Eurobonds

Foreign-language economic and finance links for 26 November

Those that call for the ECB to substantially increase its sovereign bond purchases, or for Germany to agree to euro bonds, want the opposition to unilaterally disarm. They insist on putting the cart before the horse. In effect, under…

I have already highlighted some of the issues being reported on Eurobonds. But I should point out that I believe the Germans are already considering Eurobonds despite official denials. The other major story is contagion. Poland’s currency…

Neither the current governing coalition nor the German populace is anywhere close to getting where Schröder is. The most Germany will deliver is what’s on the table now: EU fiscal oversight with penalties and potentially expulsion for…

As I said in defense of the ECB last week, “central bankers always prefer to force elected officials to make the tough political choices that are the essence of fiscal policy.” The ECB wants this whole problem to be resolved by elected…

BofA Clash With Fannie Mae Escalates Over Loan Buyback Stance - Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. (BAC) told Fannie Mae it refuses to cooperate with the U.S. mortgage firm's new stance on loan buybacks, setting the lender up for a…

Spiegel is reporting that European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso plans to talk up Eurobonds on Wednesday and to present three different options for issuing Eurobonds as a solution to the European sovereign debt crisis. This is an…

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…

The ruling by the German Constitutional Court does allow the EFSF to operate as planned. Most commentators have focused on this. However, the language of the decision means there can be no eurobonds and no “supra-national” fiscal agent…

This week's Outside the Box is in the tradition of showing the other side of the argument. Normally, anything George Soros says or does politically has my blood pressure up about 20 points. Yet, I posted another piece of his today in Over…