International Monetary Fund

Greek lawmakers approved the heavily indebted country's budget for 2019 late Tuesday, the first since Greece exited an eight-year bailout program.

The budget lawmakers passed with a 154-143 vote still is heavy on austerity measures to ensure Greece registers a hefty surplus, in compliance with its debt relief deal with international creditors.

In August 2018, Greece exited the economic programs with the European partner countries, the European Commission, European Stability Mechanism, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (the latter had already opted out). This was seen as an occasion for celebration.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel retains the top spot on the list for the 8th year in a row. While she recently stepped down as head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and is not running for reelection in 2021, her leadership of Europe's largest economy makes her the defacto female leader of the free world.

Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) officials are increasing pressure on local banks to expand their auctions of debtors' properties to include main residences valued at less than 100,000 euros.

The state budget to be submitted in Parliament on Wednesday, after the government got the nod from Brussels, will be the first in three years that will not include a primary surplus overrun, as that has already been "spent" on preserving the level of "old" pensions - i.e. those issued before May 2016.

This year "Serbia recorded the fastest growth in the last ten years despite adverse external conditions," Jovananovic told a presentation of the Central Bank's Inflation Report on Friday in Belgrade.

In the past three quarters GDP growth reached 4.5 percent y-o-y, he added.

The International Monetary Fund is not changing its forecasts for a recovery in Saudi Arabia's economy in response to the furore over the death of dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a senior IMF official said.

The European Commission lowered its forecast for the growth of the Bulgarian economy this year from 3.8%, as expected in the spring, to 3.5%. The explanation is the delay in exports. The forecast of the International Monetary Fund in October is that the growth for the year is 3.6%, as is the expectation of the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance, reports Dnevnik. 

A lot has changed in Greek-German relations since the time when the greatest source of friction between the two countries was the matter of whether Greece would choose the Eurofighter as the fourth-generation jet for the Hellenic Air Force.

If Greece was an enterprise it would have probably shut down already, given its negative net position.