European Stability Mechanism hanging by a thread on France’s credit rating

The Daily Express picked up on my article pubished through IREF about the European Stability Mechanism:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1797868/eurozone-euro-eu-france-credit-rating

The ESM’s firepower – to back the debts of Eurozone member states and thereby to act as the backstop for the currency itself – depends upon its having backers of sufficient size and with high enough credit ratings.

The credit rating […]

UK’s debt is NOT larger than the EU’s

Bruges Group book summary

The Campaign for an Independent Britain published this piece that the UK’s debt is not larger than the EU’s as the Daily Telegraph had claimed, if the EU member states’ shadow debts and contingent liabilities are factored in:https://cibuk.org/eurozone-debt-dwarfs-that-of-the-uk/

My figures on the EU are drawfrom my book ‘The shadow liabilities of EU Member […]

InvestEU, NetZero and the growing debts of EU citizens

As presented at the IES-IREF Summer University in Aix 20-22 July 2023

I made a presentation at the IES-IREF Summer University in Aix-en-Provence about an aspect of my book, ‘The shadow liabilities of EU Member States, and the threat they pose to global financial stability’.

The relevant aspect is the build-up of off-balance sheet financing through the […]

The European Stability Mechanism hangs by a thread – on France’s credit rating

The ESM and its image

As previously published on IREF Europe: https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-european-stability-mechanism-hangs-by-a-thread-on-frances-credit-rating/

Introduction

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) backstops the euro. Its nominal size is €705 billion but its lending capacity is lower at €500 billion, and the main condition attached to that is that the member states guarantees of the ESM’s solvency must be good enough […]

Eurozone’s ‘shadow debts’ start to become real ones, and threaten the Bundesbank with bankruptcy

Published by The Bruges Group on 29 June 2023

The German Federal Audit Office (‘Bundesrechnungshof’) has warned that the Bundesbank may need a bailout due to losses on the EUR650 billion of bonds it bought as part of the Eurozone’s equivalent of Quantitative Easing. The Daily Telegraph reported on this on 26 June.

Of course the risk […]

UK inflation is a threat to financial stability – time to conceal that with tried and tested Eurozone techniques

As published on IREF Europe

UK Consumer Price Inflation remained at 8.7% in May. The Bank of England has raised the cost of overnight money to 5% via increases in its Base Rate, and has caused the cost of medium-term money to rise by selling off the bonds that it bought since the Global Financial Crisis […]