Interest rates – both short and long term – are at record lows in Europe. The driving force behind this is the belief that both employment and inflation will be lower for longer. This is something that concerns the ECB and Drahgi’s Jackson Hole speech implies further easing ahead. These appear to be exceptional times.
The story of how we got here is pretty simple: a global banking collapse in 2…
Read the articleIn principle, the European Central Bank (ECB) is well in line with its price stability objective, which it defines as a “year-on-year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%”. Nonetheless, July inflation numbers released last week bring the currency union as a whole dangerously close to deflationary territory. The aggregate HICP annual rate of ch…
Read the articleOn the right is UK Chancellor George Osborne, the austerity axeman. On the left was opposition leader Ed Miliband, the fiscal freedom fighter. But it now appears that Miliband and co are so alarmed that Cameron and Osborne are better trusted by the electorate to run the now booming UK economy that they are quietly embracing Tory austerity. The Liberal Democrats have accused the Tories of purs…
Read the articleFrance has a unique social model. It originates from the end of the Second World War, when the National Council of the Resistance (NCR) hastily put together a plan to rebuild the country after five years of Nazi occupation. Despite not having any official political affiliations, the NCR was in fact influenced by left wing individuals and the “National Front”, a communist party. The NCR’s “actio…
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Green bonds are instruments in which proceeds are exclusively applied towards new and existing green projects – defined as activities that promote climate or other environmental sustainability purposes. They enable capital raising and investment in projects with environmental benefits. The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) set out some guidelines for issuing of green bonds in Janu…
Read the articleThere is a lot of analysis and conjecture about how much impact the financial crisis has had on the global economy and financial markets. There has been considerably less analysis around the impact of the crisis on bond fund managers. In a small attempt to quantify these impacts, we have dug out a few old photos of members of the M&G bond team pre and post-crisis. The photos show clearly where …
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