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EUROPE
Ties
with Syriza could leave Podemos in a bind – FT
By hitching
the party to the Syriza bandwagon, Podemos, founded just over a year ago,
stands to suffer gravely if the new government in Athens falls short of expectations
The bankers
and politicians have stuck together. Everyone else seems to be on their own.
Euro
Area Growth: Current Consensus Is Too Low – BCA
DENMARK / SWITZERLAND
Government
bond issuance suspended in defence of peg – Danske
Bank
The issue
SNB defenders don’t address – Scott
Sumner
GREECE
ECB’s
QE-Lite Unravels As Greece Votes – Alpha
Now
Europe’s Greek Test – Krugman
/ NYT
Greek
Negotiations Begin with a Blast – Econospeak
The many
faces of Jeroen Dijsselbloem – FT
A Greek
Burial for German Austerity – Project
Syndicate
Greece will no longer deal with ‘troika’,
Yanis Varoufakis says – FT
Greece says
will not cooperate with 'troika' or seek aid extension – Reuters
No lending to Greek banks if no deal
by end of February: ECB's Liikanen – Reuters
RIP the primary surplus – Tony
Yates
How Do You
Solve A Problem Like Syriza? – The
Automatic Earth
Greek Bond Yields Surge Above 19% After
EU Talks – ZH
Greek PM Tsipras calls ECB's Draghi
to reassure over talks – Reuters
Greece Will Repay ECB, IMF, Reach Deal
With EU, Tsipras Says – BB
EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK
Escalating
tensions between the new coalition government of Greece and the Troika have rippled across
the single currency bloc, eroding much of the boost to sovereign bond prices
that followed the ECB’s announcement of something close to, but not quite the
same as, QE.
Euro
area: Negative inflation positive for the economy – Nordea
Lower oil
prices drove the headline inflation rate down to -0.6%y/y in January. This is
not yet the low point. The surprising fall in the core rate could partly be due
to larger-than-usual price cuts in the winter sales. The inflation market is
weighing the drop in the core rate in particular against the upcoming purchases
from the ECB.
The ECB
and Its Critics – Project
Syndicate
Jean Pisani-Ferry:
The ECB’s decision to embark on quantitative easing has triggered an avalanche
of indictments, largely reflecting northern European (and especially German) concerns.
Though the main charges against QE are unfounded, they must be confronted head-on,
lest they undermine the ECB’s credibility and effectiveness.
ECB vice-president
attacks supply side view of eurozone woes – FT
The ECB
vice-president has launched a staunch defence of the central banks’s
quantitative easing programme, saying large-scale asset purchases were
necessary to counter Europe’s problem of insufficient demand.
Draghi’s
golden opportunity – building the perfect firewall – Lars
Christensen
Directly
targeting market inflation expectations: buy inflation linked government bonds (linkers)
until markets expectations are exactly 2% on all relevant time horizons.
UNITED STATES
Fed-Watchers
Look to Janet Yellen’s February Testimony Before Congress – WSJ
Q4 GDP
Economists
React to the Wages Report: ‘Still Quite Tame’ – WSJ
Disappointed
by 2.6% Growth? Blame the U.S. Trade Deficit – WSJ
"It's
Different This Time" GDP Hockey-Sticks Edition – ZH
Q4 2014 GDP
Misses With Consumer Surging – Bespoke
Some
Observations on the 2014Q4 GDP Release – Econbrowser
Q4 ECI and
GDP review: Fed hike likely delayed until September – Nordea
OTHER
The
Mexican Peso & Brazilian Real Are Collapsing – ZH
Nicholas
Colas: Top 10 Wall Street Rookie Mistakes – Convergex
Why shouldn't central banks buy
risky (and illiquid) assets? – Worthwhile
Credit Supply and the Housing Boom – NBER
The Germans Are Making The Same Huge
Mistake Bill Clinton Made – BI
Government debt was reduced under
Clinton, so investment money ballooned into property and real estate instead as
investors looked for alternative "safe" vehicles for their money.
Momentum
trading, return chasing, and predictable crashes – voxeu
The
strategy of momentum investing says simply to buy stocks that are rising in
value and sell those that are falling. Abnormal returns should be crowded-out,
but have somehow remained remarkably persistent. This column explains the role
of periodic crashes – when momentum investing fails – using historical data
from Victorian London and the CSRP-era US. Crashes happen just when momentum
investing has been most successful, and fund managers are able to attract the
most capital.
We
already have a simple and conventional story to explain the weak recovery – voxeu
The anaemic
recovery from the Global Crisis and the downward trend in real interest rates
since 1980 have revived interest in the idea of secular stagnation. This column
argues that if the US, UK, and Eurozone had not pursued
contractionary fiscal policies from 2010 onwards, the recovery would not have
been so slow and nominal interest rates would no longer be at the zero lower
bound. Expanding the stock of government debt would have ameliorated, not
worsened, the shortage of safe assets.
Trilemma,
Not Dilemma: Financial Globalisation and Monetary Policy Effectiveness – FED
IMF
Launches New Data Platform – IMF
IMF has
launched a new platform to support its move to free data and to improve online
global statistical dissemination. The new portal enables bulk data downloads
and introduces dynamic visualization to showcase datasets that became available
free-of-charge on January 1, 2015.
What
Failed in 2008? – J. Bradford DeLong
The
Great Recession happened because we ignored Friedman’s ideas – Scott Sumner
Securitization
- The Road Ahead – IMF
Reform
Securitization to Improve Growth, Financial Stability – IMF
Secular
Stagnation, Debt Overhang and Other Rationales for Sluggish Growth, Six Years
On – BIS
[July 2014]
Stephanie Lo & Kenneth Rogoff: Until significant pockets of private,
external and public debt overhang further abate, the potential role of other
headwinds to economic growth will be difficult to quantify
The
interplay of accounting and regulation and its impact on bank behaviour – BIS
Regulatory
and accounting rules are important determinants of bank behaviour; however, the
interaction of the two is often not well understood and their intended outcomes
do not always align. This Basel Committee working paper reviews academic
literature on the interplay of accounting and regulatory frameworks, how these
two regimes affect bank behaviour and whether regulatory and accounting
requirements can be used to counter unintended outcomes and/or reinforce
prudential objectives.
FINNISH
Iltalehti
selvitti: Näistä kansa säästäisi – IL
Iltalehden
jättiselvityksestä käy ilmi, että kansa olisi valmis leikkaamaan eniten EU-maksuista
ja kehitysyhteistyöstä.
Hallitus
uskoi yhteisöveron alennuksen dynaamisiin vaikutuksiin – haaveeksi jäi – YLE
Veronalennuksen
dynaamisten vaikutusten piti piristää taloutta, mutta teho jäi olemattomaksi. Yhteisöverotulot
laskivat viime vuonna noin 800 miljoonaa euroa.
Analyysi:
Marx palaa Eurooppaan – Verkkouutiset
Kreikka
sai historiansa ensimmäisen laitavasemmistolaisen hallituksen. Syrizan menestys
innostaa sen sisarpuolueita muuallakin EU:ssa.
Tarvitseeko
Suomi työvoimapulan paikkaajia – Professorin
ajatuksia
Liikanen:
Puolueiden pitäisi tunnustaa faktat ja luvut ennen vaaleja – YLE
Liikanen
Kreikasta: Talouden realiteetteja ei pääse kukaan pakoon – YLE