Relatives of the 12 people killed in December when a truck ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin have expressed their dismay at the negligent way they say they have been treated by German authorities. About 50 people who lost loved ones in the Islamic State-claimed terrorist attack reportedly told a private meeting called by Germany’s outgoing president, Joachim Gauck, and the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, they felt abandoned at a deeply upsetting time.   Relatives said the first official communication they had with authorities was a bill sent to them by the coroner’s office. The letter reportedly included a warning that if the bill was not paid within a certain timeframe, the recipients would face legal action.  One relative told Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt newspapers that when she received the letter she had thought at the very least it would be a letter of condolence from Berlin’s mayor.  Those who were certain that their family members were among the dead said they were prevented by security personnel from entering the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church on Breitscheidplatz for a religious service held the day after the attack on 19 December. The reason they were given was that high-ranking German politicians – including Gauck – were among the guests. According to the papers, which reported on the four-hour meeting at Gauck’s Bellevue Palace, the president told the relatives he was distressed to hear they had been unable to enter the church and that he had not known about it at the time.

In his acceptance speech, Steinmeier, 61, said Germany should be an “anchor of hope” while democratic institutions were under threat across the globe. “As the foundations are shaking elsewhere, we have to prop up those foundations even more strongly,” he said  Gaining 75% of votes in the first round, he beat four outsider candidates fielded by the smaller parties, including Christoph Butterwegge, a political scientist and poverty researcher; Albrecht Glaser, a former Christian Democrat running for the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany party (AfD); and Engelbert Sonneborn, the father of the leader of the satirical organisation the Party.  Despite the role being largely ceremonial, past German presidents have aspired to act as a moral authority in debates of national and international importance. Steinmeier succeeds Joachim Gauck, 77, a former Protestant pastor and East German civil rights activist who told the Guardian this month that Germany would “staunchly stand by the European project”.

The world must take note of what happened in Montenegro. It paid scant attention last October when reports surfaced of an attempted coup. All eyes were on the American election; Montenegro is small and hardly known. But we can now reveal that plans were laid for a bloody coup, which was designed to kill the prime minister and destabilise the country. The goal was to prevent this sovereign nation from joining Nato. According to intelligence sources, the puppet-master was Russia. It all sounds familiar. In the last few chaotic years, Moscow has backed a separatist movement in Ukraine, propped up Bashar al-Assad in Syria, stands accused of murdering critics on foreign soil and is believed to have bankrolled opposition parties abroad. It is even alleged to have interfered in the US election...if Europe is so intent on integration then what is it doing to defend countries such as Montenegro? Several European countries spend less on defence than the budget of the New York police department. Britain must meet its own obligations and take the case for Western resolve directly to the Trump administration. The stakes are high. In Munich, the Russian foreign minister spoke of a post-West order. The reality of that proposition may sadly be disorder and freedom for tyrants. Only Nato retains the power, and hopefully the will, to stand up for democracy and the rule of law.

ECB officials think that they have the obligation to explain to investors the monetary policy decisions, and the effects are beneficial for the functioning of the channel for sending the monetary policy to the real economy. The institution of the EU ombudsman is led by Emily O'Reilly, who got the vote of the European Parliament for that position in 2013. According to its mission, the Ombudsman investigates the complaints concerning the activity of various European institutions and agencies. The complaint addressed to the EU ombudsman focuses particularly on the role of Mario Draghi, who is also a member of the G30. The CEO website shows that "our studies show a severe lack of critical distance between the decision making elements of the ECB and the bankers that are members of the G30", and "as the European Central Bank has also been given the task of regulating the financial sector, any real or perceived conflicts of interests represent a major risk to the integrity of the ECB".  ECB spokesperson said that "we have a large range of regulations and instruments to avoid apparent or potential conflicts of interest".  The CEO representatives think that the current framework is not enough, because "our analyses show that the high ranking personnel of the ECB is way too close to the representatives of the banks it is supposed to oversee".   A similar complaint of the NGO was rejected in 2012, but the current Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, made the decision to open the investigation due to the fact that "the ECB has taken on more major responsibilities in the last few years", according to Financial Times.

Germany posted a record trade surplus in 2016, just weeks after Donald Trump's top trade adviser accused the country of exploiting a "grossly undervalued" euro.

The country's €253bn (£215bn) trade surplus was the result of a 1.2pc rise in exports to €1.2 trillion, while imports only rose 0.6pc to €954.6bn, according to the federal statistics office. The 2016 surplus surpasses the previous high of €244.3bn set in 2015.   "This increase in net exports is a very encouraging sign for Germany," said Benno Bunse, head of Germany's economic development agency. "The overall picture is of an economy developing healthily towards being a place of manufacture and robust consumer-led development."  Germany's 2016 current account surplus, which measures the total money flowing in and out of a country, of €266bn, surpassed China's last year, making it the world's largest.

The institution of the EU Ombudsman recently received a complaint from NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), concerning the ties that exist between major members of the ECB management and the Group of the 30. The Group of the Thirty, created in 1978, is a private non-profit organization made up of the notable representatives of the public and private sector, as well as from academia, according to the presentation of the website of the institution, and its mission is "the drawing up of solutions for improving economic and financial stability". The president of the organization is Jean-Claude Trichet, former president of the European Central Bank, and its honorary president is Paul Volcker, former president of the Federal Reserve in the 80s.  The G30 also includes leaders of major international banks, which came under the oversight of the ECB in the last two years. A spokesperson of the ECB said that the institution will provide all the required information to the Ombudsman, but at the same time, it stressed that "in compliance with the provisions of the EU treaties, the ECB must maintain a dialogue with concerned persons from outside the institution, and the G30 is a relevant forum to that purpose", according to a report by the RTE website, Ireland's public radio and TV network. Furthermore, the ECB officials think that they have the obligation to explain to investors the monetary policy decisions, and the effects are beneficial for the functioning of the channel for sending the monetary policy to the real economy.

The rise in sterling’s value on Tuesday rounded off its best January performance against the dollar since 2011 and its first positive start to the year in half a decade.

It came as Mr Trump’s trade chief put the US on a collision course with Germany after he accused Berlin of using a “grossly undervalued” euro to “exploit” the US and the rest of the EU.  Peter Navarro, who heads the US president’s new National Trade Council, described the single currency as an “implicit Deutsche Mark” that gave Germany a competitive advantage over its trade partners....The economics professor also said Germany was the main obstacle to a trade deal between the US and European bloc as he dismissed a revival of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks. “A big obstacle to viewing TTIP as a bilateral deal is Germany, which continues to exploit other countries in the EU as well as the US with an 'implicit Deutsche Mark’ that is grossly undervalued,” Mr Navarro said.  “The German structural imbalance in trade with the rest of the EU and the US underscores the economic heterogeneity within the EU — ergo, this is a multilateral deal in bilateral dress.” Mr Trump has highlighted a preference for “one-on-one” trade deals. He pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 Pacific Rim nations on his first full day in office.

Bucharest Romania -- extremely optimistic estimates of the evolution of the economy in the next four years is not the only weak spot of the budget. Even if we overlook "transparency" easily, what about prudency? Hasn't the CNP learned anything, and more so our authorities, from the lesson of the crisis that began in 2008? Where does this optimism concerning the evolution of the economy over the next four years come from, when the global trade "landscape" is precisely in the process of undergoing a transformation following the victory of the Trump administration, and the problems of the EU are going through a new phase of worsening? The report also states that the "potential GDP will increase at an annual growth rate of 5.1%", whereas "the gap between the GDP and the potential GDP levels expressed as a percentage of the potential GDP will be closed in 2018". But don't we have the opinion of some NBR officials, that the output gap was closed as early as 2013 or Q2 2016? Aside from "faith", we must not forget that the methods for estimating the difference between the potential GDP and the real GDP are more or less mechanical, as they are heavily influenced by the growth of lending. Does the new government believe that we are back to the period of "growth" based on cheap loans and ultra-lax lending norms? It would seem so, because the report concerning the macroeconomic situation in the next years reflects an unrealistic approach of the evolution of borrowing costs. The governmental report also shows that "the yields of government bonds have followed a downward trend in the first three quarters of 2016, and then rise was mostly due to a number of foreign events".

The templates for recent relationships between the American Head of State and the British Head of Government have not been inspiring. We had Mr Blair’s obsequiousness to Mr Clinton and Mr Bush; Mr Brown’s near-invisibility to Mr Obama; and the conspiracy of cynicism between Mr Cameron and Mr Obama that led to the disastrous (from Mr Cameron’s point of view) interference by the last president in our referendum campaign. Watching the press conference held by Mrs May and President Trump, it seemed this Prime Minister had, commendably, adopted a dignified approach of her own.  Indeed, I would go further: from what emerged, Mrs May seemed to have done a superb job in furthering British interests, and those of the West, in her meeting with Mr Trump. She should be congratulated. She acted precisely in accordance with the realities of our present politics. There was no fawning.

The Trump administration is scrutinizing studies and data published by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, while new work is under a "temporary hold" before it can be released.  The communications director for President Donald Trump's transition team at EPA, Doug Ericksen, said Wednesday the review extends to all existing content on the federal agency's website, including details of scientific evidence showing that the Earth's climate is warming and man-made carbon emissions are to blame.  Ericksen clarified his earlier statements he made to The Associated Press, which reported that the Trump administration was mandating that any studies or data from EPA scientists undergo review by political appointees before they can be released to the public. He said he was speaking about existing scientific information on the EPA website that is under review by members of the Trump administration's transition team. He said new work by the agency's scientists is subject to the same "temporary hold" as other kinds of public releases, which he said would likely be lifted by Friday. He said there was no mandate to subject studies or data to political review. Former EPA staffers under both Republican and Democratic presidents said the restrictions imposed under Trump far exceed the practices of past administrations. Ericksen said no decisions have yet been made about whether to strip mentions of climate change from epa.gov

 

NIS, subsidiară a Gazprom, începe operaţiunile de foraj în perimetrele concesionate în vestul României

Lucrările de forare la prima sondă de explorare a ţiţeiului şi gazelor naturale în perimetrul EX-7 Periam din Bazinul Panonic, din vestul României, au început pe 21 ianuarie 2017. Sonda va fora la o adâncime de 2.500 de metri, iar lucrările de forare şi testare a sondei vor dura între 50 şi 60 de zile, în conformitate cu standardele ecologice, se arată în anunţul companiei.  Firma NIS, subsidiară a gigantului rusesc Gazprom, împreună cu firma canadiană East West Petroleum, are în concesiune patru perimetre petroliere în Bihor şi Timiş (EX-2 Tria, EX-3 Baile Felix, EX-7 Periam şi EX-8 Biled) cu o suprafaţă de peste 4.000 de km pătraţi în Bazinul Panonic. Arealul a fost anterior controlat de Petrom, dar nu a fost activ explorat în ultimii 20 de ani. Perimetrele sunt deţinute în proporţie de 85% de NIS şi 15% de compania canadiană  NIS va finanţa 100% din cheltuieli şi va duce East West prin fazele 1 şi 2 ale explorării, în schimbul a 85% din perimetru, spune East West Petroleum, companie listată pe Bursa de la Toronto.  În octombrie 2011, East West Petroleum a intrat într-un acord cu Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), subsidiară a gigantului Gazprom, care va finanţa în totalitate costul primei faze a programului, estimat de canadieni la 60 de milioane de euro. Această primă fază include date seismice 3D şi forarea a 12 sonde, pe o perioadă de doi ani.  Dacă partenerii extind lucrările la oricare dintre cele patru perimetre în cea de-a doua fază, NIS va continua să finanţeze costurile de explorare, estimate tot la 60 de milioane de euro.  Sârbii de la NIS a început 2014 operaţiunile de explorare petrolieră în perimetrele Periam şi Biled şi au realizat lucrări de prospectare seismică.NIS mai deţine în România, pe lângă concesiunea perimetrelor din vestul ţării, şi o reţea de benzinării, operată sub brandul Gazprom.(sursa NIS press)

Speech by Theresa May, Lancaster House, 17 January 2017 -- A little over six months ago, the British people voted for change.  They voted to shape a brighter future for our country.  They voted to leave the European Union and embrace the world.

And they did so with their eyes open: accepting that the road ahead will be uncertain at times, but believing that it leads towards a brighter future for their children - and their grandchildren too.  And it is the job of this Government to deliver it. That means more than negotiating our new relationship with the EU. It means taking the opportunity of this great moment of national change to step back and ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be.  My answer is clear. I want this United Kingdom to emerge from this period of change stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before. I want us to be a secure, prosperous, tolerant country - a magnet for international talent and a home to the pioneers and innovators who will shape the world ahead. I want us to be a truly Global Britain – the best friend and neighbour to our European partners, but a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe too. A country that goes out into the world to build relationships with old friends and new allies alike.

The global economy faces a multitude of risks in 2017, ranging from rising protectionism spearheaded by Donald Trump to a severe slowdown in China, the International Monetary Fund has warned. The Washington-based fund used an update to its economic forecasts to highlight popular antipathy towards international trade and a widening in the gap between rich and poor. It called on governments to tackle inequality by helping people find work in fast-changing jobs markets shaken up by technology and globalization.  The IMF made no changes to its October forecast for global economic growth to edge up this year after a sluggish 2016. But it upgraded its outlook for the UK economy, bringing the IMF more in line with other forecasters following signs that the British economy grew at a solid pace in the second half of 2016, despite the Brexit vote. The UK outlook for 2018 was cut, however.

Britain could suffer from having no access to the European Union’s markets after Brexit and "will not take it lying down", Philip Hammond has admitted.

The Chancellor admitted in an interview with a German magazine that the “UK we could suffer from economic damage at least in the short-term” if it is left with no access to the EU.  But he suggested that Britain could cut taxes to encourage companies to move to the UK if it were shut out from trading with the EU...The Telegraph disclosed Mrs May is preparing to set out plans for a ‘clean’ Brexit’ when she delivers her major speech at Lancaster House on Tuesday.  This would see the UK pulling out of the single market and the customs union in order to regain control of immigration and end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.  A government source told The Sunday Telegrpah: “She's gone for the full works. People will know when she said 'Brexit means Brexit', she really meant it.”  The comments alarmed pro-Remain MPs. Former education secretary Nicky Morgan, who was sacked by Mrs May, said the Prime Minister should put "maximum participation" in the single market at the heart of her negotiating strategy and warned her not to do anything to damage the economy.

Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. For more than a year now, it has been scarcely possible to think or read about anything else. Seemingly all other economic discourse has been eclipsed by this over-riding prospect.  In the circumstances, it’s an understandable obsession. Yet the fact is that far bigger challenges lie ahead for the UK economy than leaving the European Union, a point that the Governor the Bank of England, Mark Carney, seemed to acknowledge this week in admitting that Brexit was no longer the main domestic risk to financial stability. As it happens, it never was. Since the Brexit vote, the economy has continued to motor, and so far there seems to have been zero impact on financial stability...Over the last five years, the FTSE 100 has closed lower on seven of the 10 Friday 13ths.  It could be a coincidence – or is there something else at play?

On Friday 13th July 2012, China’s GDP growth dropped to a three-year low of 7.6pc, marking a new stage for the country’s economic slowdown....Superstitious beliefs run so high in the UK that some people refuse to fly on Friday 13th, stay in hotel rooms bearing the unlucky digits or buy houses that bear the number 13.  In fact, the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina estimates that businesses lose up to $900m (£585m) in sales and productivity when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday as customers refrain from activities such as flying and anxious employees stay home from work.  The phenomenon even has a name: paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday 13th, while triskaidekaphobics are scared of the number 13 more generally.  More than a quarter of Britons admit that they consider Friday 13th to be unlucky, according to a survey of 500 adults conducted by the conference call provider Powwownow.  One in 10 people avoid travelling by train on Friday 13th, 11pc refuse to stay in hotel room number 13 and 16pc of people won’t take flights on this inauspicious day, the survey found.

Germany - Inflation rage is coming to the boil in Germany. Leaders of the country's prestigious institutes warn that the economy is hitting capacity constraints and risks spiraling into a destructive boom-bust cycle.  In a series of interviews with The Telegraph they said that the ultra-loose monetary policy of the European Central Bank is now badly out of alignment with German needs. It has begun to threaten lasting damage, and is fast undermining political consent for monetary union.  "The ECB wants to inflate away the debt of the southern European countries. This is a clear conflict of interest with net creditors like Germany," said Clemens Fuest, president of the IFO Institute in Munich....Governments in the rich world are now the biggest debtors globally, piling up debts even as financial firms, other businesses and households moderate their borrowing. Total global debts have hit a new record high, driven largely by government borrowing, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF). The organisation is warning that the borrowing spree comes at a dangerous time, as debts increase sharply as the era of low interest rates comes to an end, leading to substantially higher borrowing costs....Total global debts rose to more than $217 trillion (£175 trillion) at the end of the third quarter last year, the IIF said, amounting to a record high of more than 325pc of GDP.

 

LONDON - Three of the City’s most powerful figures face a grilling from MPs over suggestions banks and other financial services firms exaggerated the threat posed by Brexit. Douglas Flint, chairman of HSBC, London Stock Exchange boss Xavier Rolet, and Elizabeth Corley, vice chairman asset manager Allianz Global Investors, will appear before the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) on Tuesday.  The influential panel of MPs has launched an inquiry into the future of Britain’s economic relationship with Europe once it leaves the EU. It is understood MPs’ will investigate whether City firms have embellished the likely impact of Brexit on the Square Mile, in an attempt to pressure the government into prioritising the financial services industry during negotiations with Brussels....It comes after the chief economist of the Bank of England conceded last week that the warnings of an economic downturn forecasters sounded before the EU referendum had been a “Michael Fish” moment - the infamous episode in 1987 when the BBC weatherman said there would be no hurricane the night before the Great Storm.

The surge in public borrowing has several important effects, exposing governments to higher interest rates as well as constraining their options at a time when economists would like extra fiscal stimulus from some countries.

“Higher borrowing costs could raise concerns about debt sustainability,” warned the IIF. “With the focus in 2017 likely to be on prospects for fiscal stimulus, already-high levels of mature market debt may act as a constraint.”. Borrowers in Britain have been working hard to pay down their debts, slashing the total debt to GDP ratio by 65 percentage points between 2011 and 2015. That is now in reverse, as the government keeps borrowing and banks stop deleveraging – in the first nine months of the year, debts rose by 15 percentage points to more than 465pc of GDP. Governments in emerging markets have increased their debt more slowly – debt to GDP increased by only two percentage points. Those nations could be particularly hit by higher interest rates in the US, however, as investors looking for yield in riskier markets may be tempted back to the States, as they were in the so-called taper tantrum of 2012.  The biggest emerging market borrower in 2016 was China – it accounted for $710bn of the total $855bn of bond issuance from the governments.

The country’s households were also keen borrowers in the nine-month period. Individuals took on loans amounting to an additional 3pc of GDP, while overall emerging market household debt hit a new high of 35pc of GDP.
“This suggests that for some households, debt service capacity could be challenged in a rising interest rate environment,” the IIF warned.

Good on Andy Haldane, the chief economist of the Bank of England, for telling it as it is. In an explosive intervention, Haldane has just compared the financial crisis and Brexit to the Bank of England’s Michael Fish moments. He was referring, of course, to the day just before the greatest storm for 300 years hit Britain on Oct 15, 1987, when the famous weather forecaster got it spectacularly wrong. “Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way… well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t!” he said.  In the case of the Great Recession, the analogy is perfect. In the case of Brexit, the error was a reverse Michael Fish, another case of the Y2K millennium bug: a prediction of immediate disaster which failed to materialise. The Bank expected a hurricane but none came, as it was put to Haldane (it’s a “fair cop”, he replied).

Wages in the US grew at their fastest pace since 2009 last month, pointing to continued momentum in the labour market and putting the country on course for a string of interest rate rises this year. Average hourly earnings increased by 2.9pc compared with the year before, the largest annual increase in more than seven years, while 156,000 jobs were created in December. Although the employment figure fell short of the 178,000 widely expected by economists, it was enough to suggest that the economy is steaming ahead.  The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.7pc in December, from a nine-year low of 4.6pc in November, as more people entered the labour market, in a sign of confidence in the economic recovery. Over the course of 2016, more than two million jobs were created in the US.  This set of jobs data will be the last for President Obama, as he makes way for Donald Trump, who is set to take office later this month.  President elect Trump has pledged to increase spending on the country's infrastructure, cut taxes and reduce red tape, three measures widely expected to boost growth this year.  The US jobs market is expected to hit full employment this year, and the country's central bank, the Federal Reserve, is set to push through interest rate rises in response.  Last month, the Fed increased the benchmark rate by .25 percentage points to a range of 0.25pc to 0.50pc. A further three rate increases are forecast for this year.  Kully Samra, managing director of Charles Schwab in the UK, said that despite December’s numbers missing forecasts, the US economy still had a robust labour market.