Eurozone unemployment hits record. The biting austerity and debt crisis across the Euro-zone continued to hit hard in December, with unemployment coming in at a euro-era high of 10.4%, which was unchanged from revised November figures. At 22.9%, Spain clocked in with the greatest unemployment, followed by Greece and Lithuania. At the other end of the scale, Austria had a 4.1% rate, while Germany's jobless figures fell more than expected; the rate was 6.7%.
Eurozone banks to tap ECB for even more money. In further evidence of the liquidity squeeze among eurozone banks, several of the largest may double or even triple their request for funds at the ECB’s three-year money auction on Feb. 29, The Financial Times reports. Banks borrowed €489B in the emergency funding scheme's debut auction last month.
EU finalizes permanent bailout fund. Twenty-five of 27 EU member states will sign off on the €500B permanent European Stability Mechanism rescue fund. The U.K. and the Czech Republic are not supporting the vehicle, which will replace the temporary European Financial Stability Fund. The ESM is unlikely to be big enough, though, as this infographic shows.
€500 Billion seems like a lot of money. But as the graphic provided by the link in the previous paragraph indicates, the size of the debt is €2.91 Trillion, or just short of six times the amount of the bailout fund. This means the fund needs to be six times larger than what was just agreed upon. And this is only for the PIIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). There are 22 other nations in some significant degree of current or future trouble as indicated by the unemployment numbers mentioned above.
As an aside you might notice from the infographic that BBVA (formerly Compass Bank) is the second largest lender to PIIGS nations. Let the buyer (or in this case bank customer) beware.
EU finalizes permanent bailout fund. Twenty-five of 27 EU member states will sign off on the €500B permanent European Stability Mechanism rescue fund. The U.K. and the Czech Republic are not supporting the vehicle, which will replace the temporary European Financial Stability Fund. The ESM is unlikely to be big enough, though, as this infographic shows.
€500 Billion seems like a lot of money. But as the graphic provided by the link in the previous paragraph indicates, the size of the debt is €2.91 Trillion, or just short of six times the amount of the bailout fund. This means the fund needs to be six times larger than what was just agreed upon. And this is only for the PIIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). There are 22 other nations in some significant degree of current or future trouble as indicated by the unemployment numbers mentioned above.
As an aside you might notice from the infographic that BBVA (formerly Compass Bank) is the second largest lender to PIIGS nations. Let the buyer (or in this case bank customer) beware.
2 comments:
President Obama has pointed at a decline of American joblessness from more than 10 per cent shortly after he took office to the most recent level of 8.5 per cent. In my world we have the Netherlands at 5.8 per cent, socialist Germany (according to Ron Paul) at 6.3 per cent and Sweden at 6.7 per cent.
In per capita terms, socialist Germans sold $2,300 more of their products overseas than they bought for every one of the nation's 82 million citizens. The United States has an annual trade deficit now approaching $600 billion, by far the biggest on Earth, amounting to a $2,000 loss registered on the bottom line of every American.
Frank, reported unemployment when Obama took office was right at 9% and has not changed to any degree since then.
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