France

Developments in the Netherlands may steal the limelight as the French election is still more than a month away. The key issue in the Netherlands is that last week, the Dutch Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis warned that next year's deficit…

Polls suggest that in the first round of balloting in late April, Sarkozy is trailing his Socialist challenger Hollande 31%-24.5%. Marina Le Pen's candidacy appears sufficiently strong to deny either candidate a majority in the first round.

This is a great chart below via the Wall Street Journal. It shows the total debt to GDP ratios for the largest developed economies in the world broken down into four sectors: households, non-financial corporations, financial institutions…

The light news stream, adequate bill auction receptions and comments from Fitch suggesting France's AAA rating is secure this year encouraged short-term players to take profits. However, sentiment is still wholly euro negative and a large…

Soon, Credit Writedowns Pro is coming out with my predictions/forecast for 2012. I am aiming for a Jan 5th release and will also start a few forum topics then as well. See the piece "Introducing Credit Writedowns Pro", which is stuck to the…

Here are two interesting charts courtesy of the Macro Business Superblog. In outlining how the latest European crisis response policy fails to deal with the underlying issues in Euroland, Macro Business also illuminated the individual debt…

The British decision to veto the proposed new EU treaty is not surprisingly provoking an avalanche of commentary this weekend. Among journalists, at least, there seems to be a consensus that David Cameron committed some kind of major…

The following are the press releases Moody's issued this morning, downgrading the credit ratings of three large French banks.

News links for 7 December 2011 featuring thoughts on a French downgrade, the austerity budget in Ireland, patents and China and other stories

The “troika” – Italian, Spanish, and French bond yields - is acting pretty well even after the S&P downgrade. Italy is under 6 percent and that is what matters. We sense there will be tremendous pressure on the shorts and equity risk…