Germany

My friend Lars Schall sent me this link. I think you have to put this in context by looking at what Der Spiegel was saying about a Greek exit. What is clear is that the taboo that Angela Merkel broke in responding to the proposed Greek…

This sounds like hearsay to me, but I wouldn’t be telling you about it if I didn’t believe it was credible.

Germans really are sceptical of the euro and many miss the days of the Deutsche Mark. I think Merkel is trying to make the case for why the German people have never been given a direct vote on any major euro area decision. No one wants…

This chart from Der Spiegel shows you that the ECB has been buying a lot of periphery bonds. But, no matter how much they have bought, their purchases are dwarfed by the absolute magnitude of bonds coming due next year in Italy, over 300…

The German Christian Democrats hold a party congress next weekend. There are a number of proposals that members are trying to get incorporate into the party position and platform. One such proposal is to give the national central banks…

I have been saying for some time that the euro zone is coming apart at the seams. This makes a lot of sense. The question is how to do it. Here’s my suggestion from a few days ago.

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

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…

If you are still inclined to give Greece the benefit of the doubt, I suggest you study the works of Egan-Jones, a credit rating company located in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Contrary to most other rating companies, Egan-Jones does not receive…

So how do we explain the European crisis? One theory is that the European crisis was caused by the moral turpitude and spendthrift habits of lazy Europeans along the periphery, in sharp contrast to the hard-working and thrifty countries of…