The dark cloud of the Omicron coronavirus variant may be plunging your plans for the New Year into uncertainty, but there are still reasons to hope that Europe can make significant progress on a range of thorny issues in 2022.
While it is clear we will have to live with COVID-19 for another while, new political constellations have been emerging since Germany’s change of government in December. These will offer the prospect of innovative solutions for long-standing problems in the European Union.
To be sure, there are several things that could go wrong: an uncontrollable surge of more deadly coronavirus variants that set back the economic recovery; a Russian military offensive against Ukraine; a Polish blockade of EU institutions in the battle over the rule of law and EU funds.
However, none of those worst-case scenarios is certain — or even likely. And there are undeniable grounds to be more optimistic about the coming year.
After years of sterile battles over the EU’s much abused fiscal rules — which were suspended at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — a consensus is emerging that in order to avoid strangling the recovery, budget discipline regulations must be changed before they return to force in 2023.
From the frugal north to the more spendthrift south, there is widespread recognition that public investment will be key to the success of the green and digital transformations of the European economy, and that outdated debt and deficit limits must not prevent this. Along this line, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi have jointly called for reform to perpetuate collective EU borrowing beyond the temporary recovery fund created in 2020.
Read more at:
5 reasons for the EU to be hopeful in 2022 – POLITICO
Showing posts with label outlook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outlook. Show all posts
12/6/21
USA: CEOs across economy agree on one 2022 prediction: No Covid end -
Chief executive officers of companies from sectors including healthcare, restaurants, packaged food, manufacturing, logistics and chip sector tell CNBC that any hope of a “return to normal” in 2022 is misguided and volatility will remain a primary business challenge.
CEOs see opportunity in the changes already made during Covid to become permanent competitive advantages, and for global economic growth to remain strong, but it won’t be without a high level of uncertainty and volatility.
Read more at: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/ceos-across-economy-agree-on-one-big-2022-prediction-more-volatility.html
Read more at: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/ceos-across-economy-agree-on-one-big-2022-prediction-more-volatility.html
11/25/20
UK economy to suffer 'largest fall in output for 300 years' as GDP down 11.3% in 2020, says Sunak
Debt would be 91.9% of GDP this year, rising to 97.5% in 2025-26, he said. In comparison, government debt in the eurozone stood at 95.1% of GDP in the second quarter of 2020, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.
The OBR said that if the UK trades with the EU under World Trade Organization (WTO) terms, as would happen should no trade deal be reached by the end of the transition period on December 31, the effect would "reduce real GDP by a further 2% in 2021". Bottom line, the economic picture for Britain looks quite bleak.
UK economy to suffer 'largest fall in output for 300 years' as GDP down 11.3% in 2020, says Sunak | Euronews
The OBR said that if the UK trades with the EU under World Trade Organization (WTO) terms, as would happen should no trade deal be reached by the end of the transition period on December 31, the effect would "reduce real GDP by a further 2% in 2021". Bottom line, the economic picture for Britain looks quite bleak.
UK economy to suffer 'largest fall in output for 300 years' as GDP down 11.3% in 2020, says Sunak | Euronews
3/21/19
1/31/17
USA: A futuristic Outlook: How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. -
t’s 2021, and President Donald Trump
will shortly be sworn in for his second term. The 45th president has
visibly aged over the past four years. He rests heavily on his daughter
Ivanka’s arm during his infrequent public appearances.
Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for reelection. His has been a popular presidency: Big tax cuts, big spending, and big deficits have worked their familiar expansive magic.
Wages have grown strongly in the Trump years, especially for men without a college degree, even if rising inflation is beginning to bite into the gains. The president’s supporters credit his restrictive immigration policies and his TrumpWorks infrastructure program.
The president’s critics, meanwhile, have found little hearing for their protests and complaints. A Senate investigation of Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign sputtered into inconclusive partisan wrangling. Concerns about Trump’s purported conflicts of interest excited debate in Washington but never drew much attention from the wider American public.
Allegations of fraud and self-dealing in the TrumpWorks program, and elsewhere, have likewise been shrugged off. The president regularly tweets out news of factory openings and big hiring announcements: “I’m bringing back your jobs,” he has said over and over. Voters seem to have believed him—and are grateful.
ost Americans intuit that their president and his relatives have become vastly wealthier over the past four years. But rumors of graft are easy to dismiss. Because Trump has never released his tax returns, no one really knows.
Anyway, doesn’t everybody do it? On the eve of the 2018 congressional elections, WikiLeaks released years of investment statements by prominent congressional Democrats indicating that they had long earned above-market returns. As the air filled with allegations of insider trading and crony capitalism, the public subsided into weary cynicism. The Republicans held both houses of Congress that November, and Trump loyalists shouldered aside the pre-Trump leadership.
The business community learned its lesson early. “You work for me, you don’t criticize me,” the president was reported to have told one major federal contractor, after knocking billions off his company’s stock-market valuation with an angry tweet. Wise business leaders take care to credit Trump’s personal leadership for any good news, and to avoid saying anything that might displease the president or his family.
The media have grown noticeably more friendly to Trump as well. The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner was delayed for more than a year, during which Time Warner’s CNN unit worked ever harder to meet Trump’s definition of fairness. Under the agreement that settled the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Amazon, the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has divested himself of The Washington Post. The paper’s new owner—an investor group based in Slovakia—has closed the printed edition and refocused the paper on municipal politics and lifestyle coverage.
Meanwhile, social media circulate ever-wilder rumors. Some people believe them; others don’t. It’s hard work to ascertain what is true.
Nobody’s repealed the First Amendment, of course, and Americans remain as free to speak their minds as ever—provided they can stomach seeing their timelines fill up with obscene abuse and angry threats from the pro-Trump troll armies that police Facebook and Twitter. Rather than deal with digital thugs, young people increasingly drift to less political media like Snapchat and Instagram.
Trump-critical media do continue to find elite audiences. Their investigations still win Pulitzer Prizes; their reporters accept invitations to anxious conferences about corruption, digital-journalism standards, the end of nato, and the rise of populist authoritarianism. Yet somehow all of this earnest effort feels less and less relevant to American politics. President Trump communicates with the people directly via his Twitter account, ushering his supporters toward favorable information at Fox News or Breitbart.
Read more: How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. - The Atlantic
Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for reelection. His has been a popular presidency: Big tax cuts, big spending, and big deficits have worked their familiar expansive magic.
Wages have grown strongly in the Trump years, especially for men without a college degree, even if rising inflation is beginning to bite into the gains. The president’s supporters credit his restrictive immigration policies and his TrumpWorks infrastructure program.
The president’s critics, meanwhile, have found little hearing for their protests and complaints. A Senate investigation of Russian hacking during the 2016 presidential campaign sputtered into inconclusive partisan wrangling. Concerns about Trump’s purported conflicts of interest excited debate in Washington but never drew much attention from the wider American public.
Allegations of fraud and self-dealing in the TrumpWorks program, and elsewhere, have likewise been shrugged off. The president regularly tweets out news of factory openings and big hiring announcements: “I’m bringing back your jobs,” he has said over and over. Voters seem to have believed him—and are grateful.
ost Americans intuit that their president and his relatives have become vastly wealthier over the past four years. But rumors of graft are easy to dismiss. Because Trump has never released his tax returns, no one really knows.
Anyway, doesn’t everybody do it? On the eve of the 2018 congressional elections, WikiLeaks released years of investment statements by prominent congressional Democrats indicating that they had long earned above-market returns. As the air filled with allegations of insider trading and crony capitalism, the public subsided into weary cynicism. The Republicans held both houses of Congress that November, and Trump loyalists shouldered aside the pre-Trump leadership.
The business community learned its lesson early. “You work for me, you don’t criticize me,” the president was reported to have told one major federal contractor, after knocking billions off his company’s stock-market valuation with an angry tweet. Wise business leaders take care to credit Trump’s personal leadership for any good news, and to avoid saying anything that might displease the president or his family.
The media have grown noticeably more friendly to Trump as well. The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner was delayed for more than a year, during which Time Warner’s CNN unit worked ever harder to meet Trump’s definition of fairness. Under the agreement that settled the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Amazon, the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has divested himself of The Washington Post. The paper’s new owner—an investor group based in Slovakia—has closed the printed edition and refocused the paper on municipal politics and lifestyle coverage.
Meanwhile, social media circulate ever-wilder rumors. Some people believe them; others don’t. It’s hard work to ascertain what is true.
Nobody’s repealed the First Amendment, of course, and Americans remain as free to speak their minds as ever—provided they can stomach seeing their timelines fill up with obscene abuse and angry threats from the pro-Trump troll armies that police Facebook and Twitter. Rather than deal with digital thugs, young people increasingly drift to less political media like Snapchat and Instagram.
Trump-critical media do continue to find elite audiences. Their investigations still win Pulitzer Prizes; their reporters accept invitations to anxious conferences about corruption, digital-journalism standards, the end of nato, and the rise of populist authoritarianism. Yet somehow all of this earnest effort feels less and less relevant to American politics. President Trump communicates with the people directly via his Twitter account, ushering his supporters toward favorable information at Fox News or Breitbart.
Read more: How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. - The Atlantic
1/12/16
Central Europe’s Outlook on the EU and Foreign Policy - by Milan Nič, Vít Dostál
A consortium of four Central European think tanks has published and presented a unique regional survey on foreign policy trends in the four Visegrad Group (V4) countries—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
The study is based on data collected in mid-2015 that allowed the authors to examine and compare the views held by over 400 foreign policy experts and opinion makers from the V4. The survey looked at a variety of national and European policy issues such as foreign and EU policy priorities, allies and partners, successes and failures, cooperation among the Visegrad countries, EU policies, and transatlantic relations.
The survey was finalized at the beginning of September as the V4 leaders closed ranks amid Europe’s migration crisis to resist the EU’s refugee relocation mechanism. The leaders also reduced their previous differences of opinion on Russia and the Ukraine crisis.
Read more: Central Europe’s Outlook on the EU and Foreign Policy - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The study is based on data collected in mid-2015 that allowed the authors to examine and compare the views held by over 400 foreign policy experts and opinion makers from the V4. The survey looked at a variety of national and European policy issues such as foreign and EU policy priorities, allies and partners, successes and failures, cooperation among the Visegrad countries, EU policies, and transatlantic relations.
The survey was finalized at the beginning of September as the V4 leaders closed ranks amid Europe’s migration crisis to resist the EU’s refugee relocation mechanism. The leaders also reduced their previous differences of opinion on Russia and the Ukraine crisis.
An analysis of the responses gives an
insight into the divisions and overlaps among national visions and
perceptions in the Visegrad region, as well as expectations in the
European context.
The results indicate several interesting trends. First of all, the Visegrad Group will remain a cohesive bloc on the EU level on some relevant issues such as energy and migration. Perceptions of priorities on the national and the EU levels overlap a lot. Also, bilateral relations within the Visegrad Group are now perceived as excellent—which has not always been the case and is part of the success of EU integration and Visegrad cooperation.
While the ongoing migration crisis has brought about a major parting between Berlin and the V4 capitals, Central Europeans still consider Germany their most important partner.
On the future of EU integration, Visegrad expectations are quite divergent and fragmented. Poles and Czech expect more differentiated (multispeed) integration, Hungarians think that larger member states will increasingly dominate, and Slovaks—the only eurozone country in the grouping—expect a reinforcing of the euro area.
The results indicate several interesting trends. First of all, the Visegrad Group will remain a cohesive bloc on the EU level on some relevant issues such as energy and migration. Perceptions of priorities on the national and the EU levels overlap a lot. Also, bilateral relations within the Visegrad Group are now perceived as excellent—which has not always been the case and is part of the success of EU integration and Visegrad cooperation.
While the ongoing migration crisis has brought about a major parting between Berlin and the V4 capitals, Central Europeans still consider Germany their most important partner.
On the future of EU integration, Visegrad expectations are quite divergent and fragmented. Poles and Czech expect more differentiated (multispeed) integration, Hungarians think that larger member states will increasingly dominate, and Slovaks—the only eurozone country in the grouping—expect a reinforcing of the euro area.
Read more: Central Europe’s Outlook on the EU and Foreign Policy - Carnegie Europe - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
12/20/15
Europe's year from hell may presage worse to come - by Paul Taylor
By any measure, it has been a
year from hell for the European Union. And if Britons vote to leave the
bloc, next year could be worse.
Read more: Europe's year from hell may presage worse to come - Yahoo News
Not since 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell and
communism crumbled across eastern Europe, has the continent's
geopolitical kaleidoscope been shaken up so vigorously.
But unlike that year of joyous turmoil, which paved the
way for a leap forward in European integration, the crises of 2015 have
threatened to tear the Union apart and left it battered, bruised,
despondent and littered with new barriers.
The collapse of the Iron Curtain led within two years to
the agreement to create a single European currency and, over the
following 15 years, to the eastward enlargement of the EU and NATO up to
the borders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
That appeared to confirm founding father Jean Monnet's
prediction that a united Europe would be built out of crises.
In contrast, this year's political and economic shocks
over an influx of migrants, Greek debt, Islamist violence and Russian
military action have led to the return of border controls in many
places, the rise of populist anti-EU political forces and recrimination
among EU governments.
Jean-Claude Juncker, who describes his EU executive as the "last
chance Commission", warned that the EU's open-border Schengen area of
passport-free travel was in danger and the euro itself would be unlikely
to survive if internal borders were shut.
Juncker resorted to gallows humor after the last of 12 EU
summits this year, most devoted to last-gasp crisis management: "The
crises that are with us will remain and others will come."
His gloomy tone was a reality check on the "we can do it"
spirit that German Chancellor Angela Merkel - Europe's pre-eminent
leader - has sought to apply to the absorption of hundreds of thousands
of mostly Syrian refugees.
Merkel has received little support from her EU partners in
sharing the migrant burden. Most have insisted the priority is sealing
Europe's external borders rather than welcoming more than a token number
of refugees in their own countries.
This is partly due
to latent resentment of German dominance of the EU and payback for its
reluctance to share more financial risks in the euro zone.
Some partners also accuse Berlin of hypocrisy over its
energy ties with Russia, while friends such as France, the Netherlands
and Denmark are simply petrified by the rise of right-wing
anti-immigration populists at home.
One of the sharpest rebuffs to sharing more of the refugee
burden came from close ally Paris. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said of
Merkel's open door policy toward Syrian refugees: "It was not France
that said 'Come!'."
2/7/14
US Economy Struggling: - January Job Figures Disappointing And Outlook Grim
Following the US job report by the US Government, Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note to clients Friday mornin wrote: “In one line: grim.”
Employers added jobs at a slower-than-expected pace in January, the second month in a row that hiring has been disappointing and a sign that the labor market remains anemic despite indications of growth elsewhere in the economy.
Employers added jobs at a slower-than-expected pace in January, the second month in a row that hiring has been disappointing and a sign that the labor market remains anemic despite indications of growth elsewhere in the economy.
The
data for January come after an even more disappointing report on the
labor market for December, which was revised upward only slightly
Friday, to show a gain of just 75,000 jobs, from 74,000.
The level of hiring in January was also substantially below the average
monthly gain of 178,000 positions over the last six months, as well as
the monthly addition of 187,000 over the last year.
The
two weak months in a row will prompt questions about whether the
Federal Reserve acted prematurely when policy makers in December voted
to begin scaling back the central bank’s expansive stimulus efforts.
Note EU-Digest: Extending federal long-term jobless benefits is the latest source of
political tension on Capitol Hill. Republicans have said they want to
offset its $6.4 billion price tag with cuts somewhere else.
"I made clear that we would consider it, extending emergency employment benefits, if it was paid for and if there were provisions that we could agree to that would get our economy moving again and put the American people back to work," said House Speaker John Boehner.
"We particularly hope that the Republican majority in the House will not just block anything we do, if we're able to come to an agreement. If they do, it's going to hurt them in the election," said Senator Charles Schumer.
Meanwhile, the US Labor Secretary says that while the economy is showing steady overall growth it still has three applicants looking for one available job, and he’s pushing Congress to renew those benefits.
Read more: Jobs Report May Raise Questions on Pullback of Stimulus - NYTimes.com"I made clear that we would consider it, extending emergency employment benefits, if it was paid for and if there were provisions that we could agree to that would get our economy moving again and put the American people back to work," said House Speaker John Boehner.
"We particularly hope that the Republican majority in the House will not just block anything we do, if we're able to come to an agreement. If they do, it's going to hurt them in the election," said Senator Charles Schumer.
Meanwhile, the US Labor Secretary says that while the economy is showing steady overall growth it still has three applicants looking for one available job, and he’s pushing Congress to renew those benefits.
1/11/13
As Europe’s Currency Crisis Fades, Growth Worsens - by Carol Matlack
Maybe, just maybe, the worst of the euro crisis is over. Business and consumer confidence is rising across the Continent, sovereign bond yields are falling, and capital flight from its weakest economies is easing. Talk of an imminent breakup of the currency union has all but disappeared. Even Greece, whose debt hemorrhage plunged the euro zone into crisis three years ago, is starting to meet deficit targets agreed to with its lenders.
“We are now back in a normal situation from a financial viewpoint,” European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said at a Jan. 10 news conference. “We spoke a lot about contagion when things go poorly, but I believe there is a positive contagion when things go well. That’s also what is in play now.” His comments lifted the euro to $1.32, its biggest gain in four months against the dollar.
But the indicators on Europe’s real economy are, if anything, worse than ever. Factory and services output contracted in December for a 17th consecutive month, and unemployment is at 11.8 percent and rising in many countries. The ECB lowered its growth forecast last month and now predicts the euro-zone economy will shrink 0.3 percent this year. “The worst is over, but what we still have to do is difficult,” says Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.
Read more: As Europe’s Currency Crisis Fades, Growth Worsens - Businessweek
“We are now back in a normal situation from a financial viewpoint,” European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said at a Jan. 10 news conference. “We spoke a lot about contagion when things go poorly, but I believe there is a positive contagion when things go well. That’s also what is in play now.” His comments lifted the euro to $1.32, its biggest gain in four months against the dollar.
But the indicators on Europe’s real economy are, if anything, worse than ever. Factory and services output contracted in December for a 17th consecutive month, and unemployment is at 11.8 percent and rising in many countries. The ECB lowered its growth forecast last month and now predicts the euro-zone economy will shrink 0.3 percent this year. “The worst is over, but what we still have to do is difficult,” says Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.
Read more: As Europe’s Currency Crisis Fades, Growth Worsens - Businessweek
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