Economy

What is becoming clearer to almost everyone is that this is now no longer simply a Euro periphery sovereign debt crisis. It has become a full blown crisis of confidence in the Euro itself.

An in-depth (and cynical) look at the current political environment in America, from the Occupy Wall Street protesters to the President's reaction to the Republican Primary via Omid Malekan, creator of the Quantitative Easing Explained and…

The rumour mill is grinding particularly fast at the moment. Germany and France seem to be working on the famous nuclear solution, Spain plays tough on outsiders, the IMF is rumoured to be preparing an aid package for Italy not to mention…

Almost exactly one year ago I wrote the following: In practice, you could have sovereigns conduct a ‘sovereign debt swap’ whereby the ECB buys an agreed-upon portion of the existing debt from the sovereigns and then uses these funds…

So here we are, with the ECB demanding deflationary austerity from the member nations in return for the limited bond buying that has been sustaining some semblance of national government solvency, not seeming to realize it can’t inflate…

I have already highlighted some of the issues being reported on Eurobonds. But I should point out that I believe the Germans are already considering Eurobonds despite official denials. The other major story is contagion. Poland’s currency…

Neither the current governing coalition nor the German populace is anywhere close to getting where Schröder is. The most Germany will deliver is what’s on the table now: EU fiscal oversight with penalties and potentially expulsion for…

The weak November HSBC PMI for China has added to market bearishness. This is not the official PMI but we do note that while the HSBC measure has been below 50 for 4 of the 5 past months, the official PMI has yet to fall below 50, but it…

Ted Forstmann was a sterling example in a tarnished field.

Here is the second version of this foreign news links post that I am starting. The feedback yesterday was good. You all said it makes sense to see what the press in country are saying in Europe since that is the locus of the sovereign debt…