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The eurozone experienced negative inflation for the second month in a row, according to a flash estimate published today (30 January) by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. Inflation is expected to be at −0.6%, with consumer prices falling further than economists had forecast. The fall represents the biggest decline in prices in the history of the euro. […] The drop was driven by the fall in energy prices (−8.9%, compared with −6.3% in December). […] The deflationary spiral comes as Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), is trying to tackle deflation with a policy of...

Last year Austria's largest bank, Erste Bank, sent shudders of Credit Anstalt through the European Banking System. This year it is Austria's 3rd largest bank that is scaring investors senseless. On the heels of the Swiss National Bank's decision to un-peg from the Euro, Raiffeisen Bank's Swiss-Franc-Denominated mortgage worries have resurfaced (along with Russian/Ukraine writedowns) and nowhere is that more evident than the total collapse of the bank's bonds (from over 95c to 65c today). Even after the ECB Q€ (and some apparent intervention to weaken the Swissy) bonds kept free-falling. Perhaps, The Freedom Party's demands for a bailout will...

The long-anticipated collapse of the euro is here. When European Central Bank president Mario Draghi unveiled an open-ended quantitative easing program worth at least 60 billion euros a month on Thursday, stocks soared but the euro plummeted like a rock. It hit an 11 year low of $1.13, and many analysts believe that it is going much, much lower than this. The speed at which the euro has been falling in recent months has been absolutely stunning. Less than a year ago it was hovering near $1.40. But since that time the crippling economic problems in southern Europe have gone...

The massacre in Paris of the staff of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was an act of terrorism, but also a successful act of war in the clash of civilizations between Islamism and the West. Nor were we lacking for warning signs. In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, a license to kill author Salman Rushdie for his anti-Muslim novel "Satanic Verses." Danish cartoons of the Prophet with his turban in the shape of a bomb caused riots across the Middle East. Charlie Hebdo published them. The vulgarian Theo Van Gogh was carved up alive on a street in Amsterdam...

It's taken a long time, but the International Monetary Fund finally seems to be talking some sense about the beleaguered deficit economies of the eurozone. In a new analysis of continuing imbalances within the single currency area, it pretty much concludes that the situation is hopeless without the sort of eurozone-wide macro economic policies – monetary as well as fiscal – which are specifically rejected by the high command in Berlin. OK, so it doesn't quite say that, but even so, this will make deeply depressing reading for the struggling economies of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

A bill designed to allow police access to EU airline passenger details would help prevent future attacks by suspected terrorists inside Europe, says the European Commission. EU home affairs spokesperson Michele Cercone on Monday (2 June) told reporters in Brussels the 2011 EU passenger records name (PNR) proposal—which has been stalled due to opposition from the European Parliament—“could facilitate the endeavors of the member states” to fight what he said was a growing internal security threat. The proposal would oblige airlines flying to and from the EU to hand over the personal details of the passengers onboard. The renewed interest...

Europe’s young people lack the skills for work despite record levels of unemployment, according to a report by the US-based consultancy giant McKinsey. In its study, “Education to Employment,” published on Monday (13 January), McKinsey said one in three firms feel that a lack of skills among Europe’s youth posed major business problems, in the form of cost, quality, or time. Meanwhile, 27 percent reported that they had left a vacancy unfilled over the past 12 months because they could not find anyone with the right skills. …

A lost generation of jobless youth in the eurozone could tear the single currency apart if nothing is done to address chronic levels of unemployment, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned. “There is a growing consensus on the fact that unless we address chronic joblessness, we will see an escalation in social unrest,” said S.D. Shibulal, chief executive of Infosys, who contributed to the WEF’s Global Agenda Report. “People, particularly the youth, need to be productively employed, or we will witness rising crime rates, stagnating economies and the deterioration of our social fabric,” he added. …

The Labor Department on Friday is expected to report the economy added 120,000 jobs in October, below the 148,000 recorded in September and the trend for months prior. … Adding discouraged adults, who have quit looking for work altogether, and part-timers who want full-time employment, the unemployment rate is 13.6 percent. Even with more full-time positions, the pace of jobs creation is well short of the estimated 360,000 needed each month to lower unemployment to 6 percent over three years. That pace would require GDP growth in the range of 4 percent to 5 percent. … The increased cost and...

The potential for social unrest in European Union countries is higher than anywhere else in the world and the already yawning gaps between rich and poor, a major trigger, are likely to widen globally, the International Labour Organisation said on Monday. Those most vulnerable, the report said, were Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. However the risk of social unrest had declined in Belgium, Germany, Finland, Slovakia and Sweden since 2010. Overall, the risk of unrest in the EU "is likely to be due to the policy responses to the ongoing sovereign debt crisis and their impact...

Another month, another 95,000 people lost their jobs in the eurozone. The EMU unemployment rate nudged up a point to 12.2pc, but this understates those who have dropped out of workforce. The European Commission says the real rate for Italy is around 20pc, not the declared rate of 11.2pc. There are now 19.4 million registered unemployed in Euroland and 26.6 million in the EU as a whole. There are 5.6m youths below the age of 25 looking for jobs. Frankly, I have nothing further to say on this. The chart below contrasts EMU policy failure with the US and...

The Newtown killings had anti-gunners licking their chops from CNN to Capitol Hill. Years of working to undermine the right to keep and bear arms had come virtually to naught for gun confiscationists, but they knew the deaths of 20 children could be manipulated any way they liked, allowing them to make the most asinine and unsupportable claims imaginable about the evils of gun ownership. Call it a benefit of owning the national media. So Barack and friends spent months dancing on the graves of 20 sons and daughters while cooking up senate bills and executive “actions” advocating every conceivable...

Some 5.7 million Spaniards, equivalent to almost one in four, are now seeking work, according to official figures. The country's unemployment rate rose to 24.6% during the April to June quarter, up from 24.4% during the previous quarter. Separately, Spain's third largest bank reported an 80% fall in net profits. CaixaBank said net profits fell to 166m euros ($203m; £129m) during the January to June period. CaixaBank also set aside 2.7bn euros against its property assets, in accordance with reform requirements stipulated by the government in May. On Thursday, Spain's biggest bank, Santander, reported that its profits halved during the...

Top EU officials Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso have told Russia that the euro is a safe bet. The two men spoke alongside Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a press briefing after the 29th regular EU-Russia summit, held on Monday (4 June) in St. Petersburg. Van Rompuy promised to publish a blueprint for deeper EU economic integration "by the end of this year" and predicted that eurozone GDP will grow between 1 and 3 percent in 2013. "There is no way back for the euro, there is only the way ahead of more integration … As for what...

… Documents from the Kohl administration, kept confidential until now, indicate that the euro's founding fathers were well aware of its deficits. And that they pushed ahead with the project regardless. In response to a request by Spiegel, the German government has, for the first time, released hundreds of pages of documents from 1994 to 1998 on the introduction of the euro and the inclusion of Italy in the eurozone. They include reports from the German embassy in Rome, internal government memos and letters, and hand-written minutes of the chancellor's meetings. The documents prove what was only assumed until now:...

The Germans must abolish themselves Eric Dor's team at the IESEG School of Management in Lille has put together a table on the direct costs to Germany and France if Greece is pushed out of the euro. These assume that relations between Europe and Greece break down in acrimony, with a full-fledged "stuff-you" default on euro liabilities. It assumes a drachma devaluation of 50pc. They conclude: The total losses could reach €66.4bn for France and €89.8bn for Germany. These are upper bounds, but even in the case of a partial default, the losses would be huge. Assuming that the new...