Comment, analysis and other offerings from Wednesday’s FT,

Martin Wolf: Europe’s stragglers need German consumers
The financial crisis of 2009 is morphing into the fiscal anxieties of 2010, writes the FT’s Wolf. More…

. . . so says Bob Janjuah, chief strategist at RBS, who is convinced — now more than ever — that the policy-sponsored excess liquidity-enabled buy fest is over.

I now think we have begun the 3rd and final leg of the multi-yr bear mrkt which began in 2007 and which SHOULD, More…

Okay, we don’t think this needs to be put through the Google Translator.

Reportedly, Moore Capital, Brevan Howard and Paulson & C0 are behind the “murky maneuvers” that have seen Spanish CDS and bond yields blow out. More…

European Central Bank (ECB) governing council member, Ewald Nowotny , sat down with FT Alphaville to talk Greece, exit strategies, speculation and contagion in the eurozone.

In addition to being an ECB member, More…

On FT Alphaville on Tuesday morning,

- Post QE gilt (auction).

- Banks, insurers and sovereign debt.

- CIC takes on the world.

- JGB update: Is Japan the next Greece?

- The cost of eurozone disunion is 55bps, More…

Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:15 on 9 Feb 2010. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT Bryce Elder Izabella Kaminska, FT   NHRight welcome to ML etc    NHBryce is here with me  More…

Insurance stocks were hit hard on Monday amid concerns about their holdings of sovereign debt. But what about the banks, how exposed are they to government paper, eurozone and otherwise.

Here, via JPMorgan, More…

Here’s a CDS curio for you to ponder this Tuesday.

The analysts on Deutsche Bank’s fixed income team have done some number-crunching/modeling and come up with some interesting perspectives on how eurozone CDS stacks up against the US and UK. More…

The European contagion effect starkly illustrated below:

That’s Portugal’s sovereign CDS curve and it has inverted — indicating that the market now believes there’s a higher probability of a default in the short-term than in the longer term. More…

New research published by the Paris-based equity strategy team at Societe Generale suggests the common assumption that the (non-American) football World Cup has a positive economic impact on the host and winner countries is actually false. More…

“The G7 countries are completely asleep at the wheel. I looked at the information they put out from their meeting I was absolutely shocked … they seem to show no awareness at all that much of Europe is facing a serious crisis and it’s not limited to Spain, More…

Spain is the victim of an international conspiracy focused on destroying the country’s economic standing and via that the euro.

That’s the plain and simple view of the Spanish government, or at least its Development minister, More…

Flashes out of Reuters on Monday suggest the Spanish Treasury has decided to cut the amount of money it will raise from the bond markets this year by 34 per cent:
RTRS-SPANISH TREASURY SAYS TO RAISE NET 76.8 BLN EUROS FROM MARKETS IN 2010, More…

Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:24 on 8 Feb 2010. Participants in this chat were: Bryce Elder Neil Hume, FT   BEGood morning.    BEIt’s 11.04am    BEand time, More…

Or, “Who cares about Portugal/Greece/Spain/Italy/UK?”

Or, “It was a fat finger in WTI; never seen a computerised trading glitch?”

Or, “Gold is a very small market; it points to nothing.”

Or, “Contagion? We’ve had the jab.” More…

Covered bonds are a circa €2,000bn market.

Europe is the biggest issuer of such debt.

And Europe is in trouble.

To date because of their unique structure, the fortunes of covered bonds have been only loosely-tied to those of their issuers, More…

Markets Live chat transcript for the chat ending at 12:17 on 5 Feb 2010. Participants in this chat were: Neil Hume, FT Bryce Elder   NHTin hat on    NH    BECheck    More…

On Thursday we noted that a number of interesting things were happening in the CDS market. Here are some further reflections, via Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid.

First, Portugal’s 5-year CDS (+28bps yesterday, More…

Greek CDS continues its Icarusian journey, reaching another record on Thursday.

Meanwhile, its CDS curve remains inverted — indicating that the market thinks there’s a higher risk the country will default in the short-term, More…

For your consideration, a selection of five-year sovereign CDS spreads from Europe as of Thursday’s close:

And for comparison, some non-European peripheral CDS spreads. First the US:

And representing the CEE, More…