Big European Funds Confirm Dumping Euro Assets

Insider Monkey submits: David Einhorn was the guest on Bloomberg’s “In The Loop” program last Friday for two hours. Most of what he said about the European debt crisis, Apple (AAPL), St. Joe Company (

While everyone likes to hate on Cyprus, it is Italy that is the focal point of today's European "omnishambles" that has seen the EURUSD tumble to a five month low as of this writing. First it was economic data that scared investors, with Industrial Sales and Orders tumbling far below expected, posting numbers of -1.3% and -1.4%, respectively, on expectations of an increase. Retail sales were just as ugly, declining by -0.5% in January, on expectations of an unchanged print, with the December 0.2% number revised also into negative territory.

FINalternatives submits: A key European Parliament committee has approved the European Union’s controversial hedge fund regulations, but have set up a battle with the bloc’s finance ministers at the same time.

Space does not permit a complete discussion of zombified cities. Such a list would be in the many hundreds. Rather this post is about four cities in recent news that are among the walking dead. One is even a dumping ground for the dead. Fourth Financial Urgency in Miami in Four years The Huffington Post reports Miami Declares Financial Urgency For Fourth Year In A Row

John M. Mason submits: The economic spokesperson for the Obama administration, Ben Bernanke, and the Federal Reserve System continue to underwrite “big”…Big Companies and Big Banks. The Federal Reserve has just released its survey of senior credit officers. The headlines, “Large United States Banks are Starting to Ease Credit Terms.” Terrific!

Repsol SA, Spain’s largest energy company, expects to sell liquefied natural gas assets for about 2-billion euros (US$2.7-billion) by early February, according to a person familiar with the matter.

EARLIER today, a friend sent me a note from Louis-Vincent Gave of GaveKal Research (sorry, no link) on how the ECB could preserve the euro without doing anything to offend German sensibilities. Mr Gave suggests that the central bank should stop buying assets and start selling “currency insurance.” It is an intriguing idea, so I have copied some excerpts to provide a flavor of the analysis.Mr Gave begins by arguing that convertability risk is inhibiting investment in the troubled countries:

The biggest U.S. money-market funds hold roughly $1 trillion of debt issued by big European banks, which hold piles of Greek and other European government bonds.