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Belarus said on Wednesday it was unable to repay its foreign currency-denominated debt due to sanctions imposed on it by the European Union and the United States. The World Bank said on Monday it had placed all loans made by its main lending arm to Belarus into "nonperforming" status effective immediately.

The Russian Finance Ministry said on Monday it has sent an order to a correspondent bank for the payment of coupons on eurobonds amounting to $117.2 million, a signal to markets waiting to see whether Russia will default on its sovereign debt. The eurobonds in question, maturing in 2023 and 2043, were both last trading at 20 cents on the dollar or lower and are among the first to have scheduled payments after Russia was hit by sanctions related to its invasion of Ukraine. The restrictions meant it was unclear whether Russia would be able, or willing, to make the...

THE PHILIPPINES appears least vulnerable to major risks that could darken the economic growth outlook and affect the sovereign credit scores of emerging markets, debt watcher Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said in a new report. In a Sept. 29 report, titled: “Who’s at Risk? Emerging Market Sovereigns are Facing Adverse Global Trends,” S&P cited three risks on the growth prospects of 22 emerging economies: capital outflows from developing to advanced markets once the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, unwinding of domestic credit built up in recent years and China’s economic growth slowdown. Among 22 markets it assessed, the Philippines...

1 December 2014 Last updated at 14:22 Japan downgraded by Moody's amid rising fears over debt Moody's has cut Japan's credit rating by one notch over rising doubts about its ability to reduce debt levels. The decision by the ratings agency sent the yen to a seven-year low against the US dollar. The downgrade comes less than a two weeks before a snap general election called by prime minister Shinzo Abe. His economic stimulus policies and a decision to delay a second sales tax rise will be among the key campaign issues. Tom Byrne, regional credit officer of Moody's, said...

Yes, it is every bit as bad as it sounds, and worse. Word is that the initial plan was for a 40% (!!!!) levy confiscation of Cypriot bank accounts. They settled for a MERE 6.75% and 9.9% dual-layered compromise. Yeah, you all need to do what I have been doing for the last several months and live within spitting distance of being overdrawn in your bank accounts. In other words, keep the BARE MINIMUM in the bank and feed your account just enough to cover the bills. As soon as money comes in, get it the heck out of there....

Transcribed from a speech given by Paul Singer of Elliott Management Investing is an art, more so than a science. And for me, what I get paid for is managing the “dark art,” if you will, of risk management and trying to be a visionary and having a dark vision at all times about what can go wrong. It’s a particularly fruitful and impactful time to be thinking about risk management and the thing I want talk about today is what I’ve described as “The Shape of the Next Crisis.” That doesn’t mean we’re going to be talking about the...

Large banks, toast. What about U.S. exports ? I hear this from the talking heads. We must be concerned about our exports ! EEEeek ! If Europe "collapses", we won't be able to sell them our goods and services ! Well, here are our top 15 export clients, according to census.gov: Rank Country Exports (Year-to-Date) Percent of Total Exports --- Total, All Countries 1,480.7 100.0% --- Total, Top 15 Countries 1,061.9 71.7% 1 Canada 280.9 19.0% 2 Mexico 197.5 13.3% 3 China 103.9 7.0% 4 Japan 66.2 4.5% 5 United Kingdom 56.0 3.8% 6 Germany 49.1 3.3% 7 Korea, South...

Spanish Sovereign debt yields jumped again today following Restructuring Concerns expressed by Willem Buiter. Spanish bonds fell, pushing 10-year yields to the highest level in a month, after Citigroup Inc. chief economist Willem Buiter said the nation faced an increasing risk of a debt restructuring. Ten-year Spanish securities slid for an eighth day, widening the extra yield over similar-maturity German bunds, as a decline in European stocks sapped demand for higher-yielding assets. “Spanish spreads moved much wider after Buiter’s comments,” said Lyn Graham-Taylor, a fixed-income strategist at Rabobank International in London. “This highlights concern over further debt restructuring. Bunds recovered...

BRUSSELS—The European Commission is leaning toward proposing a ban on the issuing of sovereign credit ratings for countries in bailout talks, a top official said on Thursday. "I think it's legitimate to have a special treatment when a country is in negotiation or is covered by an international solidarity program with the IMF or a European solidarity" program, said Michel Barnier, European internal market commissioner. Should the commission, the executive arm of the European Union, come to view these sovereign ratings are inappropriate, "we could ban it or suspend the rating for the necessary time frame," he said. "I am...

Tuesday's Market Preview Is Not Pretty: El-Erian Published: Monday, 5 Sep 2011 | 1:51 PM ET By: Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and Co-CIO, Pimco To state the obvious, it is shaping up to be a difficult return for U.S. markets after the Labor Day break as European stock plunge and the European Central Bank (ECB) loses some of the control it has been exercising on the Euro-zone's sovereign bond market. The best way to understand what is going on is through the following simplified sequence: banks-sovereigns-policies. Specifically: · Banks stocks led the debacle on European bourses Monday, with drops of some...

Tero Kuittinen 9/05/2011 @ 6:10PM |1,338 views Europe Is Finally Forced into a Corner The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. After a lull of few weeks, markets are suddenly starting to demand a decision from Europe. EU countries may have only days or weeks to finally agree on how to handle the rapidly escalating sovereign debt mess. As America celebrated Labor Day, Europe lurched decisively towards a culmination of its long-brewing debt crisis as several different plot lines started converging into a single, grim narrative. Greece’s 2-year bond yields finally cracked the...

We told you so. But notice the masthead above. Some bits from the Bloomberg piece: Ministers meeting in Berlin today backed a reworked European Financial Stability Facility including sovereign bond- buying powers, raising Germany’s share of EFSF loan guarantees to 211 billion euros ($305 billion) from 123 billion euros. The measures were agreed on by European leaders at a July 21 summit. The way is being paved for Eurobonds, as we told you.Peter Grottian, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University, said by phone yesterday. “What’s more painful: risking the collapse of the government and a devastating economic backlash, or...

This morning it's looking like... Large European banks will be unable to weather the coming defaults of European sovereign debt. German voters will not permit Germany to backstop the European Union. It has been reported that U.S. regulators are currently digging at U.S. banks, reviewing their European exposure, preparing for European sovereign defaults and failure of large European banks. My humble predictions... U.S. voters will not permit a bailout out of European banks or sovereigns by any U.S. government action, be it via the Treasury or the Fed. U.S. banks and most financial firms will successfully manuever to avoid and...

Although the second bailout of Greece may have calmed markets in the short-term, the recent volatility in Italian and Spanish bond markets signalled the beginning of a new and critical phase. Europe’s policymakers had always hoped that by bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the crisis could be restricted to these relatively small economies. This strategy has clearly failed and the measures taken at the recent summit recognise this fact. Slow progress The future shape of the eurozone will likely be determined by how events unfold in Italy and Spain. [...] So what is the endgame for this crisis going...

Italy seems set to follow in the footsteps of Greece, Ireland and Portugal as investor doubts on her ability to manage her debts send the yield on bonds to record highs. It has emerged that the Italian Finance Minister, Giulio Tremonti is engaged in crisis talks with Jean-Claude Juncker who chairs the group of finance ministers of the 17 nations that are members of the Eurozone. In early trading this Wednesday, the yield that Italy was being forced to pay on its ten-year bonds was 6.21%, having risen 0.19%. Another nation with sovereign debt worries, Spain, saw the yield on...

While the dominant topic of conversation when discussing margin hikes (or reductions) usually reverts to silver, ES (stocks) and TEN (bonds), what everyone so far is ignoring is the far more critical topic of real margin risk, in the form of roughly $600 trillion in OTC derivatives. The issue is that while the silver market (for example) is tiny by comparison, it is easy to be pushed around, and thus exchanges can easily represent the illusion that they are in control of counterparty risk (after all, that was the whole point of the recent CME essay on why they hiked...

MADRID -- The Spanish government said Thursday a communication error led it to claim China's sovereign wealth fund was studying a plan to inject euro9.3 billion ($13.5 billion) into Spain's ailing savings bank sector.

APRIL 14, 2011, 2:36 A.M. ET. Portugal Bailout Could Be "Bottomless Pit", Risks Spreading To Spain-Ifo Head By Tom Fairless Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES FRANKFURT (Dow Jones)--The bailout of Portugal could become a "bottomless pit" for euro-zone states, and the crisis risks spreading to Spain because of local banks' involvement in Portugal, the head of Germany's Ifo research institute said in an interview this week. Germany's government is likely to lose much of the "several hundreds of billions of euros" it has provided to struggling peripheral euro-zone states through European Union and International Monetary Fund rescue packages, as well as...

In his latest GREED & FEAR report, CLSA's Chris Wood argues that the biggest risk to the global economy is, quite simply, a US sovereign debt crisis. So far the market isn't showing any signs of worry, as Wood admits. Here's how you'll know there's trouble: This is why in GREED & fear’s view the biggest systemic risk in the world is now a US sovereign-debt crisis, which would likely mean the end of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The sign that this risk is becoming real will be when the US Treasury bond market starts to...

APRIL 4, 2011, 3:51 P.M. ET. IMF Chief: 'Black Swans' Still Haunt Global Finance By IAN TALLEY WASHINGTON—The global economic recovery is still fragile, uneven and "beset by great uncertainty," the head of the International Monetary Fund said late Monday. Growth in rich countries is too low and unemployment too high, Europe's piecemeal approach to resolving its sovereign debt and growth crisis is aggravating its problems and high commodity prices amid lower revenues and investment is threatening to undermine economic restructuring in the Middle East, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in remarks to George WashingtonUniversity students. "Great uncertainty still prevails," Mr. Strauss-Kahn...