» European Markets

Please consider the ass backwards Measures to Stimulate Bank Lending in the EMU. The European Central Bank may announce a range of measures tomorrow to stimulate bank lending, said three euro-area officials with knowledge of policy makers’ deliberations. Options on the table include loosening co...

It is now common to use the term bazooka when referring the actions of governments and central banks as they try to avert a credit crisis. And this week we saw a coordinated effort by central banks to use their bazookas to head off another 2008-style credit disaster. The market reacted as if the c...

How many European bankers does it take to change a light bulb? That’s a joke in search of an answer, but EWI’s European analyst Brian Whitmer explained five months ago that the “light bulb moment” was coming — that’s the time when most people would clearly recogni...

The European debt Bubble has burst, and the repricing of risk and debt cannot be put back in the bottle. It’s really this simple, Europe: either rebel against the banks or accept decades of debt-serfdom. All the millions of words published about the European debt crisis can be distilled down ...

Stock markets soared after the coordinated actions on Wed. Nov. 30 from six central banks around the world — the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB), and the central banks of Canada, U.K., Switzerland, and Japan — to provide “temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangemen...

If French president Nicolas Sarkozy gets his wish to ‘Level the Playing Field‘ on sovereign bonds, a decade-long European recession is on its way. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made it clear in a speech in Toulon last week that he wanted the private sector to be given a more-level pl...

Via Google Translate [with some minor tweaks by me where obvious], Spiegel Online reports Federal Government is considering nationalization of Commerzbank After the end of 2008, the institute plunged into the vortex of the financial crisis and needed financial assistance. The federal government h...

The ‘risk-on’ trade is back in full force today as portfolio managers and hedge funds are already behind the curve due to this year’s whipsaw market action.   However, the need to performance chase is becoming critical as the inevitable tick of the clock slowly counts down the re...

The time for literary allusions or even macroeconomic commentary is unfortunately over. While we have rehashed the debt deflation pattern more than enough for the past three years, I never dreamt that European leaders would themselves become a part of the problem. Yesterday’s meeting in Strasb...

In 1999, 11 European countries surrendered their currencies for the euro and a shared monetary authority. But as the world applauded, Elliott Wave International (EWI) forecast that those countries had also sealed a shared fate: to eventually collapse together in a liquidity-driven deflationary spir...

European bonds had a good day today. A good day is when nothing blows up. Italy 10-Year Government Bonds  Italy 2-Year Government Bonds  Germany 10-Year Government Bonds  Germany 2-Year Government Bonds  After a brief spurt higher, which sent S&P futures down a percent last evening, Ita...

The people buying bonds issued by Italy and Spain are clearly looking past the dysfunctional balance sheets and focusing on Germany’s reluctance to let a major PIIGS country default. So an Italian bond, in the mind of the market, becomes a German bond. But this sword cuts both ways. If European d...