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China
Britain warns China against protectionism – Telegraph
FT.com – China calls currency pressure ‘protectionism’
Chinese Premier Warns of ‘Double Dip’ Recession – WSJ.com
Paul Krugman – Taking On China and Its Currency – NYTimes.com
The more America huffs about the yuan, the less China will do about it – Telegraph
Is China’s Politburo spoiling for [...]

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Bundesbank President Weber has been the most candid to date about what the ECB could do in case Greece is downgraded again, especially by Moody’s.  Recall the problem:  Prior to the crisis, the ECB would take as collateral only paper rated A- or better.  During the crisis they have extended it to BBB-.  It is [...]

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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 early gains were wiped out during the North American session.  EUR/USD made a marginal [...]

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That’s the question on everyone’s mind and the one Bill Gross of Pimco attempts to answer in this month’s Investment Outlook. He starts out defining the problem as a lack of aggregate demand – the Keynesian understanding of depression.
To begin with, let’s get reacquainted with the fundamental economic problem of our age – lack of [...]

I said: “Here’s my question: when does this affect the Greek sovereign credit rating? That has to be next because the scenario I just scoped out would indeed suggest lower tax revenue and more budgetary pressure. Sure sounds like a death spiral to me.” And now (25 Feb 2010) S&P is saying, indeed , they may downgrade the sovereign debt next month.

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This post was originally published at A Fistful of Euros.
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s Latvian GDP numbers we now have news that Estonia’s economy shrank at the slowest annual pace in a year at the end of 2009 as a modest recovery in exports and one-time stock-building helped offset the impact of the continuing [...]

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Edward Hugh here. This is a first post at Credit Writedowns, one which was originally published at A Fistful of Euros. Expect to see more content from me here in future.
The post title is the conclusion drawn – rather surprisingly – not by some bank analyst, or by a Credit Ratings Agency, but by the [...]

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I woke up this morning thinking about James Baker’s October 1987 comments on the dollar which many feel precipitated the 1987 crash. This was on my mind as I contemplated the implications of Obama’s recent regulatory announcement bombshell. The market has been jittery the last two days and the VIX is way up. So, 1987 [...]

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Employees of US states and cities have much better pension plans than do Average Americans and this is creating some serious budgetary problems, one reason to be very careful in assessing municipal bonds, particularly general revenue ones.
A recent FT article puts some numbers on this problem:
The US public pension system faces a higher-than-expected shortfall of [...]

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Greece has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings to BBB+ over concerns about its budget deficit. Despite the cut, Fitch maintained a negative outlook on the country’s ratings, meaning it could fall further in the near future.  This action highlights how the real sovereign debt crisis is in Europe not in Dubai.
The ratings agency said:
The downgrade [...]