Germany

That’s what Philipp Rösler, the leader of the junior partner in Germany’s coalition government, is saying. Barry Eichengreen says that this kind of talk is counterproductive.

Here’s an interpretation of the euro zone I have been meaning to run by you and I touched on it in the update to my post on how austerity in Europe works. In a fixed exchange rate environment like the euro area, you don’t have currency…

Jobs and the lack of them are top of the agenda for policymakers and increasingly groups of protestors gathered in the financial districts of New York, London, and elsewhere. Unemployment in these countries is in danger of reaching 10%. In…

Let’s not get bogged down in numbers. The EFSF could have 440 billion euros behind, 1 trillion, 2 trillion, even 10 trillion euros, but it all comes back to the funding sources. The French are right: it makes no sense to implement this…

This is an update of a post I wrote at the beginning of September about European political dysfunction.

Tomorrow's EU Summit is the markets main focus. The key issue is whether European officials can finally provide closure to the two year old debt crisis and deliver the "comprehensive" and "decisive" package they have repeatedly promised. We…

Italy argues that the ECB has made the crisis worse because it refuses to stand at the ready as a lender of last resort like other central banks, an argument I have also made. However, the Italians suggest that the EU is facing a liquidity…

This video of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stirred a sense of nationalistic pride in Italy. Everyone seems to be talking about it.

Key points: German Flash Composite Index at 2-month high; Flash Services Index at 3-month high; French Flash Composite Index at 29-month low; Flash Services Index at 27-month low

France appears to have backed down in the face of a German-ECB joint position that strenuously objected to the EFSF becoming a bank to borrow from the ECB. Instead, it appears that the insurance/guarantee function of the EFSF is going to…