ecb

It feels as though the market went from discussing a Greek exit as a very unlikely event to now the most likely endgame for Europe. The question is, what would a Greek exit actually look like and how would it play out? The answer can be seen in the way that the US authorities, along with other...

With the glory days of Spain's rapid economic boom of the mid-nineties long since passed, the new prime-minister Mariano Rajoy, in office since December, is currently faced with three major problems afflicting the country: high unemployment, budget deficits, and excessive weakness of the banking...

The ECB did not change its rates earlier today, consistent with investor expectations. Both Spain and France had strong demand for bond auctions today. Spain's yield was nearly 5% on its longest term offering, a significant increase. With ECB rates holding steady at a record low 1%, today's...

Futures were trading lower throughout the morning after a Spanish bond auction yielded results that were worse than anticipated. Yet, markets fell further still after the ECB's Mario Draghi made comments following the ECB's decision to keep interest rates at 1%. Draghi, who is currently speaking,...

PIMCO's CEO and co-CIO Mohamed El-Erian has sounded bells on what he believes are fundamental compromises that could thwart progress on the continued world crisis. In an article appearing on Project-Syndicate.org, Dr. El-Erian refers to two areas where the United States and Europe may be colluding...

In recent weeks, chatter in Europe has increasingly turned to the so-called "Tobin Tax". Named after Nobel award winning economist James Tobin who first proposed to regulate international currency markets, this tax would affect financial transactions. Advocated by Germany and readily supported...

Earlier today Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, announced that it would cut the key policy rate by 25 basis points to 1.5%. The central bank also said that "a substantially stronger krone may also result in further interest rate cuts." The announcement shook the currency market and USD/NOK...

The leaders of most European Union countries signed a new fiscal treaty aimed at preventing another sovereign debt crisis from happening. The leaders also hope that the treaty, also referred to as the fiscal compact, will reassure the markets that troubled euro zone members like Spain and Italy...

There was more bad news out of Europe on Thursday when the European Union's statistics agency Eurostat announced that unemployment in the euro zone had climbed to a euro era record high and inflation was on the rise too. Eurostat said that unemployment across the euro zone had reached 10.7 percent...

The European Central Bank provided euro zone area banks with another 530 billion euros ($712 Billion) in cheap loans on Wednesday. The European Central Bank (ECB) hopes that the low interest loans that it gave to 800 euro zone banks will give the euro zone economies a boost and lower the borrowing...