EFSF

Investor, trader, watcher of the market from afar - we are three weeks into 2012 and the European Union is still…the European Union. Greece has not moved to readopt the drachma as a means to devalue its way out of its financial troubles. France and Spain have had relatively successful debt...

Traders across the globe are trying to figure one thing out right now: is Europe healing or not? Despite poor macroeconomic data, European citizens appear to be positive about the economy. Could these consumers be dead wrong about their economy? According to surveys, German citizens' economic...

Throughout the second half of 2011, investors watched the sovereign debt crisis in Europe slowly deteriorate. Multiple weaker countries have buckled and are now relying on a bailout package administered by the European Financial Stability Facility. In order to complete the bailout fund, debt...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the European Union needs to quickly enact treaty changes in order to better deal with the eurozone financial crisis. The German Finance Minister said that a treaty change was needed so that the European Union could have veto power over the budgets of...

On Thursday afternoon the equity markets and some commodities cratered. Silver was absolutely pummeled, dropping nearly 7% while Treasuries rallied. Trouble emanating from Europe may have been the primary catalyst behind the downward move, as the yields on bonds in Italy and Spain continued to...

Hardly a day passes without some news from Europe these days that could potentially move markets. Whether it's Greece backing down on a holding a referendum, Italy's Berlusconi finally resigning, or EFSF buying its own bond due to lack of demand, there's no shortage of drama for the saga....

It looks like Europe has finally drawn a line in the sand for bailouts. Just on the other side of that line is Italy. According to Reuters, Europe has no plans at this time to rescue Italy, despite the fact that Italy's debt costs have risen above the level where they could reasonably be expected...

"8 1/2" was a great movie, but having bond yields approach that number is downright scary. Last night, the London Clearing House disrupted markets even further than they already are by raising margins on Italian debt, sending yields on Italian, and French debt soaring. The yield on Italian ten...

Back in July, I wrote about the debt dominoes starting to fall, but no one was caring that much. The article related to the problems in the U.S., where we eventually saw S&P downgrade U.S. debt. Yet, the issue of a debt domino is easily just as applicable to Europe as well. Last week, when...

Everyone and their brother was euphoric yesterday, as equity markets acted like Europe had solved its problems overnight. Sorry to be the bearer of bad bad news, but it did not. There were no concrete details on how the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) will be leveraged, how the...