Italy

A unilateral exit would be a devastating event for Italy and the euro zone. Inflation would be high but bank and national solvency issues would recede. If the exit were done under these nationalistic pre-conditions of redomination, most of…

With the fundraiser week winding down, I am going to start making a few changes now. One thing we probably need is a synopsis of the past week’s posts in order to tie the week’s events together thematically. I will make this synopsis using…

By Claus Vistesen (see source of image at end of post) I have recently spent a few days in New York talking to clients as well as sneaking in a bit of marathon watching and a visit to the Guggenheim museum. Flying across the big pond…

European economies are really breaking down and panic has set in. You see pointless proposals to lord over supposed fiscal free riders from Finland and unelected governments lacking in political legitimacy and taking unfavourable economic…

I think Monti and Papademos are going to try to shoehorn the standard policy responses into the situation in order to reduce the range of outcomes they have to deal with. In a practical sense, that means going with the standard formula of…

When I was running through Italian default scenarios earlier in the day, I asked “Could Italy unilaterally exit the euro zone and redominate euro debts at par into a new Lira currency to forestall the default? Perhaps. That is something to…

The most important debate of our lifetimes is now ongoing. The question: Should the ECB “write the check’ for the euro area national governments? In thinking about the answer to this all-important question, I prefer to shift the focus by…

We are baffled by the analysis of the analyst community, some, of which, are not so analytical. They say that Europe’s fundamental problem is that it has a central bank which is unwilling to monetize sizeable debt maturities which…

This shouldn’t be happening after this weekend’s good political news. The spread widening is weighing on France who will be on the hook for their banks who are heavily exposed to European sovereigns. Where are you ECB?