I’ve had my suspicions for some time that December saw a(n) (il)liquidity event throughout the “dollar” system. The problem with that supposition is the lack of corroborating price action in riskier markets where you would expect the most impact. That was the pattern revealed by the end of the last event on October 15, where risky credit, especially corporate junk [...]
The growing appeal toward unease about the terms of Greece’s ongoing strangulation is more than just a simple, fleeting sense of déjà vu. It is exactly the same process only pushed forward three years. At the height of the “last” challenge that began in earnest in 2010, and nearly re-ignited a global bank run (among only banks) for a second [...]
The European mess is coming more into view, and in almost every case that is a negative outcome. There really isn’t much going right in Europe right now, belying everything that was said, done or proclaimed only a year ago. Italian unemployment unexpectedly rose to a record high that’s more than double the German rate, keeping alive concerns about the [...]
Just as China grapples with the scale of economic waste induced by heavy monetarism, Europe has that old 2011 feeling again of financial waste. Mario Draghi’s July 2012 promise to “do whatever it takes” was taken by banks and financial “investors” as a free-for-all to ride severely discounted sovereign debt to tremendous profit. They did so much of that the [...]
Reuters reports this morning that RBC has joined with several other banks (only Goldman Sachs and Interactive Brokers were named by Reuters; Coutts & Co were named in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article from yesterday) in a lawsuit against Blumont Group Ltd. At issue, apparently, are shares several executives and owners pledged as collateral to the financial firms securing credit lines. [...]
In the course of researching the planned Greek bond sale I spied this passage and could not help but highlight it: In further evidence of the divergent inflation prospects and central bank policy between the U.S. and Europe, Spanish five-year yields dropped below U.S. Treasuries for the first time since 2007 on Thursday. Yep, “divergent inflation prospects.” The orthodox mythology [...]
To say that Greece is an economic and fiscal mess is to be repetitive. While the imprint of victimization stains much of the economic collapse, it is at least somewhat strongly applicable in the reminder that financialism is a huge strain in the long run. As with nearly everything European since last summer, the whispers run toward recovery even in [...]
For a moment last week it seemed like 2010 all over again. The euro crisis has been officially declared dead and buried, but Portugal’s rumblings on top of Greece’s renewed and further financial insecurity certainly made it seem otherwise. Only certain markets seem to care, however, as investor attention no longer seems transfixed by European dysfunction the way it was [...]
The rumors of the ECB rate cut had become rather ubiquitous in the past few weeks. Confidence in the European economy has been indirectly proportionate to those rumors, particularly as Germany seems to be heading south again after a short-lived reprieve. France is just a downright mess. But the rate cuts that were just announced will have no impact on [...]
Ever since the first warning of crisis in August 2007, indications of global banking health and liquidity have been turned upside down. Nowhere is that more evident than European banking, especially in the periphery. Observers have been looking for lower interest rates and reduced reliance on the ECB as evidence of “normalcy”. Starting with the chief interbank rate in Europe, [...]
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