Romania’s economy seems to be good shape at the moment. General business-activity is picking up and real-estate is coming back. In plus, public-sector wage hikes, several tax cuts, low interest rates and cheap fuel prices are currently boosting consume – whether it’s on new cars or at Carrefour. Sales of the French retailer in Romania rose by 13.6% in 2015. …

When You Hack Your Central Bank   Over a weekend at the beginning of February 2016, unknown computer-hackers managed to get access to the internal systems of ‘Bangladesh Bank’, the central bank and monetary authority of the South Asian country.   The cyber-attack of the bank’s headquaters in the country’s capital Dhaka was planned and executed quite professionally. The perpetrators …

  “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – Albert Einstein A few remarks to the European Central Bank’s strategy and the impact for you as an investor or saver The 10th of March 2016 could be the date in (financial) history, when the once almighty and highly respected institutions of …

In financial markets, a high gold/oil ratio indicates ‘problems ahead’ The prices of gold and oil usually rise and fall in sync. Conventional wisdom is that rising oil prices push up inflation, thereby increasing demand for gold as a hedge and vice versa. Since 1980, the median gold/oil-ratio (that’s how many barrels of oil can be bought with one ounce …

The dangerous interest-experiment by the European Central Bank This week, the area of negative interest rates in Europe was remarkably widened. While investors were just getting used to negative yields for government-bonds, on Tuesday german bank ‘Berlin Hyp’ set a new landmark. The relatively small bank became the first ever non-state borrower who issued an EUR-denominated debt (of 500 million …

This week, China reported its largest monthly drop in exported goods since May 2009. China’s ‘February-2016-trade performance’ was far worse than economists had expected, with exports falling 25.4% reflecting the current downturn in global demand for chinese products. Although this figure looks pretty bad, one has to consider the week-long Chinese new year holidays – with factories closed for seven …

Good food, friendly people, a vibrant nightlife, a very busy and stressful traffic with daily gridlocks and beeping car drivers – well, this may sound like Bucharest, but I’m talking about Tel Aviv, Israel. Besides all similarities between Bucharest and Tel Aviv, there are considerable differences. And I don’t talk about geographics like the beautiful 14 km-shoreline along the Mediterranean Sea …

Two unknown giants are leading the ranking If the names ‘Vitol’ and ‘Trafigura’ are unfamiliar to you, then your are in good company. Vitol and Trafigura Beheer are rarely mentioned in the general news, although they are leading the ranking of the 13 largest privately held companies in Europe by revenue: Vitol Holding B.V. – Revenue: 270 billion USD The …

How ‘Millennials’ are shaping and changing the global economy For at the least a century now, the vast majority of economic trends and our consumer-behavior have their roots in the US. Front and center was the rise of the automobile culture – that started when cars became affordable to average workers thanks to Henry Ford’s persistence (see chapter 41) – …

US-producer’s message to Opec: ‘Above 40 – we are back!’ Over the last few days, the price for Brent-crude climbed regularly. On March 1st, 2016, it reached a new year-high of over 37 USD/barrel, that’s quite a rise from the January-lows of 29 USD. Could this be the beginning of a rebound of oil to price-levels from a year ago, …