Europe

If the strongest argument against going back to the Drachma always was that this would imply default, now that default is coming, why not allow Greece to devalue? As Krugman says, the issue isn’t whether Greece would openly decide to exit…

Many an economic eyebrow must have been raised last Friday when Europe’s first quarter GDP data was released, and people discovered that the Greek economy had suddenly surged forward, rising by 0.8% over the level it had attained in the…

Each new version of the European debt crisis will spook the bond markets yet again. When you look at the economies of the euro-peripheral countries, it is hard to see how they can dig themselves out without a great deal of pain and serious…

Barron's Roundtable member Felix Zulauf spoke to the German-language Handelsblatt about the European sovereign debt crisis and financial markets in an article published today. Like Jeremy Grantham, he has turned bearish. Below is my…

The narrative has shifted recently with regards to Greece. Greece had been portrayed by many as a small economy one tenth the size of Germany whose debt problems could be solved by throwing EU/IMF money at it. Now, Greece appears to have…

Guest Author Polyvios Petropolous argues that the European Union must put in place the contingency plans for a Greek debt restructuring in secret before the plan is announced and executed. To end bailouts without such a plan in place would…

The following editorial by Timo Soini, the head of the True Finns party in Finland, on perceived corporatism in the EU bailouts of the eurozone periphery appeared in Monday's Wall Street Journal. We are reprinting it here because the…

Systemic risk is not driven by close macro integration. If this were the case, US states would have far higher exposure to systemic credit risk. Instead, systemic exposure is very high for European sovereigns. The roots of systemic risk lie…

Dollar stronger on the day for the fourth day in a row. Stories are flying about a possible new Greek aid package, causing choppy currency markets. Swiss CPI well below expectations; Norway CPI above expectations

One of the key premises underpinning the establishment of the Euro as a common currency to be shared by a number of individual national states rather than one single nation was the central idea that the several economies of the…