Category: Eurozone Debt Crisis
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Spain Committing Financial Suicide to Appease Big Finance, Marching Towards Depression / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Whitney
“Other countries have gone through similar experiences. Latin American countries suffered a lost decade after 1982, and Japan has been stagnating for a quarter of a century; both have survived. But the European Union is not a country and it is unlikely to survive. The deflationary debt trap threatens to destroy a still-incomplete political union.” George Soros, Financial Times
Monday, April 16, 2012
The Pain in Spain is too Big to be Contained / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: PhilStockWorld
Depression.
Not the Economy (yet) but how I feel so far in my weekend reading. Even John Mauldin had to go against his wishes to ignore Spain this week now echos my thoughts on the subject in an excellent overview of the situation. Russ Winter has s similar view in "Bernanke and Germany Wake up to a Merda Storm" and Mish discusses Spain's emergency ban on cash transactions exceeding 2,500 Euros in an effort to clamp down on tax evaders and stop the rapid flow of money out of the country as well as the massive jump in Bank of Spain borrowing from the ECB.
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Sunday, April 15, 2012
Spain in Debt Crisis War, Fighting to Stop Turning into a Black Economy / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Mauldin
I fully intended to ignore Spain this week. Really, truly I did. I had my letter all planned, but then a few notes drew my attention, and the more I reflected on them, the more I realized that the inflection point that I thought the ECB had pushed down the road for at least a year with their recent €1 trillion LTRO is now rushing toward us much faster than ECB President Draghi had in mind when he launched his massive funding operation.So, we simply must pay attention to what Spain has done this week – which, to my surprise, seems to have escaped the attention of the major media. What we will find may be considered a tipping point when the crisis is analyzed by some future historian. And then we'll get back to some additional details on the US employment situation, starting with a few rather shocking data points. What we'll see is that for most people in the US the employment level has not risen, even as overall employment is up by 2 million jobs since the end of the recession in 2009. And there are a few other interesting items. Are we really going to see 2 billion jobs disappear in the next 30 years?
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Spain Would Be Dead Without ECB Loans, Black Market Transactions in Spain; Bartering in Greece / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
As Greece wonders whether its debt crisis will eventually spell its exit from the euro, one town, Volos, has formed an alternative local currency as noted by the BBC in Greece Bartering System Popular in Volos.
Read full article... Read full article...A few months ago, an alternative currency was introduced in the Greek port city of Volos. It was a grass-roots initiative that has since grown into a network of more than 800 members, in a community struggling to afford items in euros during a deepening financial crisis.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Spain in the Debt Crisis Crosshairs / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: William_Bancroft
Only weeks ago Italian technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti proselytized that the Eurozone crisis was “almost over”. It felt like more propaganda from the European establishment, and since returning from the Easter break the markets don’t seem to be agreeing with him. Spanish and Italian yields are firmly on the rise again, marking a reverse of the trend helped into action by €1bn of refinancing money from the ECB. Tensions are rising once more given that Spain and Italy are ‘too big to bail’
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
ECB Soveriegn Debt Bond Buying Deja Vue All Over Again / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Shedlock
ECB Says Bond-Buying Program Available
The ECB went from loading up on sovereign debt and making a huge mess of it when Greece defaulted, to the LTRO program which has not made a big mess yet but will. Things are about to go full-circle as the ECB threatens once again to make another mess of things with sovereign bond purchases.
The Bundesbank, Germany's central bank protested bond purchases the last time (correctly), and will do so again, likely to no avail, and with the same predictable results.
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Thursday, April 05, 2012
Why the ECB Expanded Its Balance Sheet By Over $1 trillion in Less Than Nine Months / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
Between July 2011 and today, the ECB has expanded its balance sheet by an incredible $1+ trillion: more than the Fed’s QE 2 and QE lite combined (and in just a nine month period).
This rapid and extreme expansion of the ECB’s balance sheet (again it was greater than QE lite and QE2 combined… in nine months) indicates the severity of the banking crisis in Europe. You don’t rush this much money out the door this fast unless you’re facing something very, very bad.
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Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Italian Bonds/Economic Data/Materials Raise Caution Flag / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Chris_Ciovacco
Our models remain bullish longer-term, but we have some concerns on a shorter-term time horizon. The yield on a ten-year Italian bond has crept back up over 5%, a level which was last seen just prior to recent corrections/big drops in stock prices (see purple arrows below). Economic data has started to weaken relative to expectations in a similar manner to what we saw in spring 2011 (blue arrow below).
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Monday, April 02, 2012
German Bunds Interest Rate Yield Pressing Support / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Mike_Paulenoff
Starting a new month and a new quarter, U.S. 10 year YIELD remains rangebound, but looking like it is in a down-loop towards 2.00% again.
In our comparison chart between U.S. and German yield, notice that German 10-year yield is pressing against its key support plateau, and looks like it is about to break down, which probably is a warning either that some other negative surprise is approaching in Europe, or that the German economy is about to sputter -- or both. All of this will negatively impact U.S. growth and press Treasury yield lower, also impacting the iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT).
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Monday, April 02, 2012
The blind spot surrounding the 2005 'major restructuring' of the Goldman / Greek secret loan / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: ECB_Watch
The EU Commission was at the forefront of the response to the revelation in 2010 of irregularities in Greece's government statistics and in particular the 2.8bn Euros secret loan it received from Goldman Sachs in 2001 (Bloomberg). Has it delivered, and has parliamentary oversight been adequate?
Sunday, April 01, 2012
Germany Wins Eurozone War, UK Veto Puts Britain on the Fast Track to EU Exit / News_Letter / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: NewsLetter
The Market Oracle NewsletterDecember 10th, 2011 Issue #24 Vol. 5
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Sunday, April 01, 2012
Euro Crisis Next Phase All About Spain, the Mother of All Housing Bubbles / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Mauldin
Last Monday I was in Paris and was asked to do a spot on CNBC London. I arrived at the studios an hour early due to a misunderstanding of the time zones, so while trying to catch up on the news I listened to CNBC. I had just written about Spain in last week's letter and guessed that was what they wanted to talk to me about, but for the full hour before I got on it seemed like every guest wanted to talk about Spain. When I had my turn and indeed got the Spain question, I smiled and noted that we were now in a period when it would be "All Spain All the Time," for at least the next year. I should have noted that there would be brief interruptions where we glanced at Portugal and perhaps Ireland, but the real focus would be on Spain.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
Greek Government Robbed Public Institutions to Complete the Bond Swap / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Global_Research
John Ward writes: “But Lucas my dear, if you run out of poor people, you can always steal from the sick”
REVEALED: HOW THE VENIZELOS GOVERNMENT SECRETLY REMOVED 70% OF MAJOR HOSPITAL, UTILITY & UNIVERSITY BANK ACCOUNT FUNDS TO PAY BONDHOLDERS
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Friday, March 30, 2012
Germany Monetary Policies Openly Working Against the ECB… What’s Next? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
While the mainstream financial media and 99% of investors continue to believe that Germany will align itself with the EU, we’ve been pounding the table Germany will in fact look after its own interests rather than the EU’s and that it might in fact leave the Euro temporarily.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Europe's Monetary Bazooka Will Fire Blanks / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
Europe continues to take a page out of Hank Paulson’s “Crisis Combat” booklet, by unveiling one monetary “bazooka” after another. Obviously, EU leaders didn’t notice that Paulson’s “bazooka” completely failed to stop the 2008 Crash.
Even more strangely, they keep pulling out bazooka after bazooka, first unveiling the EFSF which was supposed to raise €1 trillion but failed to raise even €10 billion without having to intervene in its own bond auctions.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Will Holland Escape the Eurozone Debt Crisis by Exiting the European Union? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: John_Mauldin
For your Outside the Box today I treat you to another big, juicy slab of Grant Williams' Things That Make You Go Hmmm… I don't want to be all Grant all the time, but this is just so good I couldn't resist. This week, Grant is digging deep into the history and mystery of the European Union, taking us all the way back to the first inter-country treaty in April 1951 and then following the rather tortuous bureaucratic proceedings that led, by hook and by crook, to today's increasingly problematic eurozone.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Greece is Now Irrelevant. Spain and Germany Will Decide the Euro’s Future / Currencies / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
Earlier this month, Spain began “rocking” the EU boat by telling the EU it wasn’t going to meet the new EU fiscal requirements.
Spain’s sovereign thunderclap and the end of Merkel’s Europe
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
Euro Crisis: Plight of the Netherlands, Staggering Unemployment in Spain and Greece / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Bob_Chapman
A report by the London-based Lombard Street Research, which says the Netherlands is badly handicapped by euro membership, and as a result the Dutch Freedom Party has called for a return to the Guilder. Leader Geert Wilders has become the first political movement in the euro zone with a large popular base to opt for withdrawal from the single currency. The Freedom Party is a conservative populist party. We do not read Dutch, but the very fact that this information was only picked up by a few sources outside of the Netherlands shows you what managed news is all about.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Big Fat Greek Lie Is Now Obvious to Spain… So Who’s Next to Debt Default? / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Graham_Summers
The big fat Greek lie being spread throughout the financial community is that Greece has been saved. It’s a lie for the following reasons:
1) Greece did in fact default
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Thursday, March 15, 2012
Europe's Economic Crisis: Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Belgium Following Greece / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
By: Bob_Chapman
It isn’t over until it is over. Of course, we are referring to Europe and its version of 1984. We find it profound that the bankers, politicians and bureaucrats of Europe can do what they have done with a straight face. Investor had a haircut shoved down their throats and the ECB, the European Central Bank and the IMF were exempt.