Englund

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

  Stellantis showcased its electric Opel Rocks-e car at the Essen Motor Show  in Germany this month © AFP via Getty Images Deal for Spanish plant comes despite EU efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese technology The factory in Zaragoza, northeastern Spain, is scheduled to start production by late 2026 under a 50-50 joint venture between the world’s biggest battery maker and the fourth-largest carmaker, owner of the Peugeot, Jeep and Fiat brands. CATL, headquartered in Ningde, eastern China, had a global market share of about 38 per cent in the first half It is already operating plants in Germany and Hungary. Financial Times 10 December 2024 https://www.ft.com/content/b2c41a7d-02fa-4846-ab50-dd27e534dcf5 Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 11 december 2024 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/12/rolfs-lanktips-11-december-2024.html

  A resurgent tourism industry is just one of a number of engines driving Spain’s impressive growth Once a laggard, the Southern European country, which was hammered during the eurozone crisis, has now become a leader. The figures underline a remarkable reversal in economic fortunes for Spain, as well as other Southern European nations such as Greece and Portugal. Spain welcomed 21.8m visitors over the summer, with so many people arriving that in parts it sparked anger from disgruntled locals. Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since the financial crisis and Spain’s borrowing costs are now lower than that of France. Debt relative to GDP has fallen from 120.3pc in 2020 to 107.7pc last year One reason for the strong headline figures is that Spain has successfully bounced back after its economy was rocked more than most by Covid Telegraph 6 November 2024 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/06/how-spain-beat-g7-become-fastest-growing-advanced-economy/ Tillbaka till Ro...

Inflationen i euroområdet steg mer än väntat i maj Den av ECB fruktade tjänsteinflationen var en av orsakerna.   Den svenska kronan fortsatte att stärkas. DI 31 maj 2024, 11:51 https://www.di.se/nyheter/fruktad-siffra-bakom-okningen/ Consumer prices rose annual 2.6% in May A measure stripping out volatile components like food and energy also surpassed expectations by quickening to 2.9%. Borrowing costs are still set to be lowered next week Bloomberg 31 maj 2024 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-31/euro-zone-inflation-picks-up-more-than-expected-before-ecb-cut French Inflation  2.7% from year ago in May  Price growth also picked up in Germany and Spain this month Bloomberg 31 maj 2024 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-31/french-inflation-accelerates-for-first-time-this-year-on-energy SEB:s seniorekonom Robert Bergqvist är inte orolig   ”Det skulle nästan vara ansvarslöst av ECB att gå vidare med ytterligare en sänkning i juli”, sä...

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...

 The Economist 6 Ferbruary 2024  https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/02/06/madrid-is-booming-growing-while-keeping-its-cool-will-be-the-tricky-part

  Den senaste tidens  nyheter om extrem torka  i det spanska medelhavsområdet, framför allt i Katalonien, avskräcker onekligen. ”Det här området kommer att överges, om tio år kommer ingen vilja jobba här”, säger en jordbrukare.  Jag kommer att tänka på författaren Maja Lundes obehagliga, dystopiska roman ”Blå”, där sydeuropéer flyr norrut, mot ”vattenländerna”. Lisa Irenius SvD 28 maj 2023 Förlorarna finns på Solkusten och Rivieran | Lisa Irenius | SvD

 How Spain is coping with the heat https://www.dw.com/en/spain-coping-with-the-heat/a-62826918 På sina resor han förnam, hur väl försynens nåd reglerat,  som floder överallt placerat där stora städer stryka fram. - Falstaff, fakir skrifter av Axel Wallengren. From the Rhine to the Tigris Global warming disturbs the jet and gulf streams that used to reliably circulate our atmosphere and oceans. Lake Mead — where the Hoover Dam blocks whatever remains of the Colorado River — is drying into a puddle and displaying everything from sunken boats to dead bodies. As these rivers, from the Yangtze to the Colorado, slowly evaporate — their water molecules destined to inundate islets or coastlines elsewhere in the world — the emphasis among scientists and policymakers is shifting to “adaptation.”  We’ll certainly need a lot of that.  Andreas Kluth Bloomberg 17 augusti 2022 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-17/rhine-tigris-river-water-levels-are-grave-climate-ch...

 From South Asia to the US, from Africa to Europe, intense heat is pushing the human body beyond the bounds of physiological tolerance. Scenarios where wet-bulb heatwaves could cause mass deaths were a subject for careful, peer-reviewed long-range climate forecasts, or for science fiction (the 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, begins with such a disaster killing about 20 million in India in a week). https://www.bokus.com/bok/9780356508856/ministry-for-the-future/ Far from being a possible outcome of a future climate-wracked world, humid heat above 35C was already happening — from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to Pakistan, India, Australia, Venezuela, and each coast of Mexico.  Temperatures above Haldane’s 31C threshold were turning up in dozens of places across tropical South and Southeast Asia, China, West Africa, southern Europe and the Americas, extending to the suburbs of New York and Naples, Italy. Air conditioners reduce indoor temperatu...

Euro-zone inflation the gap between the highest and lowest rates among the currency bloc’s 19 members jumped to its widest ever The scale ranges from Malta -- where consumer prices advanced 5.6% last month, to Estonia -- where inflation hit 20.1%. That’s a difference of more than 14 percentage points, more than at any time since the dawn of the euro in 1999. Bloomberg 2 June 2022 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-02/euro-zone-inflation-is-diverging-by-an-unprecedented-amount Som vanligt bekymmer med Portugal, Spanien och Grekland Stefan de Vylder den förste i världen som kommit på ett avgörande, inbyggt och ofrånkomligt fel med valutaunioner typ EMU Om det skrev han i en lysande artikel i Göteborgs-Posten 2002-10-22. Han hade nämligen kommit på följande enkla (i efterhand) sak: "Det faktum att den nominella räntan är gemensam i en valutaunion innebär automatiskt att realräntan blir lägst i de länder som har den högsta inflationen, det vill säga de som skulle behöva e...

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

Spanish households had proved reluctant to spend the €55bn in savings he estimated they built up in the pandemic.   Some observers say that for decades Spain’s economy has lagged behind the rest of Europe in the economic cycle and that its swings are more violent, with bigger rises and steeper falls. FT 8 November 2021 https://www.ft.com/content/2af9039d-b2e1-4392-a5d3-cfb559f550f0

55% less than the same month of 2019, back in the old prepandemic days. In other parts of the EU, the summer season was either somewhat better or somewhat worse than in Spain. Cities and regions that tend to attract long-distance travellers have fared worse. A case in point is Rome  https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/after-a-long-hard-summer-europes-travel-tourism-recovery-remains-a-long-way-off.html

This month France finally overtook Italy as the Continent’s biggest debtor – and the third biggest globally. Next, take a look at who owns it. In Italy, 70pc of government debt is owned by the Italian banks, which swiftly pass it on to the ECB.  Half of France’s debt is held by the rest of the world: indeed, since France is now the third biggest debtor in the world after the US and Japan, and since Japanese debt is also most owned domestically, French debt is arguably the second largest traded commodity in the world. The problem is this. If French banks owned all that paper, arms could be twisted in a panic to support tthe price. But global institutions will ditch the notes at the first sign of trouble. No French president has been re-elected since Jacques Chirac in 2002.  Matthew Lynn telegraph26 April 2021 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/04/26/never-mind-debts-greece-italy-france-heading-crisis/ France’s debt pile is surprisingly high  But market watchers and ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmeQOHLwKac

  https://www.ft.com/content/ee5fb423-6232-49b0-a39a-a7b2e79333df

The funds are set to be delivered over the next six years, half as grants and half as loans FT 17 Febr 2021 https://www.ft.com/content/72762eef-8d05-4e86-9101-0017758cb224

Meanwhile, Italy’s benchmark 10-year bond yield slipped below 0.5 per cent for the first time Last week, Belgium raised €5bn in 50-year debt at a coupon of 0.65 per cent while France sold €7bn in debt of the same maturity in January with a 0.5 per cent coupon. Both deals garnered strong investor demand. FT 9 February 2021 https://www.ft.com/content/5ac65419-76a2-4269-aa84-912378e03cd1 When Argentina issued its so-called “century bond” many held it up as the peak of bull market insanity. After all, what sane individual lends money for 100 years to a serial-defaulter? https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2018/05/when-argentina-issued-its-so-called.html

Spanien lånar på tio år till 0,09 procent Under hela denna tid har många varnat för att åtgärder som sätter marknaden ur spel under lång tid kan få oväntade och farliga konsekvenser längre fram.  Där är vi nu.  Andreas Cervenka DI 1 februari 2021 https://www.di.se/analys/for-sent-att-klaga-detta-ar-priset-for-galenskapen/