What's Coming Up this Week? The World Economic Forum and ECB News

This week will have busy. The World Economic Forum (WEF) meets in Davos. This article in BRICSPOST talks about how BRICS leaders will meet on the sidelines to continue progress on their new development bank. The ECB is expected to finally announce a massive new QE program for the EU. Investors are expecting that; so anything different might well cause another shock to markets.

This week will also lead up to the election in Greece where some believe a government more inclined to exit the EU and the Euro currency may be voted in. Sources we follow here though, think that is unlikely. We'll see what happens.

Without a doubt though, the Euro took a beating last week versus the Swiss franc and markets will be watching closely to see what happens there this week with the Euro. Especially if the ECB does announce a huge QE program.

Below are some quotes from the BRICSPOST article about the World Economic Forum. We will check in on that later this week to see if anything significant emerges from that. Usually not much happens, but this week might be different with all the market volatility going on.
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From the BRICSPOST:

"The five Finance Ministers of BRICS will meet on the sidelines of the WEF summit next week in Davos where they will discuss preparations on establishing the newly-launched$100 billion BRICS Bank."

"Finance Ministers from South Africa Nhlanhla Nene, India’s Arun Jaitley, Brazil’s Joaquim Levy, China’s Lou Jiwei will discuss individual ratification of the Bank and a $100 billion currency exchange reserve by their respective parliaments and progress on naming the first president of the Bank before the 7^thBRICS Summit in Russia this summer."

"A group of more than 2500 politicians, business leaders and academics are gathering to discuss the state of global economy for five days, beginning next week at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in the Swiss ski resort of Davos."

"Meeting against the backdrop of the world economy facing multiple challenges, the 45th edition of the WEF meet would discuss ‘The New Global Context’ from January 21-24."

"There would be wide ranging discussions at the WEF on ten global challenges, including on environment and resource scarcity, monetary policy, the future of the internet, food security and agriculture."
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My added comments:

The WEF did a survey with high level participants around the world. The results of that study are shown on their web site here. Below are the top five risks these high level officials listed for 2015.   Guess what?   All of them are the same risks we cover here on the blog.

1- Fiscal crisis in key economies

2- Failure of major financial mechanisms (think derivatives) or institutions (too big to fail)

3- Liquidity crises

4- Oil price shock to the global economy

5- Profound political and social instability

So we are covering the same risks that officials from around the world are concerned about