News (Thu evening) – BTH
Recap (29-Dec) – GMT Europe Crisis Tracker – WSJ
EURO CRISIS
Dithering at the Top Turned EU Crisis to Global Threat – WSJ A look back to the year in the euro crisis. Very nice.
Either the American way (states can default) or the socialist way (risk of all public debt is socialized)
Yes, the Market is Getting What it Wants. The ECB is Easing. – MarketBeat / WSJ
Of course, you can’t escape the cyclical nature of this solution. The ECB is propping up the banks, and the banks are keeping the euro zone governments afloat by buying their debt. If it doesn’t sound sustainable. And it might not be. But it seems that the markets at least see a path for muddling forward in Europe, which wasn’t clear just a few weeks ago.
European Fiscal Zombies – Krugman / NYT
What we have now is the result of the crisis, not of fiscal profligacy before the crisis.
ITALIAN AUCTION
Italy Sells Long-Dated Bonds To Weak Demand, 10 Year Prices Just Inside Of 7%, Bids To Cover Miss – ZH
Wall Street Response To Italian Auction – ZH
2011 & 2012
Goldman Says Good Riddance to 2011 – ZH
Adverse shocks weighed on global growth in 2011…A fragile global growth picture for 2012, still vulnerable to shocks
Risk of ECB QE, Greece falling apart, stronger USD, economy and companies slowing down.
DIVERSION
In love as in equities, we are fooled by randomness – John Kay I should have consulted the poet Wendy Cope, who wrote that: “Bloody men are like bloody buses – / You wait for about a year / And as soon as one approaches your stop / Two or three others appear”.
The protest movement, born from outrage over apparently manipulated parliamentary elections earlier this month, has gained both momentum and magnitude across Russia. The ruling tandem is taking note and, without admitting it, making concessions.
