Latest news with #PeterLaca


Bloomberg
01-08-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Hot Czech Housing Market Poses an Inflation Problem
By Hi, this is Peter Laca in Prague. Welcome to our weekly newsletter on what's shaping economics and investments from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans. You can subscribe here. Home prices in the Czech Republic are rising at breakneck speed. While that might be great for real estate owners, it's a problem for a central bank wary of inflation and the swathe of the population struggling to get on the property ladder.


Mint
04-07-2025
- Mint
Czech Republic Recovering From Blackout After Grid Issue
(Bloomberg) -- The Czech Republic is slowly recovering from widespread power outages that halted public transport and businesses in several parts of the country after a fault on the transmission grid. Underground trains and some tram lines in Prague have resumed service after central and northern areas were without electricity on Friday morning, CTK news service reported. Electricity distributor PRE Group said it expected to reconnect supplies to affected parts of the city by around 4 p.m. local time. It's the second major outage in Europe this year following a voltage issue on Spain's power network in April that caused a blackout for more than 50 million people on the Iberian Peninsula. It's taken months for the investigations to be carried out into what happened in Spain and it still hasn't been decided who is to blame. A second event so soon after, raises serious questions for operators about how resilient Europe's power system is. The grid operator said it didn't know what had caused the incident, CTK reported. Police wrote on X there were no indications that a terrorist or cyber attack was behind the blackout. The Czech outage occurred in 8 out of the country's 44 main substations, of which five are now back online, CTK reported, citing national grid operator CEPS. Substations contain the equipment that connects the high voltage transmission grid with the distribution grid so it can carry power to homes and businesses. Prague's airport wasn't affected, nor were most banking systems or mobile phone networks, according to CTK. --With assistance from Peter Laca. More stories like this are available on


Bloomberg
07-02-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Central Banker Courts Controversy Over Bitcoin
By and Krystof Chamonikolas Save Hi, this is Peter Laca and Krystof Chamonikolas in Prague. Welcome to our weekly newsletter on what's shaping economics and investments from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans. You can subscribe here. Ales Michl is no stranger to a bit of controversy. Since becoming the Czech central bank governor two and a half years ago, he upended monetary policy in the middle of the worst inflation crisis for decades, chased profits in the stock market and expressed his desire to build a national 'gold treasure.'