EEA News and Press, The European Equity Fund Inc. From 04/17/20

Overview: A 9.8% contraction of the Chinese economy in Q1 did not derail investor optimism today, which saw Asia Pacific stocks rally strongly after Gilead (GILD) reported very preliminary positive testing of its drug to fight the coronavirus and plans to re-open are developing. Japan's Nikk...

Overview Three deals need to be struck. First, the Eurogroup of finance ministers needs to reach an agreement of proposals for joint action to the heads of state. Second, oil producers need to cut output if prices are to stabilize. Third, the US Congress needs to strike a deal to provide mor...

Overview: Global equities are struggling after the S&P 500 staged a dramatic reversal yesterday. The early 3.5% gain was completely unwound and closed slightly lower. With few exceptions (e.g., Japan and the Philippines), most equity markets in the Asia Pacific region and Europe are lowe...

This opinion piece was written just prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in the West. The authors believe that the pandemic will increase the necessity and therefore the probability of fiscal integration in the eurozone. Based on the leading economic indicators, the eurozone e...

While many observers have seen this coming for a long time, the moment where the eurozone is at a crossroads has been brought forward by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The Northern countries will either have to accept some form of debt mutualization and all that it implies, or they ...

Investment thesis: International news is still mostly bad. The latest EU PMI data shows a service sector crash. Data from Japan also shows weakness, as do the latest South Korean releases. On the plus side, China was modestly higher this week but it's still too early to think about taking a ...

The eurozone problem As we all know by now the eurozone problem is that there's the one currency and therefore the one monetary policy. However, there isn't the corresponding one fiscal policy. This limits both the European Central bank and the national governments as to the economic policie...

By Antonis Giannakopoulos With fear of the coronavirus continuing to wreak havoc on every country in the West, almost all governments have taken radical measures for containment of the virus: mandatory quarantines for many, the closing of businesses, and the prohibition of many economic an...

Over the past few weeks, European countries have stepped up virus containment measures aggressively, with most of the region now in lockdown. Gauging the exact economic impact of these measures is hard, but it is almost a certainty by now that Europe will experience a very deep recession, with...

By Fabrizio Ferrari When Mario Draghi's tenure was approaching its end, I argued for a sterner governor for the European Central Bank (ECB); hence, I was not even slightly enthusiastic when Draghi's successor turned out to be Christine Lagarde - a patent dove, as can be inferred from her...