European breakup

Quick post here to highlight then continued losses in Spanish property markets and the effect on Spanish banks. House prices in Spain were down 11.2% year-on-year in July. That's the largest fall since March 2011 and it brings all in losses…

In the German press, there have been a number of stories recently that indicate that the German government will not commit any more money to bailouts in the euro zone. Specifically, the reports of greatest interest have to do with Germany's…

A recent story in German magazine Der Spiegel highlights the efforts in 2005 of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to relax the penalties for deficits in breach of the euro zone's stability and growth pact. It is a good review of the…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a brilliant political tactician. After the latest EU Summit, it seemed she had capitulated after being rounded on by France's Hollande in an effort by Italy's Monti and Spain's Rajoy to prevent the market…

The biggest news is that the EU is already backtracking on the Euro summit deal that decoupled the sovereign-bank tie which had been causing Spanish and Italian yields to rise. And predictably, Spanish and Italian yields have risen once…

I was on RT's Capital Account on Monday afternoon, talking about the euro crisis yet again. The video is below but I have a few comments before you watch it. In the video, I say Europe can continue dithering for quite a while. There is…

Hans-Werner Sinn is the sometimes controversial head of Germany's Ifo Institute, A German-based center for economic studies. He has been in the news for his warnings about the Target2 system at the heart of trans-national money clearance in…

I normally don't post at the weekend these days but I came across two links that I wanted to comment on today. The first is from an article in German daily Die Welt about the situation in Greece. While the article's tone takes a fairly…

Not a lot of links today. One link I did want to talk about was the Barron's Roundtable Midyear Update. It's largely the same cast it has been for a few years but for the past few years, the topics have been heavily macro instead of…

It is clear that Greece will be unable to hit their deficit targets. According to Die Zeit, Greece is already lagging on tax revenues and privatization proceeds. This is why the German government is already debating relaxing Greece’s…