ECB

from the BBH Currency Strategy Team The euro is slightly firmer today vs. the dollar today, but continues to make new historic lows vs. Swiss franc just below 1.25, suggesting that euro zone tensions remain strong. EM currencies continue…

John Brynjolfsson, the CIO at the hedge fund Armored Wolf, is betting on convergence. In his view, the credit quality of the banks and people of Germany and France, will soon look like the credit quality in Spain and Portugal. I featured a…

The ECB announced its subscription capital base of 5.8 bln euros would effectively be doubled to 10.8 bln euros effective at the end of the year. The move is not surprising and has been hinted for the better part of a week at least. It…

by William K. Black The struggle within the EU and the European Central Bank (ECB) over the nature of European project continues. The EU continues to be dominated by the French/German tandem. The Euro, once the great hope of the periphery…

by Marc Chandler The Financial Times reports that as Trichet was holding a press conference after the recent ECB meeting, European central banks were buying large amounts of sovereign European bonds. Reports suggested that the amounts were…

Despite its large size relative to the small Irish economy, the bailout of Ireland is not working. Risk premiums continue to rise. This column argues that part of the problem lies in a seemingly innocuous provision in the rescue facility…

The thinking behind Eurobonds is that a pan-euro zone debt instrument could be used as a release valve for liquidity issues, allowing the truly insolvent to restructure their state level debt if necessary, without creating contagion. The…

European officials must have known they were going to disappoint the market with the decision to simply postpone draining liquidity. The firewall around Greece failed. The firewall around Ireland has failed. The politicians have dropped…

A few weeks ago, when writing about the Irish debt crisis, I finished a post saying: Eventually, people may come around to Evans-Pritchard’s view: the only way out of this is via the ECB printing money and monetizing the periphery’s…

The ECB could step into the breach but buying a large amount of sovereign bonds from the periphery. This would support the market, push down interest rates and potentially arrest the contagion. Moreover, as a large owner of peripheral…