sovereign debt crisis

Given S&P's decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating to outlook negative, it bears remembering how we got here. I think the key word is deleveraging.

Moody's, the rating agency, has cut the credit rating for the Republic of Ireland two notches from Baa1 to Baa3, which is the lowest investment grade rating. They also left the outlook for further rate cuts as negative, meaning that more…

The euro zone periphery debt market has moved back into the fore, with Greece taking center stage again. While additional news flow out of the Ireland indicates that the Irish government is now considering the term “structured default” as a…

A year ago, in March 2010, Iceland’s economy was so small that it did not warrant much attention when 93% of its voters rejected the Social Democratic-Green government’s surrender to demands by Gordon Brown and the Dutch, the European Union…

In the wake of a sovereign debt ratings downgrade by the rating agency Moody's, Portuguese five-year bonds are trading with a yield of 10%. As a result, Portugal has leapt over Ireland into fourth place on the credit default swaps list of…

I was on CNBC's Power Lunch yesterday talking about European debt markets in the wake of the Irish stress tests. I certainly think the Irish stress tests were a significant event. But the Euro Crisis is really all about Spain.

The results of the Irish stress tests are going to be released this afternoon at 430PM Irish time. I will be talking about the implications for investors in European markets on CNBC's Power Lunch show. I think one has to be cautious…

By Win Thin S&P cut Portugal one notch from BBB to BBB-, and comes just five days after it cut the rating from A- to BBB. Did things really materially change over the past five days? It’s time for a reminder of what the agencies are…

After more than a year since the European debt crisis began, officials have still failed to resolve it. They raised expectations for a “grand bargain” only to crash them on the shoals of political reality. The March 24-25 Summit was to…

The resilience of the euro in the face of seemingly incontrovertible evidence that Portugal will need to get assistance and that very same program and approach has not been enough to stabilize the Greek and Irish situation is amazing.…