sovereign debt crisis

Given Greek sentiment, in all likelihood, a referendum vote for the bailout agreement will fail. The question is “what then?” I would anticipate that, at a minimum, an an actual default which triggers credit default swaps with higher…

Lots of debate out there what took the market down today. We’re not certain you can tag the first 15 S&P points on a single factor — MF Global, euro, Italy, yen intervention and strong dollar, or simple profit taking — but willing to up…

Austerity cuts demand too much to have the positive effects on deficits in the short-term that Europe wants it to have. All of these countries are likely to miss their targets. And then the Troika ‘occupations’ will commence. This is a…

10-year Italian paper now trades at 6.17% and is poised to break through highs set in August. While the ECB and European leaders recognise that the ECB is the difference here, they are as yet unwilling to have the ECB declare itself…

Risk aversion is taking hold again with global stocks broadly lower; dollar firmer against majors. Price action dominated in part by BoJ intervention; on the data front Chicago PMI and Canadian GDP. Norway’s central bank indicated it will…

For those of you wondering what's just happened in Europe, here is an animated explanation.

The big question–apart from how many investors they will get to go along with this, given that they couldn’t reach their target of 90% investor participation when the write-down was only going to be 21%–is whether this will trigger a CDS…

The challenge that the Irish economy faces can best be described in the context of flows and stocks of assets and liabilities. Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the IMF/EU/ECB Troika, Ireland must implement a severe fiscal…

CDS buyers hate it, as do holders of Italian, Spanish, Irish, and Belgian bonds. Portuguese bond holders are just fine. There was no reaction in Austria, Germany and France.

The French paper L’Express live-blogged the event and I just wanted to fill you in on the critical passage right at the outset of the interview that everyone has been talking about regarding the Greek default, the CDS and the euro. My…