Median household disposable income in the UK was £29,400 at the end of the financial year 2019, up 1.4% or £400 compared to the end of the financial year 2018, after accounting for inflation.
Eurozone and European Union Q2 2019 growth slows to just to 0.2% (QoQ); Quarterly growth slowest in 5 years
Seasonally adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by 0.2% in both the Eurozone (EA19) and the European Union (EU28) during Q2 2019, compared with Q1 2019, according to a preliminary estimate published by Eurostat. Quarterly growth is now slowest in 5 years.
U.S. Q2 2019 GDP growth estimated at 2.1% as personal consumption soars
Real gross domestic product (GDP) for the United States increased at an annual rate of 2.1% in the Q2 2019 (vs 3.1% in Q1 2019), according to the advance estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
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Eurozone government debt to GDP at 86% and European Union government debt to GDP at 81%; Government debt to GDP soars for Cyprus and Greece
Government debt to GDP for the Eurozone stood at 85.9% at the end of Q1 2019 (as against 87.1% at the end of Q1 2018). For the European Union, the number was 80.7% (as against 81.6% at the end of Q1 2018).
The Federal Reserve has done the right thing by reducing its balance sheet and increasing interest rates to support a thriving economy, why reverse this now?
The Federal Reserve has unwound its balance sheet by 12% over the past year and reduced it to $3.81 trillion (from a peak of $4.5 trillion in 2017).
It has also increased interest rates since from 0.25% (range of 0% to 0.25%) in 2016 to 2.5% (range of 2.25% to 2.5%) now.
38 countries currently have interest rates at an all-time low
A decade on from the financial crisis, 38 countries currently have interest rates at an all-time low. Ultra-low interest rates seem to be the tool of choice for Central Banks to help stimulate economies globally. But seriously, this a decade on from the financial crisis? Did the world really recover from the financial crisis? Probably not …
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The European Central Bank or ECB balance sheet is 4.7 trillion Euros or over 40% of Eurozone GDP (July 2019 edition)
Apparently, the European Central Bank (ECB) balance sheet was meant to shrink significantly in 2019. It has shrunk just 0.5% in 2019 until July 5th (as against 5% for the Federal Reserve in the same period).
At 4.67 trillion Euros (or around 41% of Euro area or Eurozone GDP), it doesn’t look like things are going to change quickly.
Money supply growth for the U.S. has slowed and it isn’t a good sign
Money supply is simply the total amount of money in circulation in a country. For the U.S. there are several components of the money supply: M1, M2, and MZM (M3 is no longer tracked by the Federal Reserve); these components are arranged on a spectrum of narrowest to broadest.
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Germany still accounts for most of the current account surplus of the European Union
The seasonally adjusted current account of the balance of payments for the European Union was a surplus of €40.5billion or 1% of GDP in the first quarter (Q1) of 2019, up from a surplus of €40.2billion or 1.0% of GDP in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2018 and down from a surplus of €58.3billion or 1.5% of GDP in the first quarter (Q1) of 2018, according to estimates released by Eurostat.
Australia’s Central Bank cuts interest rates again to an all-time low of 1%
Australia’s Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) cut its benchmark cash rate by 25 basis points to an all-time low of 1%. This following a cut of 25 basis points in June. This is the first time since 2012 that the RBA has delivered back-to-back interest rate cuts.
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