EU and Eurozone break both the spirit and the letter of global debt rules

EU and Eurozone break global debt rules

Published on 14th April 2023

The EU and its member states position themselves as a cornerstone of the rules-based international order, but they break its financial rules in both letter and spirit by failing to fully report their financial liabilities. The key measure tracked by Eurostat – ‘General government gross […]

EU and Eurozone debts are a risk to global financial stability

EU/Eurozone debts: a risk to global financial stability

Published on 13th April 2023

EU and Eurozone member states understated their debts at the end of 2021 by 44% of EU GDP and their total liabilities by 70%. This represents a major risk to global financial stability, as the understatement causes shortfalls of capital and collateral at the […]

EU and Eurozone are massively over-indebted – but official figures obscure it

EU and Eurozone are over-indebted

Published on 12th April 2023

EU and Eurozone member states fail to fully report their financial liabilities. The key measure tracked by Eurostat – ‘General government gross debt’ – is circumvented to such an extent that, based on year-end 2021 figures, debts of around €6.4 trillion failed to be registered, and contingent […]

Risk-weighting – how to fake up resilience in a banking system

— blog published on 6th April 2023 and the underlying article by IREF Europe on 5th April 2023 —

Introduction

How resilient is the global banking system? Are banks’ capital buffers now much larger than they were going into the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8, as authorities claim?

The buffers – called ‘Common Equity Tier 1’ (or CET1), […]

Bank Resolution is dead: authorities dare not use it – and instead risk destroying capital markets

— blog published on 1st April 2023 and the underlying article by IREF Europe on 29th March 2023 —

The template created after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/8 to shield taxpayers from direct bailouts of failed banks has already folded – authorities dare not use it.

The template is to put failed banks into ‘resolution’, with […]

European Central Bank’s gaslighting defies EU energy shortage

IREF headline

Published on 18 August 2022 and first published as an IREF online article on 3 August 2022

The press releases following the meeting of the ECB Governing Council (GC) on Thursday 22 July 2022 are masterpieces of uninformation in which the ECB attempts to gaslight its stakeholders, making them question their own perception of reality. […]

Eurozone in meltdown and collapse could cost the UK £200 million – despite Brexit

Published on 17 August 2022 and as an article published in the Daily Express on 13 July 2022

Red alerts are flashing all over the Whitehall radar screen. The Prime Minister has been deposed and the country is leaderless for the summer. Living standards are plummeting under the impact of soaring inflation. Russia’s savagery tortures Ukraine […]

Why the euro threatens to be the EU’s Krakatoa

Published on 14 August 2022 and earlier published on www.brexit-watch.org on 13 July 2022 under the above headline and photograph, a Photo of Anak Krakatau by arief adhari/EyeEm from Adobe Stock]

BREXIT HAS BEEN largely botched so far, as has so much else by the present government. Remainers, several now emanating from their mausolea, claim […]

How Germany can get railroaded within the European Central Bank’s Governing Council

Published on 5 August 2022

Germany has been resistant to many measures of the European Central Bank, not least the size of its bond-buying programmes and its latest ‘Transmission Protection Mechanism’ approved at the main meeting of July 2022. The aim of the ‘TPM’ is to avoid ‘fragmentation’, meaning the yields on the bonds issued by […]