Headlines

The eurozone economy is healing nicely but inflation remains weak — good news for consumers in the short run but a sign of underlying weakness in wages and companies' pricing power. That's the take-away from economic reports released Monday that showed while the unemployment rate in the 19-country currency union fell to its lowest in eight years, price increases are modest, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story.

European Union states are considering measures which would allow them to temporarily stop people withdrawing money from their accounts to prevent bank runs, an EU document reviewed by Reuters revealed. The move is aimed at helping rescue lenders that are deemed failing or likely to fail, but critics say it could hit confidence and might even hasten withdrawals at the first rumors of a bank being in trouble, Reuters reported.

Italy took the final steps to revive Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, setting the price for its portion of the aid package needed to keep the world’s oldest bank in business. The government will pay 6.49 euros per share as part of the bank’s capital raising, according to a statement from the lender, Bloomberg News reported. Italy earlier this week published two decrees, setting terms for a so-called precautionary recapitalization of the bank, according to the statement. The Siena-based lender needs state support to survive, even though regulators have declared it solvent.

In China, taxi rides aren’t just a form of transportation any more. They’ve also become useful for bond buyers doing due diligence. Dining out at restaurants is also helpful. It’s all part of a boom in field trips by market participants coming to grips with a new reality in China: the potential for bond defaults. After decades when authorities effectively provided blanket assistance to keep troubled companies from going under, the Communist leadership’s focus on shuttering unproductive assets has upended the market, Bloomberg News reported.

It seems everyone has a set of demands for what should happen to Venezuela. For the most part, from the streets of Caracas to the White House, these are loud but rather vague talking points. People in the bond market, though, have begun to put together a plan for reassembling the country’s economy and finances, the Financial Times reported. Of course it would be better if Venezuelans were able to agree their own coherent plan, but that is not happening right now.

Ireland’s central bank has increased its economic growth forecasts by almost a third, as growing strength in the rest of the eurozone helps to offset its expectations of a negative impact from Brexit, the Financial Times reported. In a quarterly update released on Friday, the Central Bank of Ireland said it now expects gross domestic product to increase by 4.5 per cent this year, compared to previous estimates of 3.5 per cent. Growth is expected to slow to 3.6 per cent in 2018, but that is still better than its earlier prediction of 3.2 per cent growth.

After a brief period where inflation watching became fun in the eurozone, consumer price growth has held broadly steady across three of the bloc’s four biggest economies in July. Harmonized annual inflation in Germany was stable at 1.5 per cent this month, 0.7 per cent in France, and inched up to 1.7 per cent from 1.6 per cent in Spain, the Financial Times reported.

The French government has decided to nationalise the STX France shipyard in an ownership standoff with Italy, Le Monde newspaper reported on Thursday. The Economy Ministry would not comment on the report when asked by Reuters, but said it would hold a news conference on the subject at 3:00 pm (1300 GMT). Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire had given the Italians until Thursday to accept an offer for 50/50 ownership of the shipyard, brandishing the threat of a temporary nationalisation to buy time to find another solution if the offer were rebuffed, Reuters reported.

Italian banks should take additional measures to materially reduce their pile of soured debt and improve efficiency, according to a report from the International Monetary Fund, Bloomberg News reported. “Banks’ non-performing loan reduction and restructuring strategies should be ambitious, and credible, aided by supervisory assessments,” the Washington-based IMF said Thursday after its annual review of the country’s economy and finances.

Noble Group Ltd.’s crisis escalated as Moody’s Investors Service Inc. flagged an elevated risk of default after the embattled Hong Kong-based commodity trader warned of a quarterly loss of as much as $1.8 billion and announced more asset sales, Bloomberg News reported. “The further expected deterioration in Noble’s financial results in the second quarter of 2017 suggests that default risk will remain elevated,” Gloria Tsuen, a Moody’s vice president and senior analyst, said in a statement as the company’s shares tanked in Singapore.