fiscal

With sovereign interest rates in the euro zone rising, Finland is feeling the contagion effect despite being only country in the euro zone except tiny Luxembourg which is both AAA-rated and meets all of the Maastricht Treaty requirements.…

The following numbers come from a recent article in Die Welt on the backlash in Europe against the ratings agencies.

I think Monti and Papademos are going to try to shoehorn the standard policy responses into the situation in order to reduce the range of outcomes they have to deal with. In a practical sense, that means going with the standard formula of…

We are baffled by the analysis of the analyst community, some, of which, are not so analytical. They say that Europe’s fundamental problem is that it has a central bank which is unwilling to monetize sizeable debt maturities which…

For all practical purposes the Fed has done it all. And yet unemployment remains at depression levels of over 9% (and over 16% the way it used to be calculated not long ago) and the only thing keeping what’s called ‘inflation’ over 1% is a…

Sources close to the German government have told Reuters that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking agreement to make changes to the Lisbon Treaty, considered the European Constitution. According to Reuters’ sources, Merkel wants…

This video is about the Chinese view of America’s budget battles. The US congress has until November 23rd to figure out on how to reduce its public debt. If it doesn’t, eventually mandatory budget cuts will go into place. As a result, Guan…

This is a translation from a Handelsblatt interview with Amgela Merkel. MUST READ.

The scale of the Italian challenge is far greater than Greece's as Italy's sovereign debt is bigger than Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal's put together. Greece has, prior to the coming haircuts, about 350 bln euros of debt. Italy has to…

The European debt crisis is straining the Paris-Berlin axis, the pillar of EMU. French banks are heavily exposed to Italian debt, with some estimates putting public and private sector exposure at more than $400 bln at the end of H1 (without…