Germany

Europe seems to have reached the nadir economically, judging from the last few economic data points. But there is still a long way to go. In my view, Spain remains the most important country in Europe's sovereign debt crisis because of its…

While Germany's numbers for Q4 2012 were poor, showing a contraction of 0.5%, I noted in my last post on Germany that this does not mean recession. The contraction was due to export and capital investment figures, which look to rebound in…

German GDP contracted by an unexpectedly large 0.5% in Q4 2012, according to preliminary estimates of the German government. The contraction is largely due to receding trade volume and does not necessarily mean Germany is in recession…

The latest opinion polls in Germany show Angela Merkel at her most popular. But her governing coalition partner FDP will almost certainly miss the 5% hurdle in Germany's general election, leaving the political landscape very uncertain.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) believes that eurozone banks still have much work to do to strengthen their capital. They warn that many of the entities currently are still below a capital ratio of 5% of…

Last year, I started my weekly newsletter out with Ten Surprises for 2012. The goal was to give you a list of things that investors only assigned one in three odds of occuring that I believed had a fifty percent or better chance of…

Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that German industrial output for the 4th quarter of 2012 likely fell below the output for the 3rd quarter, making it possible that Germany could lapse into recession.

Until just recently, Germany was more indebted than Spain. The country was the first, along with France, to breach the Maastricht Treaty's 3% hurdle for annual deficits in 2005, prompting a change in the rules. And Germany has also been in…

Today's links have three major themes. They are the continuing economic and political problems in Europe, the impact of the global growth slowdown on earnings and the escalating mobile war between Apple and Android. First on the European…

The ratings agency Moody's issued the following statement earlier today in connection with its ratings review of the German banking sector. The outlook for Germany's banking system remains negative, says Moody's Investors Service in a new…