Spain

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…

The European Central Bank is now deciding how much liquidity to provide because it has received a quid pro quo from Italy that some analysts knew were necessary before the ECB would provide any liquidity. We will see soon whether this will…

The point is that this is a rolling crisis where investors have realised that the sovereign debt profiles right across Euroland have problems. And because there is no lender of last resort, the weakest debtors get plucked off one by one…

As Mr Zapatero put it on Saturday, when he announced the date of Spain’s general election, the decision “is in the country’s interest” since from now on there will be certainty, and “certainty is stability”. While it is quite possible that…

Euroland is coming apart at the seams. Belgian/Bund spreads are now also over 200bps along with Italy and Spain. Belgium has just entered the periphery and France is not far behind.

The Europeans can’t catch a break. The crisis has already flared before they have had a legitimate opportunity to deal with the medium- and longer-term issues. Willem Buiter says the Europeans need a 2.5 trillion euro EFSF to deal with…

Felix Zulauf spoke to Barron’s Alan Abelson about his thoughts on the European sovereign debt crisis now that Greece has received its second 100 billion euro bailout. Here I discuss what Abelson says about the conversation and why I think…

Tolstoy tells us in the first line of Anna Karenina that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is directly applicable to Europe. It is easy to tar all (growing) peripheral countries with the…

The question is not whether Greece will default but what will happen once it has. If Greece defaults but stays in the euro, not only will it not solve the underlying lack of competitiveness, but markets will immediately turn their attention…

Most analysts agree that Greece is insolvent. This column argues that the issue is whether Greece’s troubles are contagious.