I had promised a quiet day. I may have to eat my words. Look at this on the euro, and remember my post yesterday.
The currency also weakened after Germany’s Stern magazine reported German Finance Minister Hans Eichel and Bundesbank President Axel Weber discussed a possible failure of European monetary union. The euro is off to [...]

Right: Polling in the Netherlands started at 5:30 this morning, the polling stations will close at 19:00, at which point a national exit poll will be released. So the question is: what will be the relative proportion of each camp? Stake your claims below.

Following the turbulent river of news which has flowed unrelentingly through the principal European media outlets since Sunday night, today we seem to be swimming in a relative ocean of calm. This is very deceptive. Today the Netherlands is voting and tomorrow the ECB will have a closely watched meeting which may potentially have significant [...]

And significantly. It will be worth looking at the US data this afternoon, but the trend is clear, off-shoring is, if anything, picking up speed.
Manufacturing in the dozen euro nations in May shrank the most in almost two years as unemployment near a five-year high and oil prices around $50 a barrel add to concerns [...]

Having just posted on Afoe suggesting I expect a quieter day, I have just noticed this:
“The euro fell against the dollar after the manufacturing report. The European single currency traded at $1.2285 at 10:15 a.m. in Frankfurt, down from $1.2304 late yesterday in New York, according to electronic foreign-exchange dealing system EBS.”
Still this fits in [...]

This is not surprising, but it is hard to see how the German economy is going to generate GDP and employment growth in 2005. Remember global trade is slowing gradually, so it is hard to see who you can rely on exports.
Retail sales in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, fell in April as unemployment held near [...]