currencies

Highlights The US dollar was stronger vs. the majors, as the euro was unable to hang on to its recent gains above 1.24.  Euro selling accelerated after news of German regulator BaFin banning some short sales (see below).  Euro…

Obviously, the FT's Martin Wolf has been listening to the same preacher I have because he is singing my song.  In today's FT he writes about the recent Beggar-my-neighbour eurozone policy and how the policy response in Europe has…

Highlights The euro has recovered from yday’s low, but the risk remains strongly tilted to the downside and so this is a good selling opportunity (see below). The EU Fin. ministers have disbursed the first tranche of loans to Greece…

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters in Brussels today (Monday) that getting their deficits down was “the only task that everyone has to fulfill for himself and for the common good.” Meanwhile, over in New York, Paul…

This is the title of a recent article in the French Les Echos. And this goes directly to my recent commentaries about competitive currency devaluations as a potential course of action going forward. It seems likely that the depreciation of…

Highlights Euro weakness intensifies as we start the week, risk-off trades dominate and the US dollar and the yen are the winners in the current context, still. There was no fresh ‘bad news’ from the EZ, but sentiment is extremely poor,…

Greece fiddled its books and ran a deficit in good times and bad.  But, it is rubbish to paint all of the debtor nations in Euroland now in crisis with the same brush. There are huge differences I would like to point out. And I will…

The design flaw at the heart of the euro zone has become manifest to a variety of market observers, practitioners, economists and journalists.  A fiscal/monetary half-way house divided cannot stand.  That seems to be clear. So…

Is the Euro depreciation planned or just a by-product of currency revulsion? No one knows. However, the events of the past week following the European shock and awe package are curious to say the least. Here's one curiosity. In the…

To paraphrase Shakespeare, things are indeed rotten in the State of Denmark (and Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and almost everywhere else in the euro zone). An entire continent appears determined to commit collective…