In a week which has already seen Rai president Lucia Annunziata announce her departure (Rai is Italy’s state-run television and radio network), the latest statements from the Italian government about the future of Alitalia only serve to reopen one of the old questions floating round my head: just how solvent is Italy?
The [...]

Update: The ECB has now announced that it will leave rates unchanged for another month. This in my view is a mistake, essentially putting off the inevitable for another month - unless, that is, Trichet has info that tomorrow’s US employment numbers will be much better than expected. If not this is only [...]

I have already posted on my own blog about what I see as the surreal consequences which might follow from this wish becoming a reality. If what I think happens next to the Spanish economy really does happen - and I have no doubt whatsoever that the housing bubble will crash one or other of [...]

Well I suppose it’s better to end the week on a bang rather than a whimper, so here I go with another of those posts. What really ended the week on a high note (or should I say a low one) was the US labour market. And since I am arguing that the euro-dollar parity [...]

When this is all over, and we come to look back at the when and the where, maybe we will remember today’s decision as just one more of those missed opportunities. Certainly not much notice seems to have been taken of Gerard Schroeders request for a helping hand on the interest rate front. Is there [...]

“A sad day for trade relations between the US and Europe”. This is how John Disharoon, vice president of the trade committee at the American chamber of commerce to the EU described the decision by the European Union to begin imposing trade sanctions on US goods as of today. Of course, the arguments about [...]

Eurostat issued a flash indicator last Friday to the effect that eurozone inflation has fallen unexpectedly from 1.9% to 1.6%. I say unexpectedly, but of course this is, in many ways, one of the foreseeable consequences of the euro rise.

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OK I’m on a roll, so I’m going to stick my neck out. This slide in the Italian confidence index apparently surprised the ‘experts’. Well it shouldn’t have surprised Fistful readers who have been following what I have been saying. Clearly these confidence indexes are not the last word in sliced bread. But [...]

Now maybe David is sitting there today asking himself just what the hell that post of Edward’s on outsouring in the US had to do with a European centred blog. Well the answer didn’t take long in reaching us: the euro rose to a fresh record above $1.29 today as upbeat U.S. data [...]

After a weekend of semantic analysis the currency markets didn’t take long getting back to work - the euro was only a cent off its all time high by late morning. According to Dictionary.com the relevant meaning of volatility is: tending to vary often or widely, as in price - the ups and downs [...]