
Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, has recently stepped down as President of the Euro Group, which is a meeting of the finance ministers of the eurozone. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Finance Minister of the Netherlands, is his successor.
Amid disputes between the trinity of lenders, the long-awaited financial support to Cyprus may see a further delay (at least until March 2013). The IMF offers a partial write-down of the public debt. The EU officials insist on privatization while the local authorities do not want to sell public assets.
They say you will never know what you can until you try. Today’s investment and financial gurus (like George Soros, Warrant Buffet and others) one started their way to financial prosperity from small businesses.
According to the data published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, the producer and consumer prices increased in December.
The situation in the Australian labor market keeps deteriorating. The amount of new jobs has been declining for 10 months in a row. In particular, December’s decline was around 3.8%. The year-over-year decline is 16%. It appears that the indicator has reached the lowest value in 3 years. Since the global crisis, it has already dropped by 50%.
In Q4 2012, Germany’s GDP declined by 0.6%. Consequently, the Germany economy grew only 0.7% in 2012. For comparison sake, it boosted 3$ in 2011. The economic slowdown is going faster than expected.
The Japanese government is interested in weakening the national currency – the Japanese Yen. One of the ways to do that is to purchase US bonds. This stem is expected to exert extra pressure on the Japanese Yen, simultaneously stimulating the export-oriented Japanese economy. This is what the Japanese prime Minister thinks on the matter.