Italy

This is a Friday night massacre over in Europe. Fitch, the ratings agency, first downgraded Italy one notch, from AA- to A+, following in Moody's footsteps for earlier this week. Then, just a few minutes later, Fitch cut Spain's credit…

Moody's Investors Service has today downgraded Italy's government bond ratings to A2 with a negative outlook from Aa2, while affirming its short-term ratings at Prime-1. The rating action concludes the review for downgrade initiated by…

Former ECB chief economist Otmar Issing recently spoke to German weekly Stern in an interview now published online. His view is that the appropriate strategy for dealing with Greece is to force a hard restructuring and a large writedown of…

I want to highlight three things here from Wolfgang Munchau on the euro zone because he reaches conclusions I have reached. Below are excerpts of what Munchau writes about a Greek default, Italian solvency and euro zone dissolution.

Here’s what I am hearing. At the end, I will tell you how far-fetched I think these things are.

EUR/USD and European stocks recover amid hopes of Greece aid; market shrugs off Italy’s downgrade. BBH Sovereign Credit Rating Model suggests that further downgrades for Italy and Spain are likely.

Reader: It’s interesting that the ECB announced these liquidity mechanisms in place for some reason. Either, a Greek default, Italian or Spanish downgrade, or things inside the European banks are a lot worse than anyone is admitting. The…

Clearly, Stark sees the monetisation path the ECB is on as not at all compatible with thee ECB’s mandate. Separately, the noises coming out of the German governing coalition show exasperation with the progress in Greece. Edward Hugh writes…

The fact that Italy's 5-year CDS prices remain elevated (376 now vs 388 on Aug 4 peak) warns that ECB bond buying, fiscal austerity has not convinced private sector investors that the worst is truly past. This offers a poor backdrop from…

The Italian debt markets are a lot calmer this week than they were the week before last because the level of Italian bond yields is now more or less completely guaranteed by the European Central Bank (the ECB). However, Italy’s problem is…