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Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi's coalition government risked collapse on Thursday after the 5-Star Movement, one of its members, failed to support a parliamentary confidence vote including measures to offset the cost of living crisis.The confidence vote has become a focal point for tensions within Draghi's broad coalition as its parties prepare to fight each other in a national election due by early 2023.The risks of a collapse of a Draghi government rippled through financial markets where Italian bond yields rose sharply, indicating investors demanding a higher premium to hold its debt, and shares fell.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed the situation in Afghanistan with Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi on the eve of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s planned visit to Moscow. The latest developments in Kabul were one of the major points of a phone conversation between Putin and Macron, the Kremlin said in a statement on Thursday. The two leaders agreed it was important to provide security to the Afghans and focus on the pressing humanitarian issues. Russia and France said they were ready to cooperate, including within the UN Security Council and G20 group, to contribute to the peace and stability...

The head of the European Central Bank warned that global friction over trade — such as U.S. threats to impose more tariffs — is holding back the economy as he underlined the bank’s readiness to deploy more stimulus if needed. Mario Draghi said Wednesday that an improving jobs market and rising wages were helping the economy in the 19 countries that use the euro but uncertainties like trade disputes and Brexit are hurting it. “Global headwinds continue to weigh on euro area growth,” he told a news conference after the central bank kept its key interest rates and policy promises...

The spread of illiberal ideology is threatening the euro, but it is an illusion that leaving it would offer an easier path, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Saturday. Warning that a half-finished monetary union could be at risk in the next crisis, Draghi made the case for sweeping changes in how the currency bloc operates and spreads around financial risk. “The fascination with illiberal prescriptions and regimes is spreading; we are seeing little steps back in history,” Draghi said in Pisa, Italy. “Only by continuing to make progress, freeing up individual energies but also fostering social equity,...

Europe’s top monetary official criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as a “dangerous” unilateral move. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said that the “immediate spillover of the trade measures … is not going to be big.” But he said such disputes should be worked out among trade partners, not decided by measures initiated from one side. “Whatever convictions one has about trade … we are convinced that disputes should be discussed and resolved in a multilateral framework, that unilateral decisions are dangerous.” “There is a certain worry or...

Large parts of the eurozone are slipping deeper into a deflationary trap despite negative interest rates and one trillion euros of quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, leaving the currency bloc with no safety buffer when the next global recession hits. The ECB is close to exhausting its ammunition and appears increasingly powerless to do more under the legal constraints of its mandate. It has downgraded its growth forecast for the next two years, citing the uncertainties of Brexit, and admitted that it has little chance of meeting its 2pc inflation target this decade, insisting that it is now...

As Draghi said in a speech to Asian government officials and business leaders on Monday, there’s still a great deal more that can be done to punish Europe’s hordes of savers, the central banker’s scapegoat du jour for all that ails Europe’s debt-laden economy. The low or negative interest rates plaguing Europe are a symptom of a much bigger problem, he said: the compression of investment returns due to a massive global savings glut. To our great amazement, it’s this purported glut — and not his monetary policies — that lies behind the historic decline in interest rates. Inevitably, whenever...

Just what the market had hoped would not happen... *ECB SAYS IT LIFTS WAIVER ON GREEK GOVERNMENT DEBT AS COLLATERAL *ECB SAYS IT CAN'T ASSUME SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF GREECE REVIEW What this means simply is that since Greek banks are now unable to pledge Greek bonds as collateral and fund themselves, and liquidity is about to evaporate, the ECB has just given a green light for Greek bank runs... and all the worst parts of the bible (or merely a negotiating move to let Greece see just what kind of chaos this will create). And now finally, after many years...

The eurozone experienced negative inflation for the second month in a row, according to a flash estimate published today (30 January) by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. Inflation is expected to be at −0.6%, with consumer prices falling further than economists had forecast. The fall represents the biggest decline in prices in the history of the euro. […] The drop was driven by the fall in energy prices (−8.9%, compared with −6.3% in December). […] The deflationary spiral comes as Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), is trying to tackle deflation with a policy of...

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank said on Thursday that it would begin buying hundreds of billions of euros worth of government bonds in an ambitious — though some say belated — attempt to prevent the eurozone from becoming trapped in long-term economic stagnation. The bank’s president, Mario Draghi, said the central bank would begin buying bonds worth 60 billion euros, or about $69.7 billion, a month. That is more spending than the €50 billion a month that many analysts had been expecting. The long-awaited program, known as quantitative easing, comes after inflation in the 19 countries of the eurozone...

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi announced the launch of an open-ended, expanded monthly 60 billion euro ($70 billion) private and public bond-buying program on Thursday. The long-anticipated introduction of euro zone government bond purchases will bring the ECB's buying program into line with the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE). The program will be open-ended, lasting until at least 2016, Draghi told reporters at his regular media conference on Thursday, and will start in March this year. The hope is that it will boost the region's painfully low inflation rate, which came in at an annual minus 0.2...

DRAGHI: Inflation Must Rise Without Delay Mike Bird   European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi is speaking today at a banking conference in Frankfurt, and he has one central message: we have to bring inflation back up, now. It’s one of Draghi’s most forthright speeches, with one exceptional snippet: “It is essential to bring back inflation to target and without delay.” Draghi added: “We have to be very watchful that low inflation does not start percolating through the economy in ways that further worsen the economic situation.” You can take a look at the full text of the speech...

Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog,Over the past several decades, people around the world have become so brainwashed that few people really give much thought anymore to the safety of their currency.It’s not something people really understand... there’s apparently some Wizard of Oz type figure at the top of the hill pulling all the levers of the monetary system. And we just trust them to be good guys.This is partially true. Today’s financial system is dominated by central bankers who have been awarded nearly dictatorial control of global money supply.In allowing them to set interest rates, they...

Today, ECB President Mario Draghi said that the European Central Bank (ECB) will keep its main interest rate on hold at a record low 0.5 percent on Thursday, saying that improved economic data in May confirmed its forecast of a gradual recovery from prolonged recession later this year. Draghi sees GDP growth at -0.6%. Oh that tepid news, European sovereign yields rose, some by over 20 basis points. Draghi-fly effect? While US Treasury markets remain relatively quiet today, mortgage rates continue to rise, puttingoa chink in the housing recovery armor. Here is a chart of Freddie Mac’ loan commitment rate...

When Mario Draghi (now ECB President), had oversight of the Italian bank system as Bank of Italy Governor, the Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena (Italy's third largest bank) hid information on the derivatives transactions between 2006 and 2009. This information is just now out, and shares of the bank have plunged 22% in a few days. Mario Draghi ought to be under fire, but he says it's a "Matter for the Italian Authorities". The Mish translation is "It's a Matter for the Italian Authorities, to Sweep Under the Rug". With that backdrop, let's take a look at the...

Judging by the very favorable market reaction to Mario Draghi's announcement in July 2012 that the ECB would do whatever it took to save the euro, one could be forgiven for thinking that the European debt crisis has now finally been resolved. However, European policymakers would be making a grave mistake if they were to allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by the market's relative calm. Since once again the ECB is only addressing the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the crisis. And it is only a matter of time before Europe's weak...

Germany’s director at the European Central Bank has thrown his weight behind mass purchases of Spanish and Italian debt to prevent the disintegration of the euro, marking a crucial turning point in the eurozone debt crisis. “A currency can only be stable if its future existence is not in doubt,” said Jörg Asmussen, the powerful German member of the ECB’s executive board. He signalled full backing for the bond rescue plan of ECB chief Mario Draghi, brushing aside warnings from the German Bundesbank that large-scale purchases would amount to debt monetisation and a back-door fiscal rescue of insolvent states in...

Mario Draghi - 2002-2005: Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs International In other words, Draghi was a key executive at Goldman at precisely the time when none other than Goldman Sachs was hired to create and facilitate the active hiding of the true extent of the Greek debt problem. In yet other words: could it be that none other than the head of the European Central Bank is refusing to cooperate with a Bloomberg FOIA, something even the US Federal Reserve ultimately succumbed to which led the revelation that the Fed had handed out trillions in secret loans...