France

By Marc Chandler The US dollar is going into month and quarter end on a soft note.  The greenback had been generally firm against most of the major foreign currencies, but the Japanese yen, since around mid-month, but the news stream…

In today's links was a Figaro article which pointed to a slowdown in French housing transactions in Q2 2012. As sales are the first to decline in a housing bust, this turn of events bears watching, especially because France is embarking on…

Here are my first quick reactions to the ECB's new monetisation scheme. They have decided to buy bonds on the secondary market in potentially unlimited quantities up to three-year maturities for countries that submit to a Troika program.…

This week's second weekly-length post is just another review of the Price Waterhouse Coopers study that is big news in the German press. I have now seen the numbers in a bit more granular detail and I wanted to run through them for me…

My view is that the euro zone sovereign debt crisis will end in a combination of monetisation, breakup or default. Let's review why.

The long-held view in German policy circles has been that the European sovereign debt crisis is a clear indication that the stability and growth pact (SGP) was not sufficiently robust in addressing fiscal discipline. The ECB is now…

Later this week, I plan to write a more comprehensive post on the European sovereign debt crisis to incorporate what we have learned since the French and Greek elections. Here's a short preview of what I will have to say.

Fitch has not been as aggressive as the other two agencies, keeping Austria and France at AAA up until now. As such, its negative comments about the Netherlands are noteworthy and likely signal a harder line by Fitch in the coming months.…

The string of developments has encouraged risk-off behavior. Equity markets are lower. Core bonds are higher. The high beta currencies, such as the freely traded emerging market currencies, the Australian and Canadian dollars, the euro,…

The French premium over Germany rose today to a three-month high. Rumors of a rating downgrade proved wide of the mark, but it reflects the market's anxiety about the outlook for France going forward.