Switzerland

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...

Swiss banking giant UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) announced that its 4th quarter net profit fell 76% to 393 million Swiss francs ($427 million), down from 1.66 billion Swiss francs for the same quarter a year earlier. The result fell well short of the forecast of 737 million Swiss francs in a Reuters poll of...

Japan's Finance Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that it had conducted stealth interventions in the foreign exchange markets in November of last year in an attempt to prevent the Japanese yen from climbing any higher. The Finance Ministry reported that it secretly sold 1.02 trillion yen ($13.3...

The news of the death of North Korea's long-term dictator, Kim Jong-Il, hit the Internet late last night. North Korea has been probably the most closed society and economy in the world and the foreigners have had a very limited access to the country. Kim Jong-Il or “Dear Leader” ruled the country...

Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa warned on Monday that a surging yen and the European Union's sovereign-debt crisis were slowing Japan's post tsunami economic recovery. The strong yen and the European financial crisis are related because as investors dump the euro, they look for what they...

Slovakia put the future of the euro in jeopardy yesterday when the tiny, poor European country voted against enhanced powers for the European Union that are needed in order to prevent a financial meltdown. Slovakia's ruling party failed to get enough votes to give the European Financial Stability...

Banking stocks across Europe have been rising since European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that the eurozone's leaders were considering recapitalizing the region's banks. Banking stocks had already been given a boost after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Europe needed to...

The United States Congress moved closer to passing a bill that would punish countries that the United States accuses of keeping their currencies artificially low. The law is clearly aimed at China, which has long been accused of manipulating its currency in order to make its exports more...

The euro dropped to an 8-month low against the American dollar, as concerns over Greece's ability to pay its debts continued to put pressure on the eurozone currency. European stock markets were also down during Monday trading as investors worried about the effect that a Greek default would have on...

The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a victory on Thursday when the German parliament passed a vote expanding the powers of the institution charged with saving troubled eurozone members like Greece, Ireland and Italy from default. The German Parliament overwhelmingly approved a...