Tom SpencerEurope may not go to rehab before it is too late THE US Federal Reserve took steps yesterday to make it easier for European banks to borrow and lend dollars. The Fed is now providing such cheap money to Europe that the European Central Bank can borrow from the Fed at lower interest rates than American banks. The […]
THE MARKETS have been temporarily buoyed amid optimism that European leaders will find a solution to the debt crisis. Unfortunately, the optimism is likely to be short lived because the problem with Greece is not just that they owe everyone a lot of money. Greek debt is a symptom of a more endemic problem rooted in the […]
Whatever you say it is, it isn’t ~ Alfred Korzybski IN OCTOBER 2011, private banks accepted a 50% writedown on Greek debt. European leaders negotiated the writedown to avoid a technical default. It is surprising that ratings agencies did not classify the writedown as a default when you consider that S&P defines sovereign default as […]
ON WEDNESDAY November 23rd, an auction of German government bonds (known as “Bunds”) managed to sell only €3.6 billion out of a total €6 billion worth of Bunds on offer (source: Economist). Germany is one of the most financially stable countries in the Euro-zone, so its failure to sell all of its Bunds is worth […]