Spain

Banks, households and the government sector are all engaged in deleveraging. It is difficult to see where aggregate demand will come from. Spanish exports in January were up about 4% from a year ago, but the pace appears to be leveling off.…

I had intended my commentary here to be on US interest rates but i have already written that (silver level) post. So I will refer you there. Instead, I will mention Europe again because the links are filled with European stories.

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.

The focus now ahead of the weekend is three-fold. First, Spain is set to unveil its 2012 budget. Full details will not be available until it is presented to parliament next Tuesday. However, the overall savings is what investors are most…

This is a day of the general strike in Spain, so a large number of the links below are about Spain and the situation there, in both English and Spanish.

Below is a video of scenes from the least peaceful parts of today's nationwide general strike in Spain. Other links are below. In general, the protests were peaceful.

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…

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…

There are several developments that warn of future problems in the euro zone and these make us suspicious about the euro's ability to sustain the upside break.

The shockingly weak euro zone flash PMI, especially the sub-50 reading for German manufacturing, is the main focus today. New orders have been weak and the Bloomberg consensus does expect the euro zone economy to contract not only in Q1 but…