Europe

It was not the news stream, which was poor to say the least. The flash European PMI and German IFO warns that even the German economy may be fizzling. UK Q1 GDP was revised down. Yet by the news hit the euro selling appears to exhaust…

The EU informal summit will be held over a dinner and despite the attention it is receiving, it still seems unreasonable to expect anything concrete. Today's informal EU summit is not the real thing. It is out of the late June summit that a…

The Financial Times has gone through the very useful exercise of creating a decision tree on what a Greek exit from the euro zone entails. I think the Europeans are now actively preparing for a Grexit because to not do so would be folly.…

Not a lot to say today but I do have a lot of links. The stories today are all the same, which is why I don't have a lot to add. One story to note is that the German government is now borrowing 2-year money at zero percent. This tells…

ELA is the acronym for Emergency Lending Assistance. This is direct lending by the national central bank, with ECB authorization to local banks with more liberal collateral requirements. The national central bank is responsible/liable for…

Michael Pettis had a great write-up on the situation in Spain and Europe's depressing prospects. While his conclusion that Spain will be forced to exit the euro zone is something I have yet to endorse, the logic he uses surrounding many of…

The talk about Greece being kicked out of the euro zone has clearly been overdone. Some have suggested that the Germans had reached their fill and that they would 'stare the Greeks down' in this high stakes game of chicken. I have…

As always, I have a lot of links on Monday. Three or four stories have dominated the news in each market for the past week. In the US, it is about either JPMorgan Chase's escalating losses, Facebook's IPO or the general aimlessness of the…

By Michael Pettis Normally I don’t like to write about European prospects in the midst of a very rough patch in the market because in that case there isn’t much I can say that isn’t already being said. I find it more useful to wait for…

I still find it hard to believe a Greek exit from the euro zone is imminent. So it's good to see someone push back on the concept that a Greek exit from the euro zone is imminent. John Dizard at the FT does just this in a piece out today…