Englund

Replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe.   A millions-strong diaspora is studying, telecommuting and retiring overseas. The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is to no longer live there. Sunset in Cadaques Spain. Tony Hicks/Associated Press On a conference call last month hosted by Expatsi, a relocation company, almost 400 Americans signed up to learn how to move to Albania.  The former Stalinist state offers a special visa allowing U.S. citizens to live and work there, with no tax on foreign income for a year, no questions asked. Michael Le Blanc, a 56-year-old former creative producer at Adobe and Paramount now freelancing from Lisbon, moved with his two children after the second active shooter scare at his 8-year-old son’s Los Angeles school.  In the six months since, his wife, Stephanie, a 42-year-old academic adviser in the U.S., has found work selling Lisbon real estate to incoming Americans.  Some 58...

Tysklands ekonomi avstannat, tillväxt i Portugal, Italien, Grekland och Spanien Greece had the worst economic slump in a developed country since the Depression.  Now, some 15 years later, for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain — labelled the ‘PIIGS’ by some analysts in the past — the tables have turned. Germany had no increase in economic activity at all over the past four years, and the Bundesbank has warned that this stagnation may drag on well into 2025 Tourism was boosted by pent-up demand for travel and higher savings during the pandemic. In Spain and in Greece, tourist arrivals are up at double-digit rates  “A 30 per cent disadvantage in unit labour costs that existed over the first decade of the currency union has been offset,” The newfound economic fortunes of Europe’s debt crisis countries can in part be traced a €800bn debt-funded investment programme launched during the pandemic. The so-called NextGenerationEU Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greece are the main r...

 — the countries at the centre of the 2010 to 2015 Eurozone crisis. This story of success in Greece defies all the doomsayers and hotheads of 2015, when the country briefly flirted with leaving the euro under its populist-left Syriza government.  The lesson to learn from the crisis over a decade ago is the value of solidarity across Europe, enabling sovereign debts to be put on a sustainable basis with support from more financially secure countries.  Conditionality attached to this support was vital, despite its political difficulty. Kicking the can down the road, as happened often from 2010 to 2015, was also necessary to foster difficult compromises. Chris Giles Financial Times 11 December 2024 https://www.ft.com/content/9ae38922-bb81-459f-83f9-2eaa4cb38fcf

Remember the “PIGS,” short for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain?  Four of the top-10 performers in the Stoxx Europe 600 index over the past year are Italian and Spanish banks: Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banco de Sabadell, Banca Popolare di Sondrio and UniCredit.  In Greece and Italy, yields on 10-year government bonds have gone from trading roughly 2 percentage points above Germany’s to around 1 percentage point. This is an impressive turnaround for nations that many investors saw as irredeemable basketcases following the eurozone crisis of 2011 and 2012. in Europe, though, fiscal austerity is back. The European Parliament last month approved a new set of fiscal rules designed by the 27 EU states.  They will allow for more bespoke adjustment plans, but nevertheless force national governments to return to an arbitrary “structural” deficit below 1.5% and a debt-to-GDP ratio below 60%.  This is a self-inflicted wound as the bloc tries to catch up with American an...

Farmers in both Portugal and Spain, who are growing produce for all of Europe, are worried that their crops for this season will be ruined. Neighboring Portugal has also seen little rain since last October. By the end of January, 45% of the country was enduring “severe” or “extreme” drought conditions Scientists estimate that Portugal will see a drop in average annual rainfall of 20% to 40% by the end of the century. Bloomberg 13 February 2022     China possesses 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of its fresh water https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/12/china-possesses-20-of-worlds-population.html

The EU swatted away modest UK demands for City safeguard clauses. It then circumvented a British veto. Europe’s leaders  rammed through the compact  outside the EU treaties by “intergovernmental” means.  They subjected the British Prime Minister to a torrent of invective for good measure. David Cameron’s referendum pledge was the consequence. Brussels claimed the compact was vitally needed to bolster monetary union. What it really meant was that Germany and the northern creditor bloc wanted intrusive budgetary surveillance powers to bring southern Europe to heel. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 1 December 2020 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/12/01/brexit-will-nothing-compared-europes-culture-debts-wars/ Många har börjat glömma, men efter den stora finanskrisen 2008–2009 stod flera EU-länder på randen till konkurs. Tre institutionella långivare – IMF, ECB och EU-kommissionen – bildade en trojka, som skulle förhandla och övervaka villkoren för gigantiska räddnin...

 It highlights a stunning turnaround from the euro-area crisis Less than a decade ago, investors could barely be compensated enough to hold the bonds of Spain and Portugal for fear the nations could be severed from the European Union.  Now, they are a hair’s breadth away from having to pay for the privilege. Bloomberg 19 augusti 2019 Before the global financial crisis, Spain was growing healthily and might have benefited from higher interest rates; Germany was growing more weakly.  As one monetary policy had to fit all, Spain benefited from low rates aimed at Germany, and enjoyed an epic construction boom that would inflict a severe and enduring recession once the bubble burst. John Authers Bloomberg 19 augusti 2019

Grekland,  Italien, Spanien, Irland,  Portugal. Johan Carlström SvD 4 November 2018 När och hur spricker EMU?

So long as at least one of the four rating agencies judges Portugal to be worthy, its government debt remains eligible to participate in the ECB's bond-buying program.  But if the country drops to sub-investment grade at all four, the ECB’s own rules forbid it from buying any more Portuguese government securities - purchases which have ballooned to almost 15 billion euros ($17 billion) in the program's one-year lifetime. Mark Gilbert, Bloomberg 25 April 2016

What we saw — at least here in Europe — is the return of the financial crisis. The toxic twins: the interaction between banks and their sovereigns. Italy’s position may be better than Portugal’s but it is still not sustainable.  Europe’s banking union has failed. No deposit insurance and no government backstop to bail out failing lenders. Wolfgang Münchau, FT, February 15, 2016 The Never-Ending Story: Europe’s Banks Face a Frightening Future http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-02-16/european-bank-nightmare-far-from-over-as-fines-and-fintech-loom EMU Collapse at IntCom

What has happened to Greece and Portugal is underway in Spain and Italy.  The peoples are powerless because their governments do not represent them.  Not only are their governments receiving bribes, the members of the governments are brainwashed that their countries must be in the European Union. Otherwise, they are bypassed by history. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-31/paul-craig-roberts-west-being-reduced-looting-itself http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/ http://www.nejtillemu.com/senastenytt.htm

Förhandlingarna med Grekland har brutit samman. Det var inte bara Tyskland som sade nej till de grekiska kraven. Tyskland fick gott stöd av sina allierade Spanien, Irland och Portugal. Grekland har påpekat att åtstramningspolitik inte leder till tillväxt. Ledarna för länder som Spanien, Irland och Portugal har låtit sina befolkningar lida i åratal på ett sätt som bara gradvis skiljer sig från Grekland. Att ge Grekland rätt hade inneburit att de hade erkänt att de själva fört en totalt felaktig politik för att vinna gillande i Bryssel, Frankfurt och Berlin. - Europe’s leaders have led their electorates into the most ghastly mess, and still they can’t admit it, skrev Jeremy Warner häromdagen . Jag har hittat på en lag, Englunds lag,  och den lyder så här:  ”Har man sagt A, måste man säga B, och har man sagt B är det svårt att säga att A var fel.” Jag tror jag myntade lagen på ett ESO-seminarium på Rosenbad onsdagen den 17 mars 1999 . Jag hörde häromdagen en da...

Espirito Santo International files for creditor protection Holding company of Portugal's second-largest bank says it can't meet its obligations Telegraph 18 July 2014 Portugal’s central bank has ordered the immediate appointment of a new chief executive and other board members at Banco Espírito Santo. The move accelerates replacement of executives from the troubled Espírito Santo family group, BES’s biggest shareholder, with an independent management team that has no connections with Espírito Santo or the current board. FT 14 July 2014 Det finns ingen anledning till oro The /Portugese/ central bank said investors had "no reason to doubt" the security of funds, and savers had "no need to be worried". BBC 11 July 2014 http://www.nejtillemu.com/portugal.htm#santo

Portugal

Jag har länge trott att eurons skulle bryta samman i Spanien . Alla talar om Spanien och Grekland och Italien. Ingen verkar bry sig om det lilla Portugal. Landet hade en textilindustri som har flyttat till Asien. Vad har dom nu och i framtiden? “There are signs aplenty of adjustment fatigue,”IMF said. “With unemployment high and real disposable incomes falling for several quarters in a row already, the announcement of further austerity measures to underpin the 2013 budget is testing the broad-based political and social consensus that has buttressed the program to date.”  Bloomberg, Oct 25, 2012 Observera att jag skriver "utlöser" eurons sammanbrott, inte förorsakar således. Euron kommer att kollapsa därför att det var en felaktig tanke.

The troika's bailout package is expected to keep the country going until September 2013 or so. That gives Portugal about one-and-a-half years to win back the financial markets' trust and wrestle interest rates on its government bonds back down to a level where the country can once again finance itself on the markets. Experts believe success is absolutely possible. * El-Erian, also co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, said he expected Portugal's first bail-out package will be insufficient, prompting it to ask the EU and IMF for more money. "Then there will be a big debate about how to split the burden between the EU, creditors, the IMF and the European Central Bank. And then financial markets will become nervous because they are worried about private sector participation," Portugal Ms Merkel’s scepticism also stems from bitter experience. She followed investors’ advice and called for private holders of Greek bonds to share the burden of a sec...

Grekland omtalas alltmer sällan som ett specialfall skriver  Timothy Garton Ash, kolumn, DN.27 januari 2012   - Det finns mycket aggressioner mellan nationerna: greker mot tyskar och tyskar mot greker, nordeuropéer mot sydeuropéer, britter mot nästan alla andra och nästan alla mot britterna. Förtroendet för det europeiska projektet är krisartat lågt. Och på såväl det nationella som det europeiska planet råder skepsis, om inte cynism, till politikerna.   - Om det är eurons räddning vi bevittnar är det en fruktans seger, inte hoppets   Freden   Portugal Timothy Garton Ash Mare Nostrum  

Commentary: One default is an accident; two is a systemic crisis MarketWatch Jan. 25, 2012 Och jag som har trott att det var Spanien som skulle fälla euron. Men det kanske blir så att de spanska bankerna, med stora lån till Portugal, går under när Portugal gör det. Det ena ger det andra, som jag brukar säga

The European Union is in bad shape. Not only is the common currency in a shambles and the economies of many member states moribund, but young Europeans no longer see how the EU helps them. Millions of them are taking to the streets to demand a future. SPIEGEL Staff, 23 June 2011 When Jacques Delors, 85, is asked about Europe, he says things like: "Europe needs a pioneering spirit," and he asks: "Do the men and women of this era truly want this Europe?" Delors, together with former French President François Mitterrand and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was one of the driving forces behind the European Union, and under his leadership as president of the European Commission, treaties were signed that would be impossible to forge agreement on today. "We are talking about the Zeitgeist, aren't we, about the 'mood'?" says Delors. By that he means that two crises are unfolding at the same time in Europe today. On the one hand, there ...

I Financial Times förklarade EU:s president Herman Van Rompuy att euroområdet var ”på gränsen till ett sammanbrott” i våras, hade Annika Ström Melin noterat på DN:s ledarsida 16/6. - I motsats till många andra hävdar han också att eurons kris delvis beror på valutasamarbetets konstruktion. ”Euron blev en stark valuta i ett område med små ränteskillnader. Det blev ett slags sömnpiller. Vi var inte medvetna om de underliggande problemen.” - Det är ett anmärkningsvärt uttalande, ansåg Annika Ström Melin helt befogat. Men därefter kommer ytterligare en kommentar av henne som gör mig besviken, men tyvärr inte förvånad. - En rimligare förklaring till krisen är de enskilda medlemsländernas bristande budgetkontroll, skrev Annika Ström Melin, som jag flera gånger förklarat vara en av vårt lands mest kunniga journalister om EU och EMU. Men om EU:s president Herman Van Rompuy kan hävda att eurons kris delvis beror på valutasamarbetets konstruktion borde detta vara möjligt även f...