by John E. Charalambakis | Mar 3, 2015 | Commentaries
Lorenzo the Magnificent (the scion of the Medici banking family), whose lending institution dominated not only Florence but much of Europe, was also a poet influenced by Horace and Catullus. The Latin phrase above reflects the first two lines of one of his sonnets....
by John E. Charalambakis | Feb 16, 2015 | Commentaries
About a year ago in a meeting we had in Warsaw, Poland I contrasted Jamaica and Singapore. The contrast was based on a simple observation/fact, which stated that those two countries started at almost identical positions in the early 1960s, but Singapore excelled since...
by John E. Charalambakis | Feb 5, 2015 | Commentaries
Close to twenty years ago, the Eurocrats decided to defy the laws of gravity in economics, and they started designing a common currency without a fiscal union. Their thinking was straight-forward: “If we suspend the law of gravity, the Euro will be sustained (like if...
by Daniel Stelter | Jan 26, 2015 | Commentaries
Despite all the advertising, launching quantitative easing (QE) in Europe may well be counter-productive. This is due in no small part to significant structural differences between the U.S. and European economies and capital markets. But that does not mean nothing...
by John E. Charalambakis | Jan 21, 2015 | Commentaries
As it is widely expected, the ECB will unveil today its own version of QE. Welcome to a dead-end where central banks may resemble Prometheus bound by chains made by his own hands! As I wrote late last year we may be entering a historical year where the greenback and...
by Daniel Stelter | Jan 16, 2015 | Commentaries
Following the start of Abenomics in 2012, Japan moved back to the center of attention of global financial markets. After two and a half decades of economic stagnation, hopes were high that Japan would escape its long stagnation and deflation. Plenty of economists...