Europe

This video does not mention Austria by name, focusing instead on Ireland, Spain and Greece, but Austria is more of the problem for the Germans as they are leveraged to Eastern Europe. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck became the…

In an interview with Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger, a well-known economist has warned that Switzerland risks bankruptcy, if the recent market turmoil centering on Eastern Europe is not contained quickly. At issue are loans made in Swiss Francs…

The video below gives an excellent view into the issues affecting European banking. Tom Keene, who is Bloomberg Radio's editor-at-large, sees the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the ultimate solution to the problems in Eastern Europe.…

Danielle, a European reader, recently asked what is going on in the European Union regarding mark-to-market. Basically, the EU has already relaxed mark-to-market requirements as an outgrowth of the market turbulence surrounding Lehman…

After Iceland collapsed and went into Depression, there were a number of reports in the press regarding countries with outsized financial sectors. The worry was that the collapse of Iceland was not an isolated incident, but rather a…

Just a few hours ago, I posted an article about European toxic asset exposure based on a Telegraph article.  The crux of the Telegraph piece was that European banks have a shed load of bad debt on their books.  A secret European Commission…

Now that I have burnished my bullish bona fides with two posts from the optimistic viewpoint, I want to share with you an analysis from John Mauldin that is much closer to the truth regarding where the global economy is headed, what type of…

If you had read the Telegraph on February 12, you would be inclined to believe there might be even more toxic assets on European bank balance sheets than on American bank balance sheets. However, anyone who read the Telegraph later would…

UPDATE: 12 Jan 2010: I am re-publishing this for the third time because of the situation at AIG. The question that Tim Iacono asked on his site a year ago in the post "Why aren't Americans rioting?" is based on an article from Alternet.…

When the euro was introduced about ten years ago, the pessimists didn't give it much chance of reaching its tenth anniversary. The euro, or so the argument went, was doomed from the outset because of the wide spread in economic performance…