euro zone

In a report published Thursday, BMO Capital Markets Connie Maneaty downgraded shares of Procter & Gamble Co (NYSE: PG) to Market Perform from Outperform with a price target lowered to $84 from a previous $100, primarily due to revisions tied to foreign exchange. According to Maneaty, the...

As I wrote in “Don’t Be Fooled: Get Short Now”, the euro is not that different from Enron, WorldCom or the Madoff fund. All of these organizations were able to pretend they were profitable or solvent long after they were insolvent. Now markets are finally acknowledging the intractability of the...

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the officials from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund conducted their fourth evaluation of the country on Monday. According to Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar, in his speech after the proceedings, the 78 billion euros bailout program is...

The debt crisis continuous to overwhelm Europe, and the prospects for countries most entrenched in debt, including Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are dismal. Worse, whether these countries voluntarily leave or are coerced to leave, it is conceivable that Germany may opt to go solo...

The New York Times’ reporters covering Europe’s financial, social, and political crises continue to channel Berlin and demonstrate an ignorance of economics so profound that it rivals the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers and columnists. On May 18, 2012 the NYT published “Rising Greek...

It was revealed on Friday that the euro zone has raised the combined lending ceiling for the two bailout funds to 700 billion euros, from 500 billion. The news was announced by euro zone finance ministers in a statement, according to Reuters. So where will that extra money come from? Well, 500...

While the Occupy Wall Street movement set its sights on occupying a financial center, Germany has accomplished the vastly more impressive feat of occupying an entire nation: Greece. Germany has experience at occupying Greece, having done so during World War II. The art of occupying another...

Wednesday, the European Central Bank loaned the European banks 529 billion euros. It is the second long-term refinancing option (LTRO) the ECB has offered in the last few months, following a previous LTRO in December that saw 489 billion euros lent out. LTROs are just one of several possible open...

Shortly after signing an agreement with 25 other European Union leaders for a new fiscal treaty that would punish euro zone countries that failed to meet budget targets, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy dropped the bombshell that Spain was going to run a bigger 2012 deficit than the one it had...

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...

Euro zone finance ministers are meeting today in Brussels to review Greece's compliance with a number of measures that the country must implement in order to receive its latest round of bailout funds. If the finance ministers are satisfied with the steps Greece has taken since the agreements were...

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...

Greece may have moved a bit further away from default after Finland's Parliament approved the latest Greek bailout plan. The Finnish parliament easily passed the bailout measure with a 111-72 vote, which followed successful votes to approve the Greek rescue package earlier this week by the German...

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny announced today that the Irish people will be given the choice of whether or not to accept the European Union's new fiscal treaty. The fiscal compact requires national budgets to either be in balance or be in surplus and contains correction mechanisms that will...