Europe

As we discuss sovereign debt levels, currencies and competitiveness, it bears remembering that interest rates are at the heart of many of these debates. To the degree debt service costs are the only measure used to determine how high a…

Morgan Stanley fears UK sovereign debt crisis in 2010 - Telegraph Goldman Staff Packing Pistols to Defend Against Peasants - Yves Smith FT.com | Willem Buiter's Maverecon | Πάντα ῥεῖ (Mavercon is dead.) interfluidity - Good…

This post from November 2009 is a reminder of how things looked in the sovereign debt crisis just a few months ago.

Benchmark Currencies: 16 Dec 2008 Nearly one year later and the U.S. dollar is looking very weak – and not just against the Euro, but also against Sterling and Swissy, and especially against the Loonie and the Aussie Dollar.  Even…

Bruce Krasting: FDIC on REO Sales: Keep'em in the Dark! Greece tests the limit of sovereign debt as it grinds towards slump - Telegraph Economist's View: "What if a Recovery Is All in Your Head?" Rhodes pushback -…

This comes via Deal Book at the New York Times. The company’s chief executive, Fritz Henderson, called the repayment plan “a personal commitment.” The Obama administration, wardens of the 60 percent taxpayer stake in the company,…

A friend sent me the following presentation earlier in the week when I was feeling a bit ill. So I neglected to post it.  But, I want to return to it because it is in keeping with my recovery/depression theme. These are the issues that…

I have been reading press accounts of the GM decision to back out of the Opel/Vauxhall sale to the Magna/Sberbank consortium from various countries. There are a lot of different perspectives on this event in the U.S., Belgium, Spain,…

Fitch, the credit rating agency, has just downgraded the sovereign debt ratings for the Republic of Ireland from AA+ to AA-.  That is two notches and is proof-positive that the ratings agencies are worried about the hole in Dublin’s…

At the weekend I wrote about Alistair Darling’s about-face on breaking up to big to fail financial institutions. Apparently, this was not a case of labour changing tack and finding regulatory religion, but rather of the European Union…