Tag Archives: Ireland

Germany’s Approaching Götterdämmerung

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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Europe’s Sovereign Debt Crisis Hasn’t Gone Away

It’s surprising that the banking crises facing Ireland and Portugal, and the wider European banking sector - have not been more contagious. While the risk of Ireland and Portugal defaulting soars, other Europe sovereign bond yields remained fairly flat in the third quarter, and Greece even enjoyed a rally of 140bp to 775bp. This calm is not likely to last long though, before more questions are asked of the banks which own the dodgiest euro-zone debt.
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The IMF Is Turning Into A Monster

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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More Evidence of German Banking Untruths

As if further evidence was needed that the German banks have been lying about the true state of their balance sheets, and that a German banking crisis is in the offing, we learn that German mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate will receive another €40 billion of state guarantees.
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Running Faster to Stand Still, Ireland is Going Nowhere Fast

Standard & Poor’s cut to Ireland’s credit rating is hardly a surprise given that Irish debt is estimated to peak at 137% of GDP, against government estimates of about 94%, despite austerity that will have seen the economy contract by around 15% since 2008 by the end of 2010.  Many more downgrades can be expected [...]
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