2011

Many observers are confused. They cry for the ECB to "man up" and "do what it is supposed to do" and be the lender of last resort. It does have that function for banks, not for sovereigns. The lender of last resort to sovereigns is the…

Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Chief Executive Officer Mohamed A. El-Erian told Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu and Dominic Chu this morning that U.S. economic conditions are “terrifying” as the nation struggles to recover from recession.…

I have been reading a lot of Western European and Spanish-language press recently. These articles give me a good sense of what the local press is thinking about the euro crisis (and the developing situation in Argentina) in addition to what…

This will surprise many. Der Spiegel reports that Germany’s fiscal management is not as “exemplary” as most perceive.

The GAO says that issues with the TARP are not “material” and chooses instead to go with the less damning term of “significant”. A three-year record of getting it wrong would seem to suggest otherwise. We get that the $470 billion TARP was…

Bank borrowing from the ECB reach a new high for the year at today's 7-day repo operation. Banks borrowed 247.17 bln euros for a week at 1.25% fixed rate. The key question is what are banks doing with those euros. The answer is that…

A unilateral exit would be a devastating event for Italy and the euro zone. Inflation would be high but bank and national solvency issues would recede. If the exit were done under these nationalistic pre-conditions of redomination, most of…

Downgrade watch begins as debt panel concedes defeat - The Hill's On The Money Credit rating agencies reiterated Monday that the U.S. is at risk of a downgrade following the announcement that the supercommittee has failed.…

Without a credible intervention this process almost always ends the same way. There is in my opinion a very high probability that within weeks, or months at most, Greece will be forced to freeze bank deposits as a prelude to leaving the…

The US dollar is trading with a softer bias in what largely appears to be a consolidation. The euro held support near $1.34, sterling near $1.56 and Aussie near $0.9800. The news stream is light and corrective forces are seen in equities,…