On September 14, the Council hosted a global conference call with David Marsh, co-chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), to discuss the current state of the Euro, options for the European Central Bank, and the fate of the Eurozone.

On September 14, the Atlantic Council's Global Business and Economics Program held a discussion with former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair on the continuing challenges in the financial industry nearly three years after the start of the global financial crisis.

The markets took another hard hit today following the abrupt resignation of Jürgen Stark, Germany’s member of the European Central Bank’s board. The euro hit six month lows against the dollar, bank stocks tumbled five percent, the Dow was down 3 percent, and the FTSE All-World index fell 3.07 percent amid near certainty that Greece would default on its debt and send anothe

Tomorrow, finance ministers and central bankers from seven wealthy countries in the developed world will convene in Marseilles, France for their regular meeting to assess the health of the global economy.

On September 1^st, the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program hosted a roundtable discussion on European financial regulatory reform efforts with European Commission Deputy Director-General for Financial Markets and Services Nadia Calviño.

Over the course of the past few months, we at the Council have been understandably, and I think rightly, heavily focused on the enormous economic implications of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

On August 24^th, the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program hosted a conference call with Dr. Thomas Mayer, Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank Group, and Managing Director of Deutsche Bank Research, on the evolving sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

According to one anonymous German official speaking off the record to reporters from Der Spiegel, “a country like Italy can’t be saved.” We will have to trust that he was referring to the country’s size when he made the statement, and not its existential core.

On August 10, 2011, the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program hosted a conference call discussion with Patrick Durkin, managing director at Barclays Capital, and Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of US fixed income strategy at Barclays Capital, for an insider perspective on how markets are reacting to the increasingly troubling economic outlook for the North Atlantic economies.

Lost in the hubbub of Standard & Poor's downgrading the US bond rating is news that the Italian government has the ratings agencies under criminal investigation.