Tag Archives: ECB

Spaniards and Italians Will Never Accept Greece’s Fate

By Martin Fluck | Published: September 6, 2012
The markets have been transfixed by the ECB’s plan for unlimited purchases of bonds - or outright monetary transactions, as they are to be called. But the ECB’s implicit deal with Germany, to link any bond purchases to the European rescue funds’ strict fiscal conditions, has tied its hands. Saving the euro now depends on proud nations like Spain and Italy being willing to kowtow to their new masters in Berlin. Judging by the mood of the Spanish people, it’s more likely that Spain will call Germany’s bluff and threaten to leave the euro forthwith, unless it is given unconditional support.
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Germany’s Approaching Götterdämmerung

By Martin Fluck | Published: April 20, 2012
Germany has been viewed as a safe haven by investors, until now. After all, its export sector has been booming. But investors are beginning to bet against Germany and its manufacturing firms, as a break-up of the euro-zone creeps ever closer. This is because the cost of failure for Germany is growing fast, and the Bundesbank may be trying to force the government’s hand before it digs itself a deeper hole.
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The IMF Is Turning Into A Monster

By Martin Fluck | Published: September 20, 2010
It’s been apparent for some time that the IMF is no longer an independent institution but an arm of the European financial elites. With Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the helm when the financial crisis hit, Germany and France have cynically been able to use the IMF for their own ends, dropping ever larger sums into the EU with ever fewer conditions, to protect German and French banks that have huge exposures to the PIIGS. Angering the very same Asian countries that were dictated to by the IMF in 1997, and who are now being asked to pay the bills, and stretching US patience to the limit, it is all likely to end in tears.
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The Second Wave of Europe’s Banking Crisis is Crystallizing

By Martin Fluck | Published: September 8, 2010
As the crisis in the European financial sector deepens, trading patterns are indicating a major sell-off within the next month, if the market breaks out of the flag patterns forming in the MSCI European Financials Index. After all, the ECB’s extension of its liquidity safety net for vulnerable euro zone banks – and the guarantees for troubled banks in Ireland – can only fuel suspicion about skeletons in the closet.
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