currencies

What happened in 2010 with Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland will happen again. But this time, Italy will be the first domino to fall. And when it does fall, Italian sovereign and bank credit risk will skyrocket. Caveat Emptor.

As expected, the Bank of England left rates unchanged at a record low 0.25% in today’s Monetary Policy Committee decision. There was a dissent, however, with soon to be departing MPC member Kristin Forbes wanting a quarter-point rise.

I have three charts for you which demonstrate that the US Federal Reserve is tightening monetary policy.

Tonight US President Donald Trump is due to give his first state of the union address. From a foreign policy perspective, the big item on the table is Russia. But from an economic perspective, the country we meed to be thinking about is…

Yesterday, I was talking to a veteran journalist based in Rome. He remarked that youth unemployment in southern Italy was 60% and that this was one of the biggest problems to deal with politically. The spectre of strong, able-bodied young…

Bloomberg View had a good column today on the popularity of the European single currency. The article shows how the euro has gone from being unloved in Germany at introduction in 2002 to well accepted, while the opposite has happened in…

The FT is reporting that US President Donald Trump sees Germany as a ‘currency manipulator’ of sorts, a view bound to have negative consequences on bilateral relations. What’s more, according to the Financial Times, Trump’s top trade…

If I could name three countries that will be particularly difficult for the US to deal with geopolitically, I would pick Russia, China and Turkey. The first two are obvious choices but the third is going to be equally tricky because of the…

With the Fed talking up the likelihood of three rate hikes in 2017 while other central banks are still in easing mode, the potential for a US dollar rout and a concomitant closing of the US trade deficit is pretty low. Therefore, given…

Eurobonds are one way of tying the fortunes of eurozone countries together by eliminating - or at least greatly reducing - default risk. The thinking is that if you have a common currency and free labour movement and you still don’t have…