Italy

Bill Gross has admitted that he has started buying Spanish and Italian debt. That's quite a turnaround given he had been saying earlier that he wouldn't touch their sovereign debt with a ten-foot barge pole. So the question is why. And the…

When it comes to the euro zone, most eyes are fixed on Spain and Greece where a debt deflationary death spiral has begun. But the economic situation remains fragile in other countries of the so-called periphery. Italy is the largest…

By Marc Chandler The most important thing that ECB President Draghi has said in his prepared remarks was the reluctance to reschedule Greek bond holdings on grounds that would be tantamount to monetary financing.    Really?  Buying the…

Yalman Onaran has written up a lengthy review of the deposit flight now ongoing in Europe. It is a reminder that Mario Draghi's plan to backstop Spanish and Italian sovereign debt can only do so much to stop redenomination risk, the…

Last week I promised to provide a little more insight into what the ECB is doing with its OMT program and what this should mean for the euro, economic growth, and European sovereign bond markets. This weekly post is dedicated to that theme.…

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.…

Here’s round two of the links, this time on Europe. It is mostly about the ECB and the rumours about unlimited liquidity. I have already written about this twice today so I won’t say any more. But I will note the Reuters article on how…

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…

Some maintain that Italy and Spain risk losing market access for their sovereign bonds despite drops in yields. A recent Vox column by Francesco Giavazzi suggested that Italy could and should avoid a bailout. This column argues that in…

Why is the global economy hamstrung by heavy debts and weak banks? Or put another way, why doesn’t deleveraging happen, and the weight of debt reduce, and why doesn’t the economy expand so the weak banks can once more become robust and…