Europe

Here are 10 items that investors will be watching this week.

Recent Bulgarian developments are worth discussing. Austerity just brought down another European government, as Prime Minister Borisov and his cabinet resigned this week amidst rising popular protests against his policies. But the story…

The best chances of balancing a strong government with a reform agenda also looks the most likely. It is the center-left winning the Chamber of Deputies and then forming a coalition with Monti's centrists to secure a majority in the…

Serious technical damage on the foreign currencies is being inflicted. The euro is falling through the uptrend drawn off last July (Draghi-induced) lows. It comes in just below $1.3200 today. The next technical target is near…

Eurozone policy seems driven by market sentiment. This column argues that fear and panic led to excessive, and possibly self-defeating, austerity in the south while failing to induce offsetting stimulus in the north. The resulting deflation…

Sweden has been one of the countries to have best weathered the economic crisis. Despite a hiccup in its domestic economy and the extra deflationary impulse from souring loans to the Baltics in 2009, the Swedish economy has been remarkably…

In the U.S. and in euro countries, policies aimed at stimulating exports are considered an effective response to lagging growth and recession. Viewing a net export balance as an economic virtue and a growth engine is a relic of Mercantilism…

It has been some time now since the ECB turned to monetisation to deal with its sovereign debt crisis. At the time, the Germans were out in full force attempting to stop the train of events and keep the ECB out of the political economy.…

Many investors understandably have not focused on France. The threat of scandal in Spain, the need for yet another round of government support for Italy's third largest bank and the country's upcoming election have commanded attention. What…

The European Union released figures for Q4 2012 GDP today and they were awful. GDP fell by 0.6% in the euro zone and 0.5% in the entire EU. Stock markets are getting clobbered on the news and the euro is selling off. This is not unexpected…