The people of Ireland go to the polls Friday to deliver what's expected to be a knock-out blow to the governing party. But many are choosing to vote in a traditional Irish fashion: with their feet. Tens of thousands are joining in a new wave of emigration, turning their backs on a country mired in economic malaise, The Wall Street Journal reported. Martin Lynch's family is one of many that are being scattered to the four winds. In the past year, one son has moved to Germany, another to England. His daughter is planning her departure for London, and Mr.

The European Union is still struggling to find a long-term strategy to deal with the crisis that has befallen its common currency. SPIEGEL spoke to Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian about how Greece can get back on its feet, the fine line Germany is treading and why the US, despite high debt, is in better shape. SPIEGEL: Mr. El-Erian, Pimco is the world's largest bond investor, with over $1 trillion in assets. A lot of that money is invested in government bonds.

Spain was lauded for its regulatory regime (by The Economist, among others) when the financial crisis first broke. Rules against off-balance sheet vehicles protected the country’s banks from America’s subprime bust. A system of “dynamic provisioning” allowed them to put money aside for expected losses before they started to be incurred. A peer review of Spain by the Financial Stability Board, published yesterday, repeats some of this praise.

Inflation fears—fueled by spiraling food, oil and raw material prices—are mounting around the globe, prompting the head of the European Central Bank to signal that it could raise interest rates in the future even though some countries have been weakened by the Continent's debt crisis. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal ahead of this week's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jean-Claude Trichet warned that inflation pressures in the euro zone must be watched closely, and urged central bankers everywhere to ensure that higher energy and food pri

The crisis levy the German government plans to impose on banks will be higher than previously expected, according to a report in Financial Times Deutschland, Spiegel Online reported.

It takes only a brief visit to the Bank of Estonia’s small basement museum to grasp what turbulent decades the Baltic states have endured, The Economist reported. This corner of Europe’s “bloodlands” between Russia and Germany saw a bewildering succession of currencies: roubles (tsarist and Soviet), marks (imperial and Nazi) and, among these, a cherished era of Estonian money, from 1919 to 1940.

EUROPEAN UPDATE: (citation: Adam Gallagher, Germany's Insolvency Law Expected to Be Modernized in Reaction to Financial Crisis, XXIX ABI Journal 10; 28, 93-94; December/January 2011) - Adam Gallagher

James Carville, an advisor to Bill Clinton, famously once said he would like to be reincarnated as the bond market, because then "you can intimidate everybody", The Economist reported in a reader poll. In 2010 two of the euro zone's smaller economies, Greece and then Ireland, were so intimidated by the punishing interest rates that the bond-market vigilantes imposed on them that they had to turn to their richer neighbours for bail-outs.

With the euro under siege, European Union leaders will gather Thursday for a meeting aimed at restoring confidence in their monetary union, but threatened by one of Europe’s persistent failings: its inability to speak with one voice, the International Herald Tribune reported. Despite eve-of-summit-meeting pleas for harmony and discipline — and a warning Wednesday from the ratings agency Moody’s that Spain’s credit rating could be downgraded — the divergent views being voiced Wednesday by E.U.

Royal Bank of Scotland was once a proud and prudent Scottish institution. It turned into a financial fool, apparently throwing money at almost anyone who came through its doors offering a dire private-equity deal or a third- rate property scheme.