Balances of banks sitting in the Eurosystem and percentage of respective country’s GDP
As previously published by irefeurope.org but with more detail behind the numbers
The European Central Bank (ECB) held its latest Governing Council meeting on 14 April 2002 and issued its normal press release. It issued its longer ‘Combined monetary policy decisions and statement’. Finally […]
The subscribed and paid capital contributions of the 19 ESM members
This article was published for the first time on www.brexit-watch.org on 6th April 2022.
The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is the main Eurozone bailout fund should further members be unable to access capital markets directly: the ESM would finance the member state, as they have done […]
Most of my contribution appeared on Facts4EU.org
On the second anniversary of the UK’s leaving the EU, it was worth relecting on what had been gained, even if Theresa May and now Boris Johnson could claim very little credit for it.
Here were my First Eleven of benefits, which made up the bulk of the Facts4EU piece…
Had […]
First published on en.irefeurope.org
In recent times, the EU authority has been challenged by Romania and Poland, both of whom have asserted the primacy of their domestic laws over EU treaty law in certain areas. Hungary is also a well-known thorn in its side. Given these threats, and the reputational sleight of the departure of the […]
This article was first published on brexit-watch.org
Facts4EU.Org has revealed that the EU, in Christmas week, floated the concept of new taxes to bring in an amount of €380 billion between 2026 and 2030, of which €85 billion would flow to Brussels. €247 billion of the new taxes are carbon-related, and €133 billion are new taxes […]
TARGET2: scale of invisible Eurozone liabilities demands action by global financial regulators
We recently had a blog published by Politeia about the lack of transparency in the accounting for the debts of EU/Eurozone member states. The member states’ contingent liability to backstop the debts of the EU is an example. Member states also have a contingent […]
The Eurosystem’s balance sheet now shows that its assets of €12 trillion exceed the Eurozone’s 2020 GDP of €11.4 trillion. This is attributable to the emergency response to Covid by the European Central Bank (ECB), who both created the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (the PEPP), extended the programme of unsecured loans to banks called Targeted […]
You can DOWNLOAD HERE the technical blog that accompanies the Politeia article on extrapolating lessons for the Eurozone, UK and global banking systems from the proposed merger of UniCredit and Monta dei Paschi di Siena.
The case raises difficult questions about whether any meaningful re-capitalization of banking systems has occurred since the Global Financial Crisis or […]
As Italy’s oldest bank is poised to merge with its second largest, Bob Lyddon considers the failure of Eurozone governance and its potential consequences – from which the UK is not immune
The UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement (2019) with its Northern Ireland Protocol remains one problematic matter of unfinished Brexit business. Less widely known is the matter […]
Two of the key patagraphs in the Withdrawal Treaty itself
What are HM Treasury and the EU playing at? Their dispute rumbles on over whether the Brexit divorce bill is the EU’s estimate of £41bn or HM Treasury’s (or rather the Office for Budget Responsibility’s) of £35-39bn.
The discussion feels phoney. The quoted amounts cannot include all […]