Europe

A while ago I posted a translation of Joerg Asmussen's Frankfurter Rundschau interview and my interpretation of his commentary. Here is the rest of the translation and some commentary. There are to be bond purchases once more. What makes…

An extremely important interview with ECB board member Joerg Asmussen was carried in the Frankfurter Rundschau recently. Below is a translation with key bits highlighted. Afterward I will interpret his remarks in light of ongoing…

Here’s round two of the links, this time on Europe. It is mostly about the ECB and the rumours about unlimited liquidity. I have already written about this twice today so I won’t say any more. But I will note the Reuters article on how…

This is just a quick follow-up to my article on ECB sovereign debt yield caps. I don’t think the ECB is about to put ceilings on euro area sovereign debt yields. The speculation generated by the Spiegel article is not warranted in my view.

It looks like the ECB is about to step forward and engage in quantitative easing, if reports from the German media are to be believed. I am sceptical that the ECB will follow through on this given political pressure in the euro zone against…

This Great Graphic comes from an email I received from Thomson Reuters. It charts the nominal effective exchange rates (NEER)of the dollar, euro, Swiss franc and Australian dollar. It is weighted by trade partner, but is not adjusted for…

Tim Duy has an interesting piece out that dovetails with something I had been saying in the comments here just yesterday. It has to do with austerity as an economic policy response in this post-crisis world. According to Bloomberg News,…

I recently wrote two member posts on the NPL problem in Europe. The source is a study by PwC's Frankfurt office that was released to the German-language media. Frankly, this report is everywhere in the German media and I think it's a big…

This week's second weekly-length post is just another review of the Price Waterhouse Coopers study that is big news in the German press. I have now seen the numbers in a bit more granular detail and I wanted to run through them for me…

Some maintain that Italy and Spain risk losing market access for their sovereign bonds despite drops in yields. A recent Vox column by Francesco Giavazzi suggested that Italy could and should avoid a bailout. This column argues that in…