Free Republic

Interest rates on new mortgages remained broadly steady in July compared to the previous month, new data from the Central Bank shows. The average interest rate for new mortgage agreements was 4.06% for the month. That compares to 4.04% in June. New fixed rate mortgage rates averaged 4.04%, while new variable rate home loans averaged 4.18% Despite the small month on month increase though, compared to July of last year, new mortgage interest rates are 1.43% higher. That is reflective of some of the European Central Bank interest rate increases being passed through to borrowers. Since July of 2022, the...

Bitcoin's conceptual design and technological shortcomings make it questionable as a means of payment: real Bitcoin transactions are cumbersome, slow and expensive. Bitcoin has never been used to any significant extent for legal real-world transactions. Bitcoin is also not suitable as an investment. It does not generate cash flow (like real estate) or dividends (like equities), cannot be used productively (like commodities) or provide social benefits (like gold). The market valuation of Bitcoin is therefore based purely on speculation. Speculative bubbles rely on new money flowing in. Bitcoin has also repeatedly benefited from waves of new investors. The manipulations by...

Following Germany’s post-Weimar record high inflation print, the European Union’s consumer price inflation data this morning surged to a record high at +8.1% YoY (notably hotter than the +7.8% YoY expected). The inflation impulses are broad based across all the major European nations… Source: BloombergThe surge in European inflation is dominated by energy prices rising, and food costs… Source: BloombergFinally, we note that the recently agreed EU import ban on a major portion of Russian oil, meanwhile, risks further stoking pressure on prices. The report comes just 10 days before a crucial ECB meeting where officials are set to announce...

Mr. Barr’s authorization prompted the Justice Department official who oversees investigations of voter fraud, Richard Pilger, to step down from the post within hours, according to an email Mr. Pilger sent to colleagues that was obtained by The New York Times. […] Mr. Barr said he had authorized “specific instances” of investigative steps in some cases. But he made clear in a carefully worded memo that prosecutors had the authority to investigate only “substantial allegations” of irregularities, warning that “specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries.” Mr. Barr’s directive ignored the Justice...

Richard Pilger, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Director of the Election Crimes Branch, has resigned following Attorney General William Barr's authorization earlier today for federal prosecutors to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Pilger reportedly tendered his resignation within hours of Barr's green-lighting of investigations into allegations of fraud that have yet to be substantiated, The New York Times reported. The re-election campaign of Republican President Donald Trump and various Republican political leaders on the federal and state level have alleged that fraudulent ballots swung the contentious presidential race into the favor of Trump's opponent,...

"Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications... I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch."

German industry is in the deepest slump since the global financial crisis and threatens to push Europe’s powerhouse economy into full-blown recession. The darkening outlook is forcing the European Central Bank to contemplate ever more perilous measures. The influential Ifo Institute in Munich said its business climate indicator for manufacturing went into “free fall” in July as the delayed damage from global trade conflict takes its toll and confidence wilts. It goes far beyond the woes of the car industry. More than 80pc of Germany’s factories are in outright contraction.

The spread of illiberal ideology is threatening the euro, but it is an illusion that leaving it would offer an easier path, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Saturday. Warning that a half-finished monetary union could be at risk in the next crisis, Draghi made the case for sweeping changes in how the currency bloc operates and spreads around financial risk. “The fascination with illiberal prescriptions and regimes is spreading; we are seeing little steps back in history,” Draghi said in Pisa, Italy. “Only by continuing to make progress, freeing up individual energies but also fostering social equity,...

As Draghi said in a speech to Asian government officials and business leaders on Monday, there’s still a great deal more that can be done to punish Europe’s hordes of savers, the central banker’s scapegoat du jour for all that ails Europe’s debt-laden economy. The low or negative interest rates plaguing Europe are a symptom of a much bigger problem, he said: the compression of investment returns due to a massive global savings glut. To our great amazement, it’s this purported glut — and not his monetary policies — that lies behind the historic decline in interest rates. Inevitably, whenever...

Mario Draghi has said the European Central Bank would intensify efforts to support the eurozone economy and boost inflation toward its 2pc goal if necessary. Speaking a day after the ECB's moves to expand stimulus fell short of market expectations, the central bank president said that he was confident of returning to that level of inflation "without undue delay". "But there is no doubt that if we had to intensify the use of our instruments to ensure that we achieve our price stability mandate, we would," he said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. "There cannot...

Rumor has it that Draghi is so fed up with German opposition to everything he wants to do with stimulus and sovereign debt bond buying that he is about to leave the ECB. The Fiscal Times asks Why the Hell Does Mario Draghi Want to Leave the ECB Now!? What would happen to EuropeÂ’s prospects for recovery if Mario Draghi left his job as president of the European Central Bank? Would DraghiÂ’s plans to implement an ambitious policy of monetary stimulus get bulldozed by German inflation hawks and others favoring continued austerity across the Continent? Even a week ago there...

DRAGHI: Inflation Must Rise Without Delay Mike Bird   European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi is speaking today at a banking conference in Frankfurt, and he has one central message: we have to bring inflation back up, now. It’s one of Draghi’s most forthright speeches, with one exceptional snippet: “It is essential to bring back inflation to target and without delay.” Draghi added: “We have to be very watchful that low inflation does not start percolating through the economy in ways that further worsen the economic situation.” You can take a look at the full text of the speech...

"What's it all about Alphie" is a sing-along that most have heard. Take out the word "Alphie" and substitute "Draghi" and the answer is "Assuage Investors" in yet another can-kicking exercise. ECB president Mario Draghi hopes that if he continues with his kick-the-can tactics long enough, that something good will eventually happen. Hope is really all the ECB has.

Deutsche Skatbank, a division of VR-Bank Altenburger Land, which was founded in 1859, is not the biggest bank in Germany, but it’s the first bank to confirm what German savers have been dreading for a while: the wrath of Draghi. Retail and business customers with over €500,000 on deposit as of November 1 will earn a “negative interest rate” of 0.25%. In less euphemistic terms, they have to pay 0.25% per annum to the bank for the privilege of handing the bank their hard-earned money or their business cash. Inflation has had a similar effect in the zero-interest-rate environment that...

Europe’s top monetary official criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as a “dangerous” unilateral move. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said that the “immediate spillover of the trade measures … is not going to be big.” But he said such disputes should be worked out among trade partners, not decided by measures initiated from one side. “Whatever convictions one has about trade … we are convinced that disputes should be discussed and resolved in a multilateral framework, that unilateral decisions are dangerous.” “There is a certain worry or...

The European Central Bank should begin winding down its expansive monetary policy in 2017 as inflation returns in the eurozone, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said in an interview on Friday. “It would probably be right if the ECB starts daring to head for the exit this year,” Schäuble told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper — although he acknowledged it would be a “difficult task”. The ECB has fixed interest rates at record lows in the 19-nation single currency area, as well as offering cheap loans to banks and buying up tens of billions of euros per month of government and...

The European Union is eroding from its periphery and it is collapsing in pieces even in Germany and France. It is highly fragile and if real recessionary winds blow the EU will start to crumble at a faster pace. We say the faster, the better. The bureaucrats are clinging to the dream, but the dream has morphed into something very different for many in Europe. We can’t say that we’re disappointed. From The Telegraph) “The Stability and Growth Pact has more or less failed. Market discipline is done away with by ECB interventions. So there is no fiscal control mechanism...

Obscured somewhat by the spectacular antics of Deutsche Bank, there appears to be another bailout of two of Spain’s franken-banks: mostly state-owned Bankia and wholly state-owned Banco Mare Nostrum (BMN). The news was released so quietly that even in Spain barely a living soul is aware it’s happening. For the moment, BMN is completely state-owned, after its four constituent state-owned parts — Caja Murcia, Caixa Penedès, Caja Granada y Sa Nostra — were rescued by Spain’s taxpayers and lumped together for the modest price of €1.6 billion in 2010. But by the end of this year all that was supposed...

Today’s mayhem is not so much the result of reckless bankers and asleep at the wheel regulators, but rather of the public policy response to the last crisis itself – that is to say, regulatory over-reach and central bank money printing. All eyes are naturally focused on the specific problems of Deutsche Bank, but Deutsche is in truth no more than the canary in the coal mine. As Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Credit Suisse, observed last week, as an entire sector, European banks are still “not really investable”. Much the same disease as afflicts Continental banks also applies to...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel cannot afford to bail out Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) given the hard line Berlin has taken against state aid in other European nations and the risk of a political backlash at home, German media wrote on Saturday. The government denied a newspaper report on Wednesday that it was working on a rescue plan for Germany's biggest bank, as its shares went into a tailspin fueled by a demand for up to $14 billion from U.S. authorities for misselling mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis. Germany, which has insisted Italy and others accept tough conditions in tackling their...