sovereign debt crisis

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…

I have a number of links coming up in today's daily commentary. The likely topic will be US interest rates. But there is a second topic I wanted to riff on so I am posting here separately about fiscal woes in Spain and the Netherlands.

Back in November last year I posted on my confusion over the jubilation shown by the citizens of Spain as they elected Mariano Rajoy as their new political leader. Mr Rajoy’s strategy during the election campaign was to say very little…

Greece argues that its needs to strong defense spending for two threats. The first is from Turkey. Yet relations have improved and a military confrontation between these two NATO members seem quite remote. The other threat Greece is thought…

This is a thematic post, I am also putting outside the paywall because there is a lot of chatter today about Spain needing to tap EU bailout funds this year. The messaging in the analyst community follows the thematic prediction I made in…

Fitch Ratings released the following statement today in conjunction with their latest ratings action on sovereign debt issued by the United Kingdom.

The following explanation of the recent Greek ratings action was posted at Fitch Ratings website.

This is a gold-level post for members only. The EU is deathly afraid of either Spain or Italy getting into trouble and will do almost anything these countries ask. On the other hand, Hungary is expendable. This has clear investing…

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…

The dollar is weaker against most major and EM currencies with Greece still the major focus. The euro broke above 1.32 against the dollar in the European morning as it becomes evident that the Greek PSI deal will likely go through, as we…