contagion

The scale of the Italian challenge is far greater than Greece's as Italy's sovereign debt is bigger than Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal's put together. Greece has, prior to the coming haircuts, about 350 bln euros of debt. Italy has to…

If you are still inclined to give Greece the benefit of the doubt, I suggest you study the works of Egan-Jones, a credit rating company located in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Contrary to most other rating companies, Egan-Jones does not receive…

So what is the trade? If Italy continues to blow out and a big bazooka EFSF bailout fund is not attainable, the EU will be faced with certain death or massive ECB bond purchases. We think they will choose the later, which makes the Euro a…

Events continue to spiral beyond the control of European policy-makers. With so much time and effort being put into Greece, the troika now finds itself facing a much bigger problem: Italy. While it has been difficult to remain committed…

This chart from Credit Market Analysis shows the sovereign bonds which had the greatest percentage increase in their default probability over a 5-year horizon.

Bonds in Italy are marching higher amid rumours of ECB intervention. Yesterday they breached 6.15%. Now they are above 6.30% and going higher still. Belgium and Spain have also been infected with Greek referendum contagion.

Are these haircuts on Greek debt really such a good idea? Or are they really just a stopgap that will make things all the worse in the long-run? Sure, Mr. Market seems to think they’re fantastic. But then, Mr. Market has always been…

Here are a few charts from the credit default swaps market based on 5-year CDS. Here’s what I see.

The Bloomberg interview with David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College last week captures the essence of the European sovereign debt crisis. The essence of what Dr. Blanchflower says is this: European policymakers are leading from the rear…

Former ECB chief economist Otmar Issing recently spoke to German weekly Stern in an interview now published online. His view is that the appropriate strategy for dealing with Greece is to force a hard restructuring and a large writedown of…