Euro problems continue to simmer

The skirmish in Athens may have bought the euro and its admirers a brief respite, but trouble has surfaced now in Spain.  The structural deficiencies in the eurozone have not been addressed. All we have had so far are  austerity measures, a pact which seeks to enforce austerity measures (Spain has blown out of the water any authority the pact might have had) and bank liquidity improved by the ECB.  The problem is that the cheap loans made by the ECB to banks has been used to buy sovereign debt which may yet go pear-shaped.

On the political scene there is the French presidential election, the Irish referendum on the fiscal pact and a general election in Greece, any of which could upset expectations in the financial markets.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9200173/Time-to-put-the-doomed-euro-out-of-its-misery.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/george-soros-eurozone-crisis-has-entered-a-less-volatile-but-potentially-more-lethal-phase.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/spain-has-only-denial.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100016196/only-a-matter-of-time-before-ecb-is-forced-into-massive-quantitative-easing/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17706434
Shares hit by worries over Spain.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9203771/Turmoil-in-global-markets-as-Spanish-bank-borrowing-from-ECB-doubles.html