Yesterday, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi sent the euro falling and eyebrows rising when he suggested he was ready and willing to begin charging banks to park cash in a deposit facility in Frankfurt. A negative deposit rate, as...
Read more »Draghi Deposit Rate U-Turn Gets Negative Review
Merkel Reigns on Cyprus — Not
Yesterday was the big German parliamentary decision on aid for Cyprus, and the burning question was whether Chancellor Angela Merkel would hold her coalition together or, as in past Bundestag crisis-management moments, rely on opposition votes to pass the package....
Read more »Brussels and Mrs. Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher spoke about Europe mainly in terms of what she didn’t want: neither a “narrow-minded, inward-looking club” that is “ossified by endless regulation,” nor “an institutional device to be constantly modified according to the dictates of some abstract intellectual...
Read more »Is Cyprus Euro-Exit Talk More Than Talk?
Bailed-out and bankingly challenged Cyprus is a “unique case,” the entire European policy establishment tells us. One under-reported way in which Cyprus is unique is that chatter about eventually leaving the euro isn’t limited to the fringes. It’s part of...
Read more »ECB’s Emergency Cash Becomes Last Bulwark Against Chaos
The euro area has just come as close as it ever has to learning that what the European Central Bank gives, it can also take away. Before euro-area ministers agreed a last-ditch bailout in the small hours of Monday morning,...
Read more »Banker-Bonus Rules Stoke Tempers in Berlin
Draft rules to scale back banker bonuses were enough to prompt a public spat yesterday between Deutsche Bank co-Chief Executive Officer Juergen Fitschen and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble as the two men sat side-by-side on a panel discussing finance...
Read more »The Revolution Begins in . . . Malta
The revolution begins in Valletta — that’s the European center-left’s rallying cry after a longtime conservative bastion, Malta, fell to the Labour Party over the weekend. Never mind that with growth last year of 1 percent and a jobless rate...
Read more »Monti’s Virtue vs. Germany’s Vices
For once, Mario Monti had a sympathetic audience — dozens of European officials he mingled with and presided over during a 10-year European Commission career that, by the looks of it, he will remember more fondly than the 15 months...
Read more »Italy’s Vote Was Bersani’s to Lose, and He Almost Pulled It Off
The Italian elections were his to lose, and Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani did a really good job of almost doing just that. Bersani, a former communist who backed Prime Minister Mario Monti’s technical government, squandered a 15-point poll...
Read more »Pope, Music Festival May Have Clipped Berlusconi’s Poll Momentum
Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation and the popular San Remo music festival may have clipped some of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s momentum in the campaign for Italy’s end-of-month election amid a blackout on opinion polls. Pope Benedict’s Feb. 11...
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