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News reports are now surfacing that the Germans are open to IMF involvement in the Greece sovereign debt crisis.  This is a 180-degree turn for the German finance minister who has expressed vocal opposition to the IMF’s involvement in ‘internal’ European Union affairs.
Bloomberg reports Germany making the shift to avoid being boxed in by a [...]

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Last week the federal Reserve released its quarterly flow of funds data. I have been unusually slow to parse the numbers. But I did do a very comprehensive sweep of the historical data in an October 2009 post called A brief look at the Asset-Based Economy at economic turns.
The overall conclusion of this analysis [...]

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As Irwin Stelzer argued in a recent opinion article in the Wall Street Journal, Spain’s Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero seems to be an admirer of Charles Dickens’s character Mr. Micawber. When asked what he plans to do about Spain’s 11.4% fiscal deficit, first he promises to extend the retirement age, only to later [...]

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Popular myth and, allegedly, the laws of aerodynamics have it that the bumblebee should not be able to take flight. Yet still, our good bumblebee refuses to be pulled down by such details and year after year it takes flight as if nothing has happened. This allegory applies, with some imagination, to Japans economy too. [...]

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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 [...]

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With the anxiety caused by the Greece situation alleviated for the time being by last week’s successful auction, words of support from Germany and especially France over the weekend, and follow through gains in the Greek debt market, attention may turn elsewhere ahead of Greece’s mid-March status report.
Portugal is the likely candidate and although the [...]

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European politicians have revealed that a European Monetary Fund is already in the planning phase. The reports suggest that this fund may be the mechanism through which the Eurozone will defend the sovereign debt of members and impose austerity conditions where necessary. The Europeans have – for political reasons – stressed that this fund will [...]

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The following is a post by Marc Chandler, global head of Brown Brother Harriman’s top ranked Currency Strategy Team. For more of BBH’s currency views, please visit the BBH FX website here.
Highlights

The US dollar was largely weaker vs. the majors as optimism picked up regarding Greece (see below).  EUR/USD traded at its highest level since [...]

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a plan to bail out Greece to the tune of $41 billion is now being formulated by Germany and France. It might seem as if a bailout is inevitable and that the terms of such a bailout are the only things now being negotiated between EU members. However, [...]

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The following is a post by Marc Chandler, head of Brown Brother Harriman’s Currency Strategy Team. For more of BBH’s currency views, visit the website here.
Pessimism pervades discussions of Europe today.  Optimists are not to be found.  Many warn that the entire economic and monetary union project is likely to falter over the large deficit [...]