Europe

As Europe’s leaders struggle to convince markets that their Greek debt problem-resolution-proposals are actually viable, and will really do the trick, last week’s flash PMI readings seem to have attracted rather less attention than they…

The employment-to-population ratio had been much higher in the US than Europe. This gap narrowed dramatically in the last decade and had almost disappeared by the end of 2009. Draw your conclusions about what this says about the different…

Felix Zulauf spoke to Barron’s Alan Abelson about his thoughts on the European sovereign debt crisis now that Greece has received its second 100 billion euro bailout. Here I discuss what Abelson says about the conversation and why I think…

In the last post on the EU, I said that the EFSF is too small. Basically, only the ECB has unlimited liquidity in its arsenal to deal with contagion to Spain and Italy. Willem Buiter agrees and has spoken to Bloomberg about his analysis of…

France and Germany have the greatest exposure to Greece and their banks are expected to be the one’s with the lion’s share of the losses in the voluntary debt exchange deal. Here is a chart from the BBC below, detailing the exposure to…

This step will calm markets – for how long is anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, the budget cuts that this deal requires must be rapid in order to try to calm markets by maintaining the fiction that Greece is not insolvent and that the…

The full statement from the EU without commentary

This post is a prelude to a BBC interview on the sovereign debt crisis. I am not going to answer financial Armageddon questions about "what oif it all goes pear-shaped" here because to understand where things are headed you need to know how…

Economic growth warning signs are evident all around in recent data from the US, Europe and China. This should mean negative earnings surprises by Q3 earnings season.

Guilio Tremonti, the Italian Finance Minister, last week compared Germany and its small-minded Chancellor Angela Merkel to a first-class passenger on the Titanic. To repeat: this is not a problem confined to the periphery. The sovereign…