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Euro falls below parity with the dollar

reuters.com

161–170 of 286 posts

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#161
post #59

The headline is "Gas crisis sends euro back below parity against dollar." Yet the article does not explain how a "gas crisis" leads to a weaker currency. What does lead to a weaker currency? On the EU side, central bank accommodation in the face of inflation ripping higher. Germany recently logged a 37% YoY annual increase in producer prices: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-economic-outlook... And the ECB…

> The headline is "Gas crisis sends euro back below parity against dollar."

> Yet the article does not explain how a "gas crisis" leads to a weaker currency.

It wasn’t clear (at least for me) why gas has such an impact on the economy as a whole because many articles concentrate the debate on the private households heating only.

But currently, most of the gas is used in the industrial sector (chemicals, power supply, food preparation), also for electricity generation and for producing materials such as ammonia, plastics, methanol and hydrogen.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#162
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do innovation, the problem is scaling up to the mass market. The EU is supposed to be a massive single market at scale to rival the US and China, and in some ways it is, but it still has a fragments cultural and legal landscape. The gravitational pull of the US on European dev talent is really hard to ignore. Every year the cream of European IT graduates move to the US because that's where the big companies a…

On what visa do these students move and work on in the US? The US visa process is extremely onerous

I believe it would be the H1-B.

Australia has the E-3 visa and Canada and Mexico have the TN visa.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#163
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not wasting money. They simply don't have the massive wealth of the North to jump off from or to cushion blows. On top of that a large quantity of what they do earn is spent on interest payments to the North.

I am from the south. We are wasting money and producing too little. We don't have the massive wealth of the north because we are culturally incapable of behaving some other way.

i'm sorry but this is plain ignorance. chalking up the performance of a collection of european economies to just "it's cultural" is being, at best, ignorant.

is the cultural problem an important factor? as someone who's also from the south, yes, i think it is. is it the only one (that matters)? no.

the eu (and the euro) works mainly to provide a cheap-access market for the stronger economies to a series of other countries. it's extremely difficult for poorer economies to compete with the stronger ones (due to regulations, size and how those two interplay). it's even more difficult for those economies to provide the same quality of life (i.e. higher salaries, same level of social care, etc.) when they themselves don't have full control of their economy/market.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please burst your bubble and consider that there is WAY more going on in the world than tech and software. The idea that you can point at something as complex as monetary economics and say "I know what's happening and I can trace it back to 15 years" is absurd and over-simplistic.

No big sector has seen similar level of YoY growth like tech. STOXX 600 is almost flat for last 20 years. While S and P 500 and Nasdaq rose 5-10 times over that period. While tech is not everything for the economy, it seems tech is everything for economy growth in past 30 or so years.

But stock growth and economic growth doesn't necessarily go hand in hand. Much of the stock market growth came from Central Bank policy.

Stock market growth is also something that isn't necessarily benefitting the country where a stock is listed. A european investor can buy Apple stock and participate the same was an an American one.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#166
post #33

Every article about the EUR/USD ratio talks about gas prices. But the current rise of the Dollar started 15 years ago. Over these 15 years, it has become more and more apparent, that software is eating the world. And the US keeps extending their lead in this area. I would not be surprised if that contributes to a long term trend in the EUR/USD ratio. (I'm sitting in a cafe in Germany, writing this text on laptop made…

No. It's a reflection of how financial markets value regional economies that use / back those currencies.

Over the past 15 years, Europe experienced:

* The Great Recession. * A Sovereign Debt Crisis which lasted well into 2014. * Increasing competition from new economies in Asia, mainly China. * Brexit. * The Pandemic. * And now an unprecedented energy crisis.

Also, the EU had expanded swiftly in the '00s allowing many of the former Eastern Bloc countries to join the union. Arguably, one does not simply integrate national economies in a single market zone under a single currency. It takes years to align towards common policies, while dealing with the many challenges posed by cultural and political differences.

Let's not forget that the initial raison d'etre of the EU - such as it was conceived by Schumann and Churchill - was to ensure sustained stability and peace across the continent in the wake of World War II. In a way, the EU has been instrumental in protecting the continent from worse consequences given the turbulent waters the bloc has navigated over the past 15 years. But it hasn't come out of all of that unscathed.

In order for the EU to recover, it needs to invest in infrastructure and people. A massive challenge which is encumbered by the significant debts most European nations have been shouldering thus far.

You, on the other hand, using American technology to connect with the world and assert that "software is eating it", well, that's - historically - just one expression of American hegemonic power after World War II. In regard to the EU that's expressed military - through NATO - and economically through countless trade agreements which have led to tight integration (see: https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-cou...). Proliferation of US technology across the continent is just one expression of that relationship between the EU bloc and the US.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#168
post #59

The headline is "Gas crisis sends euro back below parity against dollar." Yet the article does not explain how a "gas crisis" leads to a weaker currency. What does lead to a weaker currency? On the EU side, central bank accommodation in the face of inflation ripping higher. Germany recently logged a 37% YoY annual increase in producer prices: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-economic-outlook... And the ECB…

> Deeply negative real rates and little indication that the ECB has the stomach for any substantive action.

You can't have positive real rates AND pump up the real estate bubble.

There are two parts to growth - population and actual growth.

The majority of "actual" GDP growth for the last 20 years in the West has been people paying more money (inflation adjusted) for the same land.

Why? Because you could! Interest only went lower.

Positive real yields mean people need to actually work instead of speculate on real estate. Most people would rather just speculate on real estate. It's so much easier.

Unfortunately, it's a zero sum game. The losers are renters.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#169
post #141
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand though, the Eurozone population pretty much equals that of the US, and surely there are a bit underdeveloped US states compared to the overdeveloped ones, right? So why is the EU bad idea and the US is not?

Because US is a transfer union. In EU you have a lot of transfer unions within individual states (eg. East-West germany, North-south italy). When a greek moves to germany for work, the money does not flow between the two countries

If you mean transfer as regards banking, the whole EU (plus EFTA and the UK) are covered by the Single Euro Payments Area, within which all bank transfers must be subject to the same rules and fees as national ones (notwithstanding currency exchange fees if applicable).

If you mean transfer in a more abstract fiscal sense, not even individual EU states themselves are homogeneous regarding their internal fiscal policies. Some are federal, such as Germany, and some are highly centralised, such as France. Then you have the case of Spain where all 17 autonomous communities (≈pseudofederal states) have a small leeway regarding income tax and must follow the baseline central policy, but two regions in particular—the Basque Country and Navarre—have fully devolved powers regarding taxation due to "fueros", i.e. historical rights.

Re: Euro falls below parity with the dollar

#170
Germany and Russia playing a Kindergarten war with Nordstream. Putin throttles Nordstream-1 and says he'd supply via Nordstream-2. Germany refuses to open Nordstream-2.

For Germany, apparently gas flowing through Nordstream-1 is ideologically pure, but gas flowing through Nordstream-2 is evil.

The West will continue to celebrate its hawkish Ukraine policies as a success. Looks like Taiwan will be the next success.

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