Share
By Rob Parenteau, CFA, sole proprietor of MacroStrategy Edge, editor of The Richebacher Letter, and a research associate of The Levy Economics Institute.
The question of fiscal sustainability looms large at the moment – not just in the peripheral nations of the eurozone, but also in the UK, the US, and Japan. More restrictive fiscal paths [...]

Share
The Bloomberg video is a bit sensationalist in my opinion. But it gets to the heart of the problem in Europe, namely Spain. Spain has an economy and debt which is an order of magnitude larger than Greece. That means that problems in Spain are more critical than in Greece. But it also means that [...]

Share
David Rosenberg takes on the sovereign debt issue in his latest commentary, highlighting the structural deficits in the U.S. and the U.K. They are actually higher than in Spain or Greece.
Greece here, Portugal there. Did you know that the structural deficit-to-GDP ratio is actually higher in the U.S. (7.8%) and the U.K. (7.6%) than it [...]

Share
The following is a post by Marc Chandler, global head of Brown Brother Harriman’s Currency Strategy Team. For more of BBH’s currency views, visit the website here.
Greek bonds are continuing to recover from the sell-off at the end of last week that took the 10-year yield to 6.65%.  Now quoted near 6.12%, it is the [...]

Share
Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says – Bloomberg.com
Strong demand for 30 year gilt auction | Business | guardian.co.uk
GM to recall 1.3 million cars in North America
FT.com / Europe – Spanish jobless rate hits 19% as recession spreads
FT Alphaville – Tracy Alloway – On the non-existent basis of a [...]

Share
This is just in from the FT:
Germany recorded a budget deficit of 3.3 per cent of gross domestic product last year, one point more than the most recent forecasts, but still well below the level for most of Europe’s larger economies.
According to the figures released by the Federal Statistical Office on Wednesday, it is the [...]

Share
This is a post by Edward Hugh, who also blogs at Global Economy Matters.

“If you don’t fully understand an instrument, don’t buy it.”
To the above advice from Emilio Botín, Executive Chairman of Spain’s Grupo Santander, I would simply add one small rider: Don’t sell it either, especially if you are a national government trying to [...]

Share
Claus Vistesen here with a first post on Credit Writedowns.
GDP releases are, by their very nature, lagging indicators and thus do not tell us a whole lot about the current momentum in an economy. Moreover, the immediate focus of attention in the Eurozone remains, and rightly so, the situation in Greece (and Spain), and what [...]

Share
This post was originally published at A Fistful of Euros.
A new kind of battle is going on out there at the moment. In what must surely be a new twist to the old dialectic of blow against blow argument, a combination of the internet age and sophisticated data management software is adding an additional and [...]

Share
In my view, there is little chance the Germans are going to allow the EU to ride to the rescue of the Greeks. All of the bailout chatter does not really consider the domestic political constraints in Germany.
First, a bit of quick background.  Germany was traumatized by two world wars and an intervening period [...]