European central bank

The Euro rose across the board on Friday helped by its leaders' positive response to creating a facility to safeguard its nations from debt issues like Ireland's, but a rating downgrade by Moody's on the troubled country dampened the sentiment, limiting gains by the single currency.

European Union leaders said last night differences over amending the EU treaties to make way for a permanent crisis mechanism have been papered over, but the market response to the development was muted as doubts still remained over key features of the deal.

Many experts in the private sector favor expanding the size of the 750-billion euro European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which was created to bail out European countries under sovereign debt pressures.

Employment rates remained mostly stable in the euro area during the third quarter, dropping only by 0.2 percent, while unemployment rate in the U.K. touched its highest since the beginning of the year.

A war is now raging in Europe. On one side are the forces of the corporate state led by Germany and France; on the other are the forces of free-market capitalism led by Britain.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is urging the European Union (EU) to expand the size of its rescue fund in the wake of weakening market performance in the euro zone’s peripheral members.

Eurozone retail sales rose unexpectedly in October for the first time in three months, showing an improvement in household demand.

The European Central Bank (ECB) left the benchmark rates unchanged for the 19th straight month, and said it would extend its longer-term liquidity tenders into the first quarter of 2011

If the ECB lives up to market expectations, the pair could rise further but a strong resistance area is up there, between 1.3266 (key long-term resistance) and 1.3357 (38.2 fibonacci retracement from June 7 lows), between which the 100-day SMA (1.3323) is also falling.

France and Germany, the two leading countries of the euro zone, may have intentionally engineered a competitive currency devaluation by pushing private investors to share the burden of future sovereign bailouts.

The force of political will binding together a seemingly crumbling euro zone is still strong, but the imperatives of domestic economic realignments could force members to an exit option, analysts have said; and the road out of the bloc doesn’t exactly look daunting.

Sovereign debt crises in peripheral Europe threaten to bring down the overall euro zone economy because European banks are heavily expose those debt.

Greece's international lenders have agreed to provide the debt-ridden country with the third installment of a loan – valued at 9-billion euros -- but warned that the Greeks must make an extra effort to address its deficit next year.

As Ireland appears to be on the verge of resolving its debt crisis, the focus may now shift to yet another fiscally-troubled peripheral euro nation, Portugal.

As comments from Dublin and Brussels strongly hint at the possibility of Ireland formally seeking international financial support sooner or later, analysts are mulling the chances of a possible bailout of the stricken Celtic Tiger by the robust Chinese Dragon.

Ireland is open to talks with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a bailout program for its failed banks, EU Economics and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said after a Tuesday night meeting of eurozone finance ministers and officials in Brussels.

The European Union (EU) cannot survive if it fails to solve the debt crisis plaguing the continent, warned EU president Herman Van Rompuy.

Ireland's grip on the slippery debt-mired track is giving way fast as bond yields widened to a level with Greece’s before Athens went broke and was bailed out, fueling speculation that the country could be soon looking for international financial assistance.

Peripheral Europe faces waning public demand because of austerity measures, conditions that make exports difficult, and a banking sector that has not recovered well from the financial crisis. All this comes at a time when recovery is still fragile and the risks of a double-dip recession are real.

For big U.S. banks, Basel III will likely have limited impact in the short-term because of its generous phase-in timeline