I think one of the topics for next years election in Italy is just being decided. Romano Prodi (former President of the EU Commission) has just spoken out against Sinascalco. He is in favour of making cuts. Prodi is quoted as saying that:

“Credit downgrades will follow if there is not quick action in fixing the [...]

Many readers have been asking about the mechanics of any hypothetical ‘euro’ break-up, or indeed of what might happen if one country were to leave. Up to now, we have been told this is impossible, but clearly it is possible, and, however remote the possibility may seem (the order of 5% risk is the topical [...]

In some ways I think this story may run and run over the months to come. Bloomberg have an update on their earlier article. According to the latest account:
1/. The German Finance Ministry have declined to comment on the Stern report that discussions took place last week between Finance Minister Hans Eichel, Bundesbank President Axel [...]

The euro fell to a seven-month low in Asia and had the biggest fluctuation of any currency on concern the rejection of a proposed European Union constitution will slow the region’s economic integration…………
Against the dollar, the euro fell to $1.2370, the lowest since Oct. 14. It bought $1.2390 at 2:05 p.m. in Tokyo from $1.2475 [...]

The euro reached its lowest level against the dollar in seven months last week dropping from a valueof $1.311 a month ago to $1.255 on Friday. This was the lowest level since last October. Undoubtedly there are a confluence of factors at work here: yesterday’s French growth numbers, longer term stagnant growth [...]

The ECB met earlier today to conduct the monthly review of interest rate policy. It came as a surprise to noone that the outcome was to leave everything just as it is. Surprisingly though the decision this month is surrounded by a little more controversy than has been the case of late since Italy’s Berlusconi [...]

Currency traders around the globe lazily staring into their screens must have found themselves transfixed last Friday when the flatline indicating the value of the Chinese yuan (or renminbi if you prefer) suddenly jumped to life. And so it was that during a brief 20 minute interval the yuan surged to a level of 8.270 [...]

In a post which appeared earlier this week Tobias asks us whether, given some of the possible consequences of a French “non”, it might not be reasonable to ’scare’ voters a little by spelling out some of the potential fallout which might follow a French rejection of the Constitution Treaty.
Perhaps the phrasing is unfortunate, [...]

I was a little surprised to read in the Christmas edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (not yet online, subscription wall, in German) that Robert Mundell seems to have changed his mind. In his seminal 1961 paper about monetary integration, he famously stated that “the optimum currency area is not the world”. Now it appears [...]

After a series of posts on the rise of the euro earlier in the year, I’ve been relatively quiet on this front of late. This doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away. The growing feeling that the US economy was taking off certainly eased the pressure, and the euro has hovered around the low [...]