Europe

Spain is now ranked ninth for default probability just behind Ireland, with an expected 40% chance of default in the next five years. The Spanish 10-year bond yield has fallen back to 6.70% after reaching a record euro zone high of 6.834%…

The euro zone sovereign debt crisis is reaching the end of the line. Spain and Italy are both simply too big to be bailed out. Yet as we speak, the yields on Spanish and Italian 10-year bonds are soaring, Spain's reaching a record 6.807%.…

The focus recently has all been on the Eurozone periphery, but signs of strained financial conditions are now showing up in German sovereign CDS. The spread has been steadily rising.

As I first described here in late April, the Spanish bailout is looking like a bailout of Spanish banks instead of the sovereign. Spain's debt to GDP is still relatively low and so the thinking is that the sovereign debt problems there are…

From a game theory perspective, the moment one of the 17 eurozone member countries realises it would be better off outside the eurozone, it has everything to gain from being the first mover. We have all been led to believe that a break-up…

As I indicated on 27 April on Why the Spanish bailout may be to recap the banks instead of sovereign, I don't believe the Europeans are going to bail out the Spanish sovereign. Instead, given that Spain has low sovereign debt to GDP, the…

The eurozone’s architects failed to follow through with the logic of a political union. Nobody cares about “trade imbalances” in the Canadian confederation. And nobody would care if Alberta, for example, were to run perpetual trade…

The Martin Wolf piece about panic becoming all too rational fits very nicely with the macro case i made earlier today. He points to the private sector indebtedness and subsequent retrenchment as well as to the policy errors that have come…

The link I want to highlight today is on the relationship between the slowdown in growth globally and US multinational earnings.

Editor's Note: The following is the text of recent remarks on the European sovereign debt crisis made by legendary investor George Soros at the Festival of Economics in Trento, Italy.