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Look at this chart of the sovereign credit default swap wideners today. Every single name is European. The only one with a sub-10% default possibility is Sweden, and they are not in the euro zone. That tells you something, doesn’t it? I…

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…

You saw my comments in the last post on the damage Europe has done in making a mockery of the sovereign CDS market. The Italy situation is worse because of this. Below is a video clip from Monday night of the Lang & O’Leary Exchange, a…

Right now everyone is looking at monetisation and thinking this will save the day. You saw the Lakshman Achuthan video; clearly punters don’t think the US is going to double dip. Buy gold then. Maybe they are right, but I see weakness…

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…

If a central bank guarantees investors credibly that they can invest in certain debt instruments and not suffer principal or interest repayment risk, but only currency and inflation risk, some investors are almost definitely going to buy…

Yesterday I was on RT with Demetri Kofinas (@CoveringDelta) talking about the future of the euro zone. Lauren Lyster asked us where this was headed and we both agreed that it really was all about Italy. I just posted on why questioning…

"Yesterday, the headline in the Frankfurter Zeitung was “Democracy is Junk.” The meaning was the financial sector was saying that democracy is incompatible with collecting debts and, when debtors can’t pay, with foreclosing on the public…

Now that we have had a chance to digest the information from last night, there are a number of developments to report on the Greek situation which are relevant to unravelling likely scenarios going forward. Here is my synopsis of what has…

This move puts a whole train of future moves in motion, in my view. The Greek people will be apoplectic at this tactic. They will reject the bailout in a referendum out of spite. Greece and its banks will be insolvent. Meanwhile, the run on…