based gaming industry in Europe?

     - Player tracking: Does it help to improve responsibility?

     - Are manufacturers or operators driving the gaming machine market in Europe?

     Delegate numbers are set to soar with industry leaders and regulators sharing their thinking on how the European market is evolving.

  Reuters writes that the British financial authority has placed the London division of DB "under enhanced watch" since back at the end of 2014, amid "concerns over corporate governance and internal audit". Following these revelations, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), an international shareholder consulting firm, has advised DB shareholders to vote in favor of the beginning of an independent audit process, because "there are significant doubts concerning the ability of the supervisory board to investigate the potential illegal actions of its members, which reflects a conflict of interests". The next general shareholder meeting of the shareholders of Deutsche Bank will take place in Frankfurt on May 19th, 2016, according to the notice to attend located on the website of the bank.  The recommendation of the ISS also comes as a result of the recent resignation of an important member of the Supervisory Board of the bank. A press release posted on the DB website states that Georg Thoma, member of the Supervisory Board and president of the Integrity Committee, has presented his resignation two years before his term was set to expire.  In the same press release, Paul Achleitner, the president of the Supervisory Board, stressed Thoma's achievements and thanked him "for everything he did for the bank". Unfortunately for the biggest German financial institution, Georg Thoma actually did too much, and the result was an open conflict with both the executives, as well as with the Supervisory Board.  Bloomberg writes that "Thoma went too far with investigating the potential illegal activities of the bank" and has been "isolated" as a result of "examining the ties between the members of the executive management and the lawsuits that the bank has been involved in over the last two years".  One of Thoma"s "targets" was actually Paul Achleitner, and the conflict blew up in the press last week, when Alfred Herling, the vice-president of the Supervisory Board, criticized Georg Thoma for "being too zealous and spending too much time investigating potential illegalities", according to Bloomberg. The conflict between the two is marked by a bitter irony, as it was precisely Achleitner that recommended Thoma for the position on the Integrity Committee, based on their friendship, "cemented" by their cooperation on the privatization of the East-German chemical industry, according to the Bloomberg article.

Moody's said the eurozone debt crisis had made policymakers more reluctant to cede sovereignty, while "significant fiscal union" was "off the table". "The process of further integration seemingly relies on further shocks almost by design," it said.  Brussels' flagship growth plan also faced significant difficulties as countries with room to invest refused to increase public spending, while fear of further bail-outs meant the banking union remained incomplete, it added.  Moody's said the Greek crisis also remained a big threat to the eurozone and EU.  "The risk of “accidents” remains high in a process that suffers from partial solutions and, increasingly, public scepticism," it said. "Crises can be great catalysts for change, and this has been the case in the euro area. "Still, significant vulnerabilities remain - with 'Brexit' and 'Grexit' still key risks. In a period of relative financial calm, the political will to further pool sovereignty evaporates quickly, and it is only against the alternative of a break-up of the existing system that further measures come back into consideration."  Colin Ellis, Moody's chief credit officer for Europe, said a British exit could spark an "existential moment" for the bloc.  "Even if the EU survives its current challenges largely unscathed, even a 'small' future crisis could threaten the sustainability of current institutional frameworks, if it coincided with negative public sentiment and populist political developments," the report said.  "This can create the impression that the question is when the system breaks, rather than if."