Schaeuble Still Wants Grexit

As per The Wall Street Journal:

"Germany’s “powerful finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has long believed that Greek politicians aren’t capable of adapting Greece’s economy to the rigors of euro membership. Mr. Schäuble sees Greece as the weak link not only for Europe’s common currency, but also for Europe’s border controls against migration, and would welcome a new debate about a Greek exit this year, say people familiar with his thinking.”

This should come as no surprise to anyone. More to the point, the need for a resolution to the Greek question has been given added impetus by the migrant crisis. The position of the Schengen border is now being used as means to pressurise Greece to implement the agreed reforms.

The bottom line is that Greece must implement the reforms or, in effect, leave.

China Says "Ha" To Soros

George Soros in China’s crosshairs after predicting tough economic times ahead https://t.co/nSXFpP7Et7 pic.twitter.com/Q37KKpsaNc

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 27, 2016

Chinese Statistics Chief Investigated For Corruption

It would appear that the CEO of Total, when he said that no one believes Chinese statistics anymore, was right!

China's statistics chief gives presser ... China's government says statistics chief under investigation for corruption

— Martin Baccardax (@mdbaccardax) January 26, 2016

KPMG Audit of HBOS To Be Probed

Accounting experts seek independent probe into KPMG’s audit of HBOS - https://t.co/iLxuKeS2as https://t.co/nDzZX0CRiE via @FT

— Harriet Agnew (@HarrietAgnew) January 26, 2016

Greece Will Need Another Bailout

Unsurprisingly Greece, it seems, isn't fixed!

Klaus Regling, the Managing Director of the European Stability Mechanism, has said that he believes that the Greek government will soon be out of liquidity and Greece will need another midterm program with the participation of International Monetary Fund (ie another bailout).

He is quoted by Keep talking Greece:

“Greece will not need money tomorrow, but sooner or later there will be a money problem. 

Greece has debt service payments of nearly 4 billion euro in the first quarter [of 2016]. It is very likely that the country has a small primary deficit in the beginning of the year. Therefore, the government will need money to cover budget spending. “

That will not go down well in Germany.

Regarding Greek Debt Relief, it is bad news for the Greeks. Regling said that the Eurogroup was committed to Debt Relief after the Program Review is completed.

“Economically, the renegotiation of debt is not urgent because Greece has received a grace period of 10 years to repay the debt and the majority of the interest. Therefore, during the next 10 years, the service of the debt will not be increased.  

Consequently, a new debt relief would have an impact on payments, mainly after 2022.”

That will not go down well in Greece!

Total Calls China's Bluff

TOTAL CEO SAYS PEOPLE DON'T BELIEVE CHINESE STATISTICS ANYMORE ...that's the end of Total doing business in china

— MineForNothing (@minefornothing) January 22, 2016

When people see that the emperor is really naked, he has nowhere to hide.

Chinese Growth

#WEF16 Davos Live

Twitter Is Back Online

Twitter is now back online, for the moment.

Twitter's Global Crash

Those of you trying to access Twitter at the moment will be having problems, as Twitter is down globally.

The Guardian reports that Twitter has suffered a total outage.

Access to the service began failing over the web, mobile and its API (application programming interface, the system that applications use to speak to the Twitter service) at 8:20am GMT, with error messages warning the network is both “over capacity” and suffering an “internal error”.

The company initially confirmed the outage by, somehow, tweeting, from its @support account. We were unable to see the tweet, because Twitter was down.

Twitter emailed the text of the tweet to the Guardian, which read:

“Some users are currently experiencing problems accessing Twitter. We are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution.”

What's the betting that this is the work of a spotty teenager?

We can assume that its share price, which has already taken a battering, will fall further because of this.

Chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission "Resigns"

As Chinese stocks fall into the abyss, Xiao Gang the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission has offered to resign.

The smoking gun behind his resignation is his "brainchild" the circuit breaker, which in fact made a bad situation worse.

Reuters reports that Xiao's term does not formally expire until the end of 2018.

As to whether his resignation has yet been accepted depends, in part, on how worse things will become. The Chinese will need a fall guy to blame, and then a saviour to "rescue" the market if it ever hits bottom.

The EU Just Broke!

BREAKING - AUSTRIA TO TEMPORARILY SUSPEND SCHENGEN TREATY, CHANCELLOR FAYMANN SAYS https://t.co/6ev1XxqBId

— Gregor Peter (@L0gg0l) January 17, 2016

#economia50

I have been ranked 25th in the ‪#‎economia50‬ list of the top 50 most influential sources of finance news and information in social media.

My thanks to those who nominated me, and congratulations to those in the top 50.

Greece's Full On Review

https://t.co/GtQh1J7Dk8

— Efthimia Efthimiou (@EfiEfthimiou) January 13, 2016

Greece's Red Line On Pensions

Greece is in the headlines again, as Labour Minister George Katrougalos told The Wall Street Journal that Greece won't cut pensions despite demands by the Quadriga that they do so.

“For us it is a red line not to reduce pensions for a 12th consecutive time.”

The forthcoming talks with the Quadriga will be interesting.