Its Not (Eur)over Til The Fat Lady Sings

Image source:

What's going on?

Its back to school for Europe as eurozone countries start submitting their budgets for the year to the European Commission the European Unions (EU) financial headmaster. All eyes are on Greece and Italy both up to their eyeballs in debt and under pressure to deliver.

What does this mean?

In the eurozone, countries have to share their budgets with the European Commission to make sure they adhere to the EUs requirements like a governments deficit (i.e. the amount of money it spends over and above what it earns) being under 3% of the size of a countrys economy and its debt being below 60% of an economys size (so countries dont go bankrupt). Greece and Italy have the most debt in Europe well over the EUs targets.


Although its through the other side of its bailout program, Greeces economy is still in the doldrums. Its economy might have finally started to grow but there are still icky times ahead. It has to cut pensions and increase taxes to hit its own target of having excess cash left in the budget coffers.

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: Despite the bumpy ride, Europes doing okay.


Turkeys currency woes, Italy and Greeces debt issues, and the political uncertainty in France, Italy and Spain have kept investors nervous and likely encouraged them to move money to safe havens like US government bonds and the Japanese yen. However, recent data shows Europes still growing (danke, Germany).



For markets: The future looks rosier.


After Octobers budget submissions, the EU will be working hard to give countries proposals a yay or nay in November. If all goes well, the European Central Banks plan to end its program of buying government bonds to stimulate economic growth (a.k.a. quantitative easing) and raising interest rates in 2019 will be hot to trot.

Originally posted as part of the Finimize daily email.

The top 2 financial news stories in 3 minutes. Join over one million Finimizers

Read next

An Expensive Experiment

Sign up to Finimize

Get the two most important global financial news stories each day. Sent at midnight UK time.

Get started with one email a day

The top financial news stories in 3 minutes.