Portugal

The Swiss National Bank reported its reserve figures yesterday and the increase in its sterling holdings are notable and may help explain the its relative strength, despite data a soft real sector reports, culminating in the news last week…

In last week's weekly newsletter, I explained why Spain was in big trouble. Today I want to present the full context euro zone-wide and why there will be more sovereign defaults to come in the euro zone. This will be a very comprehensive…

Despite comparisons with Greece, Portugal is not in entirely the same situation, at least not yet it isn't. Crucially, Portugal is currently under no obligation to deal with international or national creditors to increasing government debt…

The following is the text of a ratings action on Portuguese banks initiated today

There are several developments that warn of future problems in the euro zone and these make us suspicious about the euro's ability to sustain the upside break.

The shockingly weak euro zone flash PMI, especially the sub-50 reading for German manufacturing, is the main focus today. New orders have been weak and the Bloomberg consensus does expect the euro zone economy to contract not only in Q1 but…

Naturally austerity isn’t popular, and evidently it doesn’t work as intended, but then this was already known before we started on this course, so it isn’t really a surprise. But what alternative do the Euro Area’s imprisoned periphery…

This is a bronze level post. These are the links with my daily commentary for 9 Mar 2012 on the Greek PSI deal and the renewed urgency this makes for Spain and Portugal.

Portugal's aid package assumes it can return to the capital markets in the second half of last year. This seems less likely with each passing day.

The country's economy will now shrink because European policy makers fail to understand the dynamics of debt deflation.