Joblessness in the Eurozone reached new highs in October, with 11.7% of the population in the member states out of work. This compares to a 10.4% unemployment rate just a year ago. And inflation has slowed, suggesting that consumer spending activity has weakened even further. 23.9% of young people under 25 are unemployed. There’s considerable [...]

European finance ministers have yet to make any decisions on the Greek bailouts. In general they have to choose whether or not to continue funding the country’s borrowing and on what terms. Will they forgive another portion of Greek debt (this is unlikely)? Will they allow the country a reprieve from meeting EU budget targets [...]

Yesterday, protests in Spain led to clashes with police. Today, a general strike in Greece also led to clashes with police. Greek police have fired tear gas to disperse anarchists throwing petrol bombs near Athens’ parliament on a day-long strike against austerity measures. Clashes erupted during the first trade union-led action since a conservative-led coalition [...]

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi wrapped up his major press conference this morning, and the news was pretty much what we heard yesterday. Draghi announced the formation of the OMT, or Outright Monetary Transactions. It’s an unlimited sovereign debt purchase scheme for those countries which submit to giving the ECB a vote on their [...]

The details of the European Central Bank bond purchase plan have been leaked to Bloomberg, and they confirm perhaps the worst fears of how this program would be managed. As I’ve been saying all along, Mario Draghi was faced with a dilemma. He needed to act to save troubled sovereigns in Europe like Spain and [...]

Yesterday I noted what a consequential week this would be for the European economy, as the European Central Bank prepared to make its decision on how to deal with soaring bond yields in Italy and Spain. ECB President Mario Draghi let some of the cat out of the bag yesterday, hinting that the central bank [...]

It appears the European Central Bank is ready to pick a fight with Germany over their resistance to saving the Eurozone economy through monetary means. Writing in the German newspaper Die Zeit, ECB president Mario Draghi espoused a viewpoint basically contradictory to the German reserve at using monetary tools to stop cascading bond yields in [...]

Bond yields in the trouble spots of Europe have actually come down a bit, as observers get more comfortable with Mario Draghi’s unfolding strategy at the ECB. Remember that this is all based on the idea that labor market reforms in the troubled sovereigns, which amounts to “internal devaluation” or widespread suffering borne on the [...]

A funny thing happened on the way to disaster in Europe. Everyone decided that they misread Mario Draghi’s thin policy statement from yesterday, and that he’s actually really committed to saving Europe, particularly by using the power of the European Central Bank to ensure lower bond rates at the most troubled sovereigns. Basically, everyone keyed [...]

Europe is tanking today after the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi quite literally failed to put his money where his mouth is. Last week, Europe cheered when Draghi said in a press conference that the ECB would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. He also said that the high bond yields in Spain [...]

Spanish and Italian borrowing costs have eased, basically entirely because of some soothing words last week from the head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi. He promised to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro, while never explicitly saying what that would entail. Most observers took Draghi to mean that the ECB would [...]