Greece debt crisis explained

Prior to landing in Madrid on Tuesday, Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping published a Spanish-language editorial proclaiming that Spain had been a key stop on the ancient Silk Road “more than 2,000 years ago.” In the modern day, he continued, Beijing’s Belt and Road project would remain incomplete without an anchor in Western Europe.Xi’s plea to Spain, which he is expected to bring to Portugal later this week, is essentially to allow the Chinese communist regime to become an indispensable part of a functional Spanish economy. It is a proposal he has sold with tremendous success to indebted dictatorships throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America – much to the chagrin of the Trump administration, which has ramped up efforts to warn the developing world away from Beijing’s “debt traps.” Yet those who have exposed China’s weaponizing of debt to take over key ports, roads, and railways in places like Kenya and Sri Lanka … [Read more...] about China Is Targeting Europe’s Most Vulnerable Countries for Belt and Road Debt Traps

Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has defended his plan to ramp up public spending, despite the country’s national debt reaching more than twice the European Union limit. Conte's proposed 2019 budget has caused a stand-off with the EU, which says Italy’s debt - which is currently 130% of its GDP - threatens the financial stability of the Eurozone. Speaking at a news conference in Rome, Conte defended his government's proposals, predicting that economic growth will "take off" if its fiscal plans are implemented. Conte said the contested budget would increase Italy’s deficit to 2.4% of GDP next year, but promised it would fall again in subsequent years. He predicted that it could be reduced to 1.8% by the year 2021. The PM also maintained that "the fundamentals of the Italian economy are good", and said Europe should give Italy a chance to fully explain their strategy, rather than dismissing it outright. When asked what he would do if the European Commission … [Read more...] about Italy PM defends plan to ramp up spending despite EU fears over debt

Stocks have been clobbered worldwide over the past week. Yesterday, the Dow fell 4.3% in trading on its worst day since 2008, erasing all the gains it had struggled to make so far in 2011. Worse still, Bloomberg has reported that “more than $4.5 trillion has been erased from the value of equities worldwide since July 26.”UK trading on Friday just closed with the FTSE 100 plummeting another 2.7%, dampening hopes that U.S. markets might rally before the weekend following some relatively positive news on unemployment. (Only 9.1% of people actively looking for jobs now can’t find employment can’t find any instead of 9.2%. YAY.)All these numbers are brutal. You know things are bad when you go to the homepage of the Wall Street Journal and see it littered with words and phrases like “global rout,” “turmoil,” “volatile,” “heavy losses,” “weakens,” “stalls,” “Be Prepared for More … [Read more...] about The Global Stock Sell-Off and Risk Management

Philip Bump, The Washington Post Published 11:58 am PDT, Thursday, July 12, 2018 In at least the view of President Donald Trump, his gruff approach to this week's NATO summit in Brussels was a success. "Prior to last year where I attended my first meeting," Trump said of spending commitments by member nations, "it was going down, the amount of money being spent by countries was going down and down very substantially, and now it's going up very substantially. And commitments were made. Only five of 29 countries were making their commitment and that's now changed. The commitment was at 2 percent. Ultimately, that'll be going up quite a bit higher than that." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would be giving hard numbers for the increase in military spending by member nations, Trump predicted, perhaps at the end of the summit. It was a relief to the president "because the United States has been paying a tremendous amount, probably 90 percent of the cost of NATO." … [Read more...] about Why it’s particularly odd for Trump to fixate on NATO’s GDP spending requirements

Digital Single Market PolicyOn April 19, the European Commission launched its “Digitising European Industry” package, a series of industry related initiatives aimed at “updating Europe’s digital infrastructure”.  The package includes reports and proposals addressing cloud computing, ICT standardization, eGovernment, Internet of Things (“IoT”), quantum technologies and high performance computing / big data.As part of the package, the Commission announced the creation of a European Open Science Cloud, which is intended to “offer 1.7 million European researchers and 70 million professionals in science and technology a virtual environment, free at the point of use, open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines.”  In its Communication on ICT standardisation, the Commission has identified five priority areas for standardization: 5G, the … [Read more...] about EU Policy Update: Digitising European Industry, Decarbonizing Transport Sector, Trade Secrets