Update: Buyers will receive 78.5 percent of the payout, while sellers of Greek CDS will have to pay as much as $2.5 billion to settle the contracts after a final value was agreed at 21.5 percent of face value. It’s in line...

The European Central Bank’s unlimited cheap bank loans have eased market tensions, particularly–in the words of ECB President Mario Draghi–by removing the “tail risk” of a banking crisis provoked by the euro debt situation. But the gusher of loans has...

Vittorio Grilli says that the markets have already priced in a possible trigger of Greek credit default swaps.  Let’s hope he’s right. I met today in Rome with Grilli, the deputy finance minister of Italy, who serves under prime minister...

The European Central Bank’s jobs keeps getting harder. Today it raised its 2012 inflation forecast and said growth could be worse than it had anticipated. Prior to the ECB’s rate announcement, I had the chance to interview former ECB executive...

(Updated to add interview with Banco BPI CEO Fernando Ulrich.) Portuguese bond yields are rising as investors are busy putting cheap money from the European Central Bank to work elsewhere. That’s a problem for Portugal’s Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho,...

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti directed his not inconsiderable influence to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Feb. 29, saying that despite her reluctance to discuss boosting Europe’s rescue fund right now, he still expects to have an agreement to beef...