Portugal

Here's a good video performance by Marshall Auerback on BNN's Business Day program. Marshall thinks the Greek default deal is actually a relatively good one. But sees a Portuguese default after the Greek default as a real possibility and…

Portugal appears to be headed down that same road. While we have warned in the past of risks that Portugal would need a second aid package, it is only since S&P joined the other major rating agencies on January 13 that more market…

I am not at all optimistic about the euro zone in terms of policy makers fashioning a solution to the problem. The euro leaders have the diagnosis all wrong. They keep harping on government debt and deficits as if that's the problem. And…

Assuming that the Greek and Italian political situation stabilize, the focus may shift back to the Iberia. The risk is that the new Spanish government will report a larger budget deficit and weaker finances in general than the outgoing…

Markets’ initial reaction to the latest EU emergency summit has been positive. Risk assets are trading up, risk-sensitive currencies are up, European bank stocks are up, and the broader stock market is as well. This relief rally is…

Here’s a great chart just released by the International Monetary Fund for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland as well as Japan, the US and the UK. Note that almost half of the US federal government debt is held by the Federal Reserve and the…

Euroland is coming apart at the seams. Belgian/Bund spreads are now also over 200bps along with Italy and Spain. Belgium has just entered the periphery and France is not far behind.

Felix Zulauf spoke to Barron’s Alan Abelson about his thoughts on the European sovereign debt crisis now that Greece has received its second 100 billion euro bailout. Here I discuss what Abelson says about the conversation and why I think…

This step will calm markets – for how long is anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, the budget cuts that this deal requires must be rapid in order to try to calm markets by maintaining the fiction that Greece is not insolvent and that the…

Tolstoy tells us in the first line of Anna Karenina that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is directly applicable to Europe. It is easy to tar all (growing) peripheral countries with the…