Europe

The two main drivers of the capital markets today have been the biggest one day loss in the Chinese yuan and new that the preliminary Eurozone February CPI did not tick down as many expected. The headline rate was unchanged at 0.8%, though…

The aim of the above header is to link two names in people’s minds, both of them Italian: Mario Draghi and Matteo Renzi. Naturally the idea is not original, the FT’s Peter Spiegel recently published an entire blog post (Does Renzi owe his…

Yesterday, I began my Ten Surprises List. As a reminder, the surprise list is loosely based off Byron Wien’s list of ten surprises which he has conducting doing at Blackstone and Morgan Stanley for the last thirty years. Wien defines his…

Themes for today: Real economy deterioration in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey is evident. Ukraine may be isolated without contagion. US data continues to surprise to the downside. Eurozone data may surprise to the upside. Sweden may…

So far the ECB has not responded to the disinflationary risks building in the euro area. Some Governing Council members dismissed the calls for action from numerous economists, referring to the analysts' reports as the "Anglo-Saxon"…

Italian stocks and bonds have rallied strongly on ideas that the Italian situation can only get better. It is exactly such time, when so many observers are nearly euphoric, that the smart money may want to take some profits.

The UK government this week ruled out any question of agreeing to a currency union with an independent Scotland. So where does this leave Scotland's currency conundrum? And what about the banks? Scotland has two very large banks - RBS and…

By Marc Chandler The Italian 10-year premium over Germany (white line) has generally fallen over the past year as the dollar against the euro (yellow line). Of course, as one would expect the euro is more volatile than the 10-year…

I have been sitting on my ten surprises for this year because not enough ideas had crystallized… until now. I think I will be ready to write the piece next week. Let me go through my thinking somewhat stream of consciously here. As a…

Themes for today: EM crisis in its infancy. Question goes to contagion US economic growth is decent but weaknesses now supporting bonds Europe is recovering with Spain brightest in periphery; France in trouble