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The reasonably strong run of hard data for the first two months of the year has prompted us to revised up our estimate of Q1 GDP growth to 0.3% q/q. However, the downbeat tone of the business surveys (including the flash PMIs for April) suggests that the …
18th April 2019
Weak growth in the euro-zone overshadows near-term prospects in Switzerland and the Nordics. We expect activity to slow in most countries this year and to stay sluggish in 2020. As a result, price pressures should generally remain subdued, prompting …
The disappointing flash PMIs for April suggest that, despite some stronger industrial production data in the first couple of months of this year, the euro-zone is not yet out of the woods. They also indicate that the manufacturing slump in Germany …
GDP growth in the euro-zone is likely to be only slightly stronger this year than in the second half of 2018. Hopes for a sharp rebound in export demand will probably be disappointed, meaning that the manufacturing sector will not turn the corner for a …
17th April 2019
The success of the nationalist Finns Party in yesterday’s parliamentary election is further evidence of the increasing fragmentation in European politics, while the tight result suggests that the process of forming a government in Finland will be even …
15th April 2019
The ECB struck a moderately dovish tone at its policy meeting this week, but with economic growth still fairly slow it will need to follow its words with actions. Meanwhile, industrial production data suggest that Italy’s recession might have come to an …
12th April 2019
Private sector production data for February, released this week, added to the evidence from other indicators that Swedish economic growth slowed sharply at the start of 2019. We think that the Rikbank will have to revise down its forecasts for the repo …
February’s industrial production data suggest that output in the sector performed a little better in Q1 than at the end of last year, but the sector is still struggling. And with global economic growth set to remain weak this year and next, euro-zone …
Swedish inflation data for March, released this morning, lend further support to our view that the Riksbank will keep policy looser for longer than it and investors expect. … Swedish Consumer Prices …
11th April 2019
President Draghi’s comments at today’s press conference suggest that the ECB will announce the terms of the TLTRO-III programme in June, which we suspect will be more generous than previous TLTROs. But we still think the Bank will need to do more to …
10th April 2019
The latest indicators have added to the evidence that economic growth in much of Scandinavia slowed at the start of 2019. Indeed, after strong finishes to 2018, surveys suggest that GDP in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland will have done well to grow at all in …
The pick-up in core inflation pressures in Norway in March suggests that the Norges Bank will stay in tightening mode for now. However, given our forecast for oil prices to fall this year, we think that policymakers will end their tightening cycle sooner …
The latest ECB Bank Lending Survey suggests that economic growth will remain weak. This will probably encourage the ECB to make the terms of its new TLTROs – which are likely to be confirmed in June – very generous. But on their own we doubt that the …
9th April 2019
The weak private sector production data from Sweden for February suggests that the economy is likely to have flat-lined at best in Q1. With core price pressures expected to remain subdued, we continue to expect the Riksbank will leave its repo rate …
8th April 2019
The sharp drop in the manufacturing PMI in Switzerland in March provides the clearest sign yet that the woes in euro-zone industry have spread over the border. Meanwhile, the manufacturing and services PMIs from Sweden for March suggest that GDP growth …
5th April 2019
This week brought more disappointing data for the euro-zone. The ECB is unlikely to respond by loosening policy further at its meeting next Wednesday, but we think that it won’t be long before the Bank is forced into action. … More weak data ahead of …
February’s industrial production data were stronger than expected and suggest that German GDP rose in Q1. But that is largely due to a sharp increase in construction, which is very unlikely to be repeated. The manufacturing sector is still struggling and …
After making some fairly big changes in early March, the ECB will probably be happy to leave things as they are at next week’s meeting. President Draghi will have no choice but to give a downbeat assessment of the economic outlook, which will probably set …
4th April 2019
The account of the ECB’s 7th March monetary policy meeting makes gloomy reading. It confirms that policymakers were worried about downside risks to their growth and inflation forecasts, even though they had only just been revised down, and that they were …
The Swiss economy will not be immune to weak growth in the euro-zone over the coming years, but rising demand from Asia and the increased importance of sectors that are relatively insensitive to the exchange rate will at least cushion the blow. …
We suspect that GDP increased by only 0.1% in the first quarter of this year. The divergence between the manufacturing and services sectors has, if anything, increased, and this in turn has exacerbated the gap in performance between countries. Germany is …
February’s retail sales data suggest that household spending growth picked up a bit in Q1. But the Composite PMI, together with other surveys, suggests that GDP growth might have slowed. … Euro-zone Retail Sales (Feb.) & Final PMIs …
3rd April 2019
The slight pick-up in Swiss inflation in March does not change our view that the headline rate will fall back into negative territory in mid-2019 and that core price pressures will remain extremely weak. … Swiss Consumer Prices …
2nd April 2019
March’s decline in euro-zone headline inflation was largely due to the timing of Easter, so the continued weakness in the manufacturing PMIs will be a bigger worry for the ECB. … Euro-zone Flash HICP (Mar.), Final Mfg PMIs …
1st April 2019
The manufacturing PMIs for March provide further evidence that the Swiss and Swedish economies made a weak start to 2019. This underlines our view that policymakers there will be in no rush to tighten policy. … Manufacturing PMIs …
Speeches by policymakers this week suggest that the ECB is likely to provide more policy accommodation within the next six months or so. All the more so as the latest survey data continue to point to an economy which is losing momentum. … Draghi dovish, …
29th March 2019
The scandal at Swedbank raise questions about transparency, corruption, and the relationship between banks and regulators in Sweden, while the collapse of WOW Air means that the chances of further rate hikes this year are diminishing. Meanwhile, the …
If it is introduced (which is far from certain) a tiered deposit rate would reduce the cost of negative interest rates for banks, but it would do so by only a trivial amount. Its main purpose would be to help to build support for, or buy off opposition …
The sharp pick-up in the Swiss KOF Economic Barometer in March does not change our view that GDP growth in Switzerland will slow this year. However, it supports our forecast that the economy will hold up reasonably well in the face of weak growth in the …
Weaker Chinese demand can explain only a fraction of the slowdown in German GDP growth over the past year: softer demand in other export markets and in the euro-zone are more important factors. Accordingly, we do not expect a stimulus in China to cause a …
28th March 2019
March’s decline in the euro-zone’s Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) adds to the evidence from other surveys that the economy has continued to lose momentum. And there is no sign that either the German or Italian economies are on the mend. … EC Business …
Over the next ten years, we think that Italy’s economy will fail to grow because productivity growth will remain weak and total employment will fall. As a consequence, the public debt ratio will probably continue rising and eventually prove unsustainable. …
27th March 2019
The decline in the Swedish Economic Tendency Indicator (ETI) in March was not as bad as we had feared given the sharp fall in the euro-zone manufacturing PMI last week. But it is still consistent with a sluggish start to the year for the Swedish economy …
If the past is anything to go by, a fresh round of ECB QE would lead to upward pressure on the Danish krone. We think Denmark’s Nationalbank would react with a combination of FX intervention and rate cuts, which would see it reduce its key policy rate to …
26th March 2019
The Spanish economy looks set to slow slightly as the effect of last year’s fiscal stimulus fades and weak growth elsewhere in the euro-zone takes a toll. That said, it will still probably be one of the region’s best performers this year. April’s general …
The Ifo Business Climate Index for March was a little better than expected, but it does not suggest that the German economy is out of the woods. … German Ifo Survey …
25th March 2019
This week delivered more data which suggest that the euro-zone economy grew at a meagre pace in Q1. And the Composite PMI is now at a level where the ECB has often loosened monetary policy in the past. … Euro-zone likely to have grown slowly again in …
22nd March 2019
In a week when the Fed called time on its tightening cycle, and further signs of weakness in euro-zone activity lent extra support to our view that the ECB will ultimately have to do more to ease policy, the Norges Bank stands out as a rare example of a …
We are now more hawkish than the consensus about the outlook for monetary policy in Norway this year. But we don’t expect the krone to keep strengthening, as we forecast that oil prices will fall. … Monetary policy likely to prevent weaker …
The drop back in the euro-zone Composite PMI for March comes as a disappointment to those hoping that the economy was beginning to turn a corner. And far from easing, as many had anticipated, the German manufacturing recession appears to be getting worse. …
Higher government bond yields in Italy have not fed through to increased interest rates on bank loans, and this seems unlikely to happen to any significant degree this year. Nevertheless, Italian banks have tightened their lending standards and loan …
21st March 2019
Today’s decision by the Norges Bank, to raise its policy rate from 0.75% to 1.00%, came as no surprise, but policymakers struck a more hawkish tone than expected. While the Bank is now likely to continue its tightening cycle in the second half of this …
As we expected, weak economic data and a recent pick-up in the króna contributed to the Central Bank of Iceland leaving interest rates on hold today. While it maintained a hawkish bias in its statement accompanying the decision, we now just expect one …
20th March 2019
Price pressures generally remained subdued in Switzerland and the Nordic economics in February. Core inflation is still stubbornly low in Switzerland and while it is higher in Sweden, it has now been stable in a narrow band since the start of last year. …
19th March 2019
A slow start to the year, combined with a deterioration in prospects for both export growth and household consumption, has prompted us to cut our forecast for economic growth in Germany to only 0.5% for this year. What’s more, we expect only a modest …
Euro-zone labour cost growth edged down in Q4 and, in contrast to the ECB, we don’t expect it to start rising again this year. This suggests that upward pressure on core inflation will remain muted. … Wage growth likely to stop rising this …
Supply-chain links between Germany and the manufacturing sectors of other large euro-zone countries are smaller than people tend to think. As long as the slowdown in Germany is contained primarily to the manufacturing sector, its direct impact on the rest …
15th March 2019
We have cut our forecast for Swiss GDP growth this year to a below-consensus 1.0%. This leaves us broadly in line with the government’s recently-revised forecast for 2019, but we think its forecast for GDP growth in 2020 is too optimistic. Meanwhile, the …
We don’t think the increase in euro-zone industrial production in January marks a turning point for the economy, given that the business surveys for February were weak and global demand is still sluggish. Indeed, with growth and inflation likely to remain …
The Norges Bank is all but certain to increase interest rates to 1.0% at its policy meeting next week. In contrast, we expect policymakers in Switzerland and Iceland to leave rates unchanged at their March meetings (also scheduled for next week). The next …
14th March 2019
