Planned scoreboard

3 year backward moving average of the current account balance as a percent of GDP, with the a threshold of +6% of GDP and - 4% of GDP;
net international investment position as a percent of GDP, with a threshold of -35% of GDP;
5 years percentage change of export market shares measured in values, with a threshold of -6%;
3 years percentage change in nominal unit labour cost, with thresholds of +9% for euro-area countries and +12% for non-euro-area countries.
3 years percentage change of the real effective exchange rates based on HICP/CPI deflators, relative to 35 other industrial countries, with thresholds of -/+5% for euro-area countries and -/+11% for non-euro-area countries;
private sector debt in % of GDP with a threshold of 160%;
private sector credit flow in % of GDP with a threshold of 15%;
year-on-year changes in house prices relative to a Eurostat consumption deflator, with a threshold of 6%;
general government sector debt in % of GDP with a threshold of 60%;
3-year backward moving average of unemployment rate, with the threshold of 10%.

Njemačka je nevjerojatno profitirala. Sve što se uplašilo među investitorima, pobjeglo je u Njemačku.

Vidjet ćete kad Italijani krenu kukati i prositi po Europi. Grci su za njih male bebe.

Italija zahvaljujući Montiju ne će doći do toga, ipak pokazuje se kakav je problem Euro. Radi se o valuti koja obuhvaća zemlje nejednakog gospodarskog rasta (do pred krizu) i veliku razliku monetarnih politika.
Robin Harris je danas rekao da ne bi bila loša ideja podijeliti na dvije ili tri valute, odnosno tri zone, prva njemačka i zemalja koje je mogu pratiti (Švedska i Austrija, čak i Poljska npr.) , južni Euro za Španjolsku, Italiju, Portugal, Grčku , a ubuduće (kada bi se stvar stabilizirala) i za Hrvatsku. Te ostaje još Francuska koja će u budućnosti biti u velikim problemima zbog ogromnog duga umirovljenicima, općenito unutarnjeg duga (iznosi im oko 548% BDPa) .

Italy Pays For Sins of The Past

As fears mount that Italy could be sucked into the vortex of the euro-zone debt crisis, consider this: The country’s public finances are among the strongest in the European Union.

Say what?

Italy is one of just five EU countries that are expected to run a primary surplus — meaning that, excluding debt interest payments, their income is greater than their spending — in 2011, according to the European Commission’s spring economic forecast. Its primary surplus is expected to be 0.8% of gross domestic product, less than only Hungary and Sweden, and higher than the rest of the euro zone, including stalwarts such as Germany and Finland.

The figure shows that Italy’s budget sins are largely in the past: interest payments on the country’s mountain of debt, accumulated during years of lax budget policy, are expected to be 4.8% of GDP, the second-highest in the EU after Greece .

Forgetting the past, Italy is in fine shape.

So what, you might say. To quote William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Italy’s large current budget deficit is going to be a problem decades from now.” (Okay, I may be misremembering part of this quote.) A deficit is a deficit, whether the cause is borrowing to fund current operations or borrowing to pay interest on existing debt.

Maybe so. But Italy’s primary surplus shows that the government as currently configured can pay its own way, even during a time of weak economic growth. That’s much more than can be said for Greece, Portugal, Ireland or even Spain, all of which are expected to run primary deficits this year.

Moderately higher growth and/or inflation — and some time — would help solve the country’s historical debt burden. Italy is expected to pay a 4% rate on its outstanding debt this year; but annual nominal GDP growth hasn’t broken 3% in five four years, and it averaged just 3.7% from 2001-2007.

Without more nominal GDP growth, Italian debt must rise. New measures pledged by the Italian government are aimed at raising the country’s long-term growth rate. This might be a steep hill to climb: changing long-term growth rates is a notoriously difficult task that could take years.

Or the euro zone could intervene to drive down Italian yields below the country’s 3% nominal GDP growth rate, putting Italian debt on a downward trajectory. That’s what the European Central Bank is doing this morning through its bond purchases. But seven-year yields are at 5.02%, requiring a lot more buying from a reluctant ECB to get the job done.

Even if euro-zone governments significantly expand the size of their bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, the lowest rate it can charge on loans is 3.5% — still above Italy’s nominal GDP growth rate in recent years.

So higher growth rates, more inflation and time appear to be Italy’s main hopes to atone for the budget sins of the past.

European Consumers Tighten Their Belts

As Crisis Drags On, Families Scrimp; 'This Thrift Mindset Is Here to Stay'

By SAM SCHECHNER

Austerity isn't just for governments anymore.

As countries across Europe slash their budgets to tackle the sovereign-debt crisis, individual Europeans are reining in spending, too. They are trading down to cheaper groceries, buying fewer big-ticket items, and searching more for bargains online.

"Suddenly, we're becoming more cautious, more restrained," said Rose-Marie Hall, 38, whose family of four east of Paris is holding off on replacing its 11-year-old car and has avoided their usual trips to nearby Disneyland Paris this year. "When you hear there are people who have lost their jobs, and find themselves with nothing, you say, 'That could happen to me.' "

Ms. Hall isn't alone. As the number of unemployed in the euro zone reaches record levels and recession bites across much of the region, consumers are becoming increasingly thrifty.

The result is a change in consumer habits that could have an enduring impact on everything from economic growth to the corporate bottom line, with slower consumer spending rippling through companies already reeling from the slowdown.

Dour indicators are piling up. French consumers spent 0.2% less in the second quarter than the first, on fewer manufactured goods, the government statistics agency said late last month. In July, consumer confidence across the 17-nation currency bloc fell to its lowest level since 2009, the European Commission said. Consumer spending on goods and services in Western Europe is expected to slip 0.9% in inflation- and exchange-rate-adjusted terms in 2012, compared to a 1.9% increase forecast for the U.S., according to market-research firm Euromonitor International.

The tighter purse strings are squeezing multiple industries. At the roughly 180 European-listed companies on the Stoxx 600 index that had reported quarterly earnings by the end of last week, profit was down 12% compared with a year ago, according to new data compiled by Thomson Reuters. Things aren't expected to improve soon: Analysts have revised their third-quarter estimates for those companies' earnings down 6.2% in the last 30 days, Thomson Reuters said Friday.

Among the biggest shifts is in groceries. For years, European households have spent proportionately nearly double what Americans do on food to eat at home. But higher prices are pushing people in some countries to actually reduce the volume of groceries they buy, analysts say. Overall at-home food expenses per household in Western Europe are expected to drop 2.7% in 2012, according to Euromonitor, as consumers shift to "hard discounters" such as closely held Aldi that offer far fewer products, often their own brands, at cheaper prices.



"People will come in and buy three or four carrots," says Nathalie Piarroux, who runs a small grocery shop in the southern French village of Olargues. She says her trade in June and July fell about 20% from the same months last year, as consumers go elsewhere for cheaper prices.

Europeans are also eschewing big-ticket purchases like cars. In the first half of the year, overall new-car registrations declined 6.8% compared with a year earlier, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, with steeper declines in France, Italy and Spain. That comes atop declines of roughly a quarter in new-car sales in the last five years.

Spending at full-service restaurants in Western Europe fell 13% from 2007 to the end of 2011, and is projected to fall another 3.5% in 2012. Ida Ardovino, a 37-year-old physician who lost her hospital job in Rome a year ago, said her family is no longer eating out three times a week. "All of the extra stuff is gone," Ms. Ardovino said. "Today we're eating sandwiches."

There are pockets of strength. Germany's economy remains relatively strong, buoyed in part by strong exports. While German consumer spending fell 0.1% in June from the prior month, the figure was still up 2.9% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Online shopping is continuing to grow—buoyed in part by bargain-hunters. Online retail sales are set to increase about 12% annually in European Union countries in the next five years, according to Forrester Research. In France, on the first day of the summer sales-promotion season, when clothing stores often hawk markdowns of 50% or more, Amazon.com Inc.'s AMZN +1.80% French website registered a 44% increase in traffic compared to the prior year, the company said.

"People see online spending as a way of reducing their living costs," said Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research, a U.K. research firm.

People are still splashing out for mobile gadgets, too. Euromonitor projects an 11% increase in smartphone sales this year from 2011. But to make ends meet, customers are often reining in what they pay for phone service in an effort to economize.

Juan Antonio Miranda, a 41-year-old insurance salesman based in Madrid, says that over the last nine months he has switched twice to cheaper telecom providers for his smartphone. "You never know what's going to happen, the way things are going, so it's best so save as much as possible these days," said Mr. Miranda.

Some companies are responding to changing consumer habits by importing techniques that they first honed in countries like Brazil and India. Consumer-products giant Unilever NV UN +2.61% is repacking some of its existing brands, like Surf detergent, in smaller packages that sell for one euro or one British pound.

Danone SA, BN.FR -0.36% whose overall sales in Europe fell 1% in like-for-like terms in the second quarter, is opting for a different approach. The dairy-products giant is rolling out a redesigned plastic yogurt pot that has rounded curves, replacing a design that hasn't changed for decades. The goal of the new containers is to stand out in the increasingly competitive grocery aisle.

"Worries about money are chipping away at consumer loyalty to brands," said Daphne Kasriel , a consumer-trends analyst at Euromonitor. "This thrift mindset is here to stay."

Ne bih se složio. Glavni i isključivi krivac je višestoljetni nered, raskalašenost i socijalni model u mediteranskim državama, koji realno nikad nisu mogli priuštiti. Ako su Njemci krivi što imaju najjaču industrijsku bazu i sređenu državu koja (za sada) ne živi previše izvan svojh mogućnosti (mada su penzioni sistemi u svim europskim zemljama tempirana bobma), onda OK.

Eh kada bi svi bili diciplinovani kao Svabe i kada bi svi trosili kao Svabe (prvo zaradi pa tek onda potrosi), krize nebi ni bilo ili bi bila slabija i manje razornija nego sto je sada.

To je mit. Nijemci se po tom pitanju ne razlikuju puno od drugih naroda.

Ne bih se složio. Glavni i isključivi krivac je višestoljetni nered, raskalašenost i socijalni model u mediteranskim državama, koji realno nikad nisu mogli priuštiti. Ako su Njemci krivi što imaju najjaču industrijsku bazu i sređenu državu koja (za sada) ne živi previše izvan svojh mogućnosti (mada su penzioni sistemi u svim europskim zemljama tempirana bobma), onda OK.

Pa tu se ne bi složio, ipak im jedinima dug umirovljenicima ide dolje u EU (možda još Španjolskoj i Italiji ide dolje, ali tek nakon što su ih natjerali na neke reforme).

Troše itekako puno. Unatoč suficitu platne bilance (zahvaljujući pametnoj monetarnoj politici) do grla su u dugovima. Ako imaš podatke o strukturi njihovog duga, postavi ih. Strane investicije sigurno nisu bitna stavka.

Ti poticaji za izgradnju bazena nisu grčka izmišljotina, oni su samo koristili sredstva predviđena u fondovima za to. I ne samo oni, nego i svi ostali. To pokazuje koliko je Unija stvarno bolesna.

Zato su bankarski, brokerski, tehnomenadžerski i drugi, u osnovi parazitski krugovi u ovoj krizi jako profitirali.

Inače ovih španjolskih 60% debt to GDP su šarena laža slična grčkim malverzacijama oko proračuna. Iz nekog neobjašnjivog razloga to nije uključivalo vanjska zaduženja autonomnih španjolskih regija, koje su pak bile najraskalašeniji potrošači (mnoge su propale i traže spas od državne vlade), kao ni tzv. contingent liabilities, odnosno državne garancije bankovnih zaduženja. Kada se sve to zbroji, negdje smo iznad 90%.