sovereign debt crisis

I thought now would be a good time to see how my ten surprises for 2012 are tracking as we are nearly a third of the way through the year. I posted these as my first weekly newsletter and these are events that have 1-in-3 odds of happening…

The Greek private sector can generally only rely on the Greek banking system for credit. At the same time the Greek private sector is moving liquidity out of the country, dramatically shrinking the availability of credit.

Professor Steve Keen was on Tonight with Vincent Browne in Ireland last week, where the topic understandably was the European Union. The question for Steve was how the Maastricht Treaty fits his economic paradigm, which follows Hyman…

Fitch has not been as aggressive as the other two agencies, keeping Austria and France at AAA up until now. As such, its negative comments about the Netherlands are noteworthy and likely signal a harder line by Fitch in the coming months.…

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…

The French premium over Germany rose today to a three-month high. Rumors of a rating downgrade proved wide of the mark, but it reflects the market's anxiety about the outlook for France going forward.

Spain is involved in two stories today that point to the difficulties that surround sovereign governments that are overindebted in foreign currency. There are a ton of Spanish-language links for that reason.

Rising tensions in Europe continues to be a dominant force in the foreign exchange market, with the euro briefly dipping below the $1.30 level for the first time since mid-February.

I thought I'd point out that the already severely undercapitalised Spanish banking system is being crushed by the spike in Spanish sovereign yields. I continue to expect Europe to continue the extend and pretend approach, creating…

"The chart also shows that the current economic situation is much weaker in several euro-area periphery countries. The recession in Greece has yet to end, and real GDP is now more than 17 percent below its prior peak. While a recovery…