Belgium

France and Belgium have both lifted restrictions on the short selling of financial stocks that were put in place last year after several major European financial institutions saw their stock prices fall dramatically. Stock prices for French banking giants BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe...

France was warned for the second time this week by a major credit rating agency that its valuable triple-A credit rating could be downgraded in the near future. Standard & Poor's was the latest credit rating agency to say that the eurozone's second biggest economy was in danger of being...

Moody's Investors Service dropped a bombshell on the markets late on Monday when the credit rating agency said that it will "monitor and assess” France's Aaa credit rating. The markets have reacted negatively to much of the recent news out of Europe. The possibility of a downgrade to France's...

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet warned the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday that the financial crisis facing the eurozone is systemic and that Europe's leaders must take decisive action in order to prevent it from escalating and spreading. Trichet will soon be stepping...

The euro rallied on Monday morning, as the EUR/USD pair spiked above the 1.36 level. News from Europe may have been the primary driving catalyst behind the move. Dexia, one of the continent's largest banks, was partly nationalized on Monday. The country of Belgium agreed to purchase the bank's...

Dexia SA agreed to sell its Belgian banking retail operations to the Belgian government for 4 billion euros ($5.4 billion) in order to prevent the Belgian-French financial institution from going bankrupt. Dexia had recently lost access to short term funding because of concerns over its debt...

France, Italy, Spain and Belgium announced that they are introducing restrictions on short selling in a fight against market volatility that they say is being caused by the abusive spread of false rumors. French banking stocks took a hit earlier this week as rumors spread that the banks' financial...

The French economy unexpectedly stagnated during the 2nd quarter, according to France's National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, which reported that France's 2nd quarter economic growth rate was 0% and that consumer spending fell 0.9%. The news is troubling because France is the...

The world has long recognized that Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain (the so called PIIGS) have been struggling with debt and solvency issues for years. Obviously, Greece has been the poster child for the group, with massive Greek protests dominating the news seemingly every other day....

If Sony (NYSE: SNE) could go back in time and re-market The Social Network with current information, the film's tagline would have read, “You can't make 700 million friends without making a few enemies.” That's right Facebook users, Business Insider reports that the social network that everyone...