Europe

Europe is in the sweet spot right now, with recovery looking like it has taken hold. Greece remains an outlier. The question is what will happen to Greece over the medium- to- long-term. I believe the answer is an exit from the euro zone.…

I want to pick up where I left off yesterday and highlight the growth dichotomy between Euroland on the one hand and the U.S. and the U.K. on the other. Yesterday I wrote that the risk is to the upside in the U.S. (and the U.K.) if…

This morning I made the argument that the global economy is growing across the breadth of developed and developing economies. I still have a problem with Europe though as I believe the risk is to the downside. Basically, the policy response…

The latest data out of Europe shows the economy in the euro zone continuing to expand and suggests that we are probably in a technical recovery. In Europe, however, the threat to recovery is to the downside, whereas in the U.S. the main…

The U.S. Treasury’s semi-annual currency report had surprisingly strong criticism for Germany. The U.S. claims that Germany’s macroeconomic policies are inherently deflationary, creating risk for further crisis. I agree with this criticism…

The PMI survey shows the first fall in manufacturing output in the US since September 2009. Eurozone PMIs are moving in the other direction.

Summary: Pippa Malmgren discusses the eurozone with Bloomberg below, calling attention to the diverging interests within the eurozone as a critical factor adding stress despite the relative calm we have witnessed in markets of late. Her…

Despite Europe’s continual moving of the goalposts to give countries more breathing room, the economic paradigm in Europe is still the same: austerity. This will dampen growth in Europe for the foreseeable future and increase government…

With Spain posting its first gains in GDP in over two years, every media outlet I have seen is trumpeting this as the end of the eurozone recession. I called it early, yes. However, one quarter’s GDP growth does not make recovery. Let’s…

The Eurozone’s tangle of conflicting goals – a series of ‘trilemmas’ – is not without precedent. This column argues that it is reminiscent of the interwar situation. The interwar slump was so intractable not just due to financial issues,…