Europe

Banks, households and the government sector are all engaged in deleveraging. It is difficult to see where aggregate demand will come from. Spanish exports in January were up about 4% from a year ago, but the pace appears to be leveling off.…

One Greek outstanding bond is a 450 mln euro FRN that is due May 15. It has a 30-day grace period to make the payment, according to press reports. The new Greek 10-year bond yield rose today to 20.55%. It is the fifth consecutive session…

Despite comparisons with Greece, Portugal is not in entirely the same situation, at least not yet it isn't. Crucially, Portugal is currently under no obligation to deal with international or national creditors to increasing government debt…

I have a number of links coming up in today's daily commentary. The likely topic will be US interest rates. But there is a second topic I wanted to riff on so I am posting here separately about fiscal woes in Spain and the Netherlands.

The focus now ahead of the weekend is three-fold. First, Spain is set to unveil its 2012 budget. Full details will not be available until it is presented to parliament next Tuesday. However, the overall savings is what investors are most…

Back in November last year I posted on my confusion over the jubilation shown by the citizens of Spain as they elected Mariano Rajoy as their new political leader. Mr Rajoy’s strategy during the election campaign was to say very little…

Greece argues that its needs to strong defense spending for two threats. The first is from Turkey. Yet relations have improved and a military confrontation between these two NATO members seem quite remote. The other threat Greece is thought…

This is a thematic post, I am also putting outside the paywall because there is a lot of chatter today about Spain needing to tap EU bailout funds this year. The messaging in the analyst community follows the thematic prediction I made in…

Warren Mosler presents some macro economic themes that will have implications for the investing and business climate.

There are several developments that warn of future problems in the euro zone and these make us suspicious about the euro's ability to sustain the upside break.