Overview of the previous week's key economic events

Note: This section contains information in English only.
Source: Dukascopy Bank SA
The previous week brought into light shaky political situation in Europe. French President ordered his Prime Minister Manuel Valls to form a new government as a response to the recent comments of outgoing Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg, who criticized France's economic direction as well as Germany's economic policies of austerity measures, which dragged France and Europe into the worst economic crisis since the 1929 Depression. Meanwhile, more than 130 businesses spoke out against Scotland's independence, marking the biggest intervention by the U.K. business community into the referendum debate thus far. These political events come as the ECB is weighing to embark on QE to revive the growth in the 18-nation bloc and prevent the economy from falling into deflationary spiral, as inflation cooled further to 0.3%.
The world's number one economy continues to surprise markets and economists. Thus, the U.S Commerce Department said that the U.S economy expanded faster than first thought, growing by 4.2% in the second quarter and beating the government's initial reading of 4%, following a 2.1% contraction in a period before. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office expects the U.S. economy to grow by just 1.5% in the whole 2014, impaired by a weak performance during the first three months of the year. The new economic forecast was considerably more gloomy than the Obama administration's, which predicted last month that the economy would grow by 2.6% this year even though it contracted by an annual rate of 2.1% in the first quarter.
EUR/USD continues to fluctuate within a tight range this week—between 1.32 and 1.3150. And even though the daily and weekly studies are mostly pointing South right now, there is a good chance the currency pair is going to re-visit the resistance at 1.33 before launching an attack on the 2013 Sep low at 1.31. If this support is broken, the Euro will be expected to set course towards 1.2750, which is the last year's trough.
While the Japanese economy has been faltering recently, inflation is stalling and economic outlook has dimmed further, analysts weigh whether the Bank of Japan will ease monetary policy this year or wait until 2015 to kick-start growth. Economists believe that the central bank will fail to reach the desired 2% inflation goal before April, and thus the BoJ will be forced to make the policy even more accommodative. The central bank cut its growth outlook for this fiscal year to 1.0% and expect the economy to expand at the 1.5% pace next year.

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Mon, 01 Sep 2014 06:56:41 GMT

Euro zone unemployment too high, inflation too low

The latest Eurostat data release reported no change in unemployment rate across 18-nation Euro bloc in comparison with the previous month, therefore staying at 11.5% mark, with 18.4 million jobless people.

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 09:20:05 GMT

Canada Q2 current account deficit shrinks

Canada's current account deficit narrowed slightly in the June quarter to register the smallest gap in more than two years as exports rose to record dollar value and foreign investment remained strong.

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