Europe

Earlier today I wrote a post on the free blog site about blaming Germany for the problems in the euro zone. I ended up defending the German political response and blaming the euro. Let me just add a bit of colour to that here.

Last year, we saw a sea change in official German policy regarding the euro crisis and inflation. The German government came out in favour of accepting higher inflation domestically in Germany as a sacrifice for eurozone wage and price…

Europe's GDP numbers have just been released today and they are miserable. They show the Netherlands and France in recession along with the rest of the periphery. And even outside the euro zone, we got some pretty dire numbers out of the…

When I see the chart for Euro zone NPLs and look at the numbers, I think debt deflation. And this is exactly the problem with the euro zone's policy mix.

ECB President Draghi suggested last week that the central bank was taking a fresh look at the deposit rate. There does not appear to be any economist that thinks it is a good idea. The reasons vary, but the two main reasons are that it…

These are the words of European Commission President José Manuel Barroso in a recent interview with Die Welt, a German newspaper. Rather than translate this article in full, I want to put it in context given Barroso's outburst about…

I have been posting for a while now that I think Greece provides the greatest upside potential. Greece's sovereign bonds outperforming was one of my ten surprises for 2013 three months ago. And with bond yields now falling below 10%, Morgan…

Portugal is going to market with a 10-year sovereign bond issue, its first since 2011. I think this is a pretty big deal. Think of it as a complete return to public market access for the Portuguese government, one of the critical…

The first thing that jumps out at me is the interview with Marco Buti, who says point blank that austerity must end as it is "pointless". That's huge because he is Olli Rehn's right hand man. And Rehn has just confirmed that the EC is…

I have been trying to break up the links posts because I have so many. So I have been writing brief theme posts to go with the links as I used to do when I had more time. I want to make this one short here and I have two topics to…