sovereign debt crisis

Dangerous stuff being kicked around at a dangerous time. Our sense is both leaders were relieved by the success of ECB intervention to bring down Spanish and Italian bond spreads and they will continue to rely on Trichet’s monetary bazooka…

Remember, this is a solvency crisis too, not just a liquidity crisis.

It is also worth stressing that this solution is far from perfect. We do not live in an ideal world. It is only one possible way of breaking the vicious circle into which the Euro Area countries have now fallen. It is one possible way, and…

The bottom line is this: many in Northern Europe see this crisis as the result of the fiscal profligacy of bad actors which were known before the Euro’s existence to be bad actors. All of these countries except Spain have been running huge…

The point is EMU is a political construct and unworkable in its present state. The question is whether the Europeans want to take the political steps like Eurobonds or fiscal integration that are necessary to support a stable currency…

Last month I wrote an article called “The ECB is the difference” which claimed the ECB was the pivotal institution in the European sovereign debt crisis. I presented two options that the European Central Bank had in relieving pressure on…

Investors are anticipating the unravelling of the 21 July 2011 “solution” and a breakdown of the interbank-market that would throw the economy into an “immediate recession” like the one experienced after the Lehman bankruptcy. This column…

The past two weeks have seen large disruptions in the global capital markets and various policy responses. Market participants are having a difficult time getting a handle on these developments. There are three things investors should…

In the audio clip below, Ambrose Evan-Pritchard explains why he is a eurosceptic and why he believes a breakup in the eurozone is inevitable.

There are two spotlights in Europe today. France and Switzerland and their problems are intertwined. Despite denials by various French officials, the market suspects there is sufficient smoke to indicate a fire. Reuters reports that an…