sovereign debt crisis

Reuters has reported that the parliament in Portugal will likely reject the socialist government's austerity budget, a move which will precipitate the collapse of that government, new elections and a likely bailout by the European Union.…

Rumors of a missed coupon payment in Ireland made the rounds and many now are down playing it. However, the problems in the periphery have not lessened. The real immediate focus is on Portugal. The government's new austerity measures will…

By Edward Hugh As Japanese officials continue to toil away in what we all hope will be a successful bid to avert a worst case nuclear meltdown, even while thousands of Japanese remain missing and unaccounted for, financial market…

Moody’s cut Portugal by two notches to A3 and kept a negative outlook despite the recently announced fiscal tightening and despite the tentative plan to expand the EFSF. This downgrade really shouldn’t come as any surprise. As we wrote just…

Ray Dalio spoke to Barron's in an interview that appeared in the weekly this past weekend. The themes of the conversation were the following: The world is on a dual track with emerging markets doing much better than developed…

European officials have reached an agreement in principle that falls well shy of the “comprehensive plan” officials had promised and is unlikely to provide investors with a sense of closure to the debt crisis that began in late 2009. Yet…

Last Wednesday, BNN's Howard Green spoke to Rob Cox of Reuters and me about two issues: the monster rally from March 2009 and the ongoing European debt crisis. On the markets, yes, I foresaw a rally two years ago because stock prices…

By Marc Chandler The market continues to digest the meaning and implications of Moody's decision to cut Spain's rating to Aa2 from Aa1. The two main considerations behind Moody's decision is that the cost to restructure the banks will be…

BBH CurrencyView Highlights The US dollar is stronger, benefitting in part from euro weakness as the sovereign debt returns to the fore and geopolitical tensions linger. The euro fell to the lowest level in a week, down three of the…

By Marc Chandler The newly created European Banking Authority will be overseeing the stress tests on almost 90 European banks. Recall that the stress tests last year met broad criticism for the lack of rigor. It was anticipated that the…