There was a hard hitting speech from
the Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt at a plenary session of the European Parliament
yesterday. You can see the video of it on YouTube by clicking here:
Verhofstadt, who is a former Prime
Minister of Belgium, brought some home truths to the Greek Prime Minister and
indeed to the Greek nation. He was particularly scathing of the privileges
enjoyed by Greek politicians, shipowners, the military, the Greek islands and even
the Greek Orthodox Church.
His final words were to the point.
Addressing the Greek Prime Minister, he said:
“How do you want to be remembered? As
an electoral accident who made its people poorer? Or as a real revolutionary
reformer. Show that you are a leader and not a false prophet”.
Definitely worth a look.
FOMC
minutes show little appetite for rate rises
The minutes of the June FOMC meeting,
released last evening, show that most of the members of the Fed are very
cautious about raising core interest rates. Even at the meeting conclusion, on
June 17th, they were worried about the Greek situation, and about China, both
of which have the potential to damage the global economy. This is calculated to
impact negatively on the US.
If they were concerned on June 17th,
they must be really worried now, given all that has happened, or not happened,
in both of those economic theatres in the meantime. Yet another development
since then has been a significant fall in the price of oil, which would be
expected to lower inflation expectations in the US, which also argues for further
caution in raising rates.
All-in-all, there is now every
indication that US rates will not move at all in 2015.
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