Thursday, May 5, 2011

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, "The (Eurozone) periphery stu...."

Today the ECB decided to keep the Eurozone rates at 1.25%, following the increase from 1% to 1.25% last month (see eg BBC's news report)

Thank god for Eurozone exports (to the rest of the Eurozone, the EU and world markets as well as their competitiveness vis-a-vis cheap third country imports) and tourism (Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Irish, etc)!

I am beginning to think that ECB philosophy is either too German or not German enough (or both at the same time)! In any case, it is "off".

I felt that I am not alone in the Universe when I watched excerpts from N. Roubini's speech at the Estoril Conferences in Portugal yesterday: Inter alia, he did point that expensive Euro was a "nail in the coffin" of PIIGS economies! (and still is IMO). He opined (and I so agree) that with the Euro being worth 1.5 or even 1.4 Euros the PIIGS economies have a hard time being competitive vis-a-vis non Eurozone cheap products! And he did "accuse" German economic policy of not increasing its domestic demand to help the PIIGS' (intra-Eurozone) exports!


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