Who’s Done What?

With the Thanksgiving holiday keeping North America quiet focus was unsurprisingly back on Europe and a meeting between Germany’s Angela  Merkel, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Italyâs Mario Monti. In their first convergence since Monti took office earlier this month, the three leaders discussed Italyâs economic program and ways to deal with the escalating debt crisis in the region as a whole. The Euro fell approximately 50 points to 1.3325 after Merkel stated she still does not believe common European bonds are necessary and that they would send the wrong signal to the market.

Earlier in the session, a relatively upbeat index of German Ifo Business Climate conditions pushed the shared currency to 1.3400 however Merkelâswords quickly cast doubt over the ability of European leaders to worktogether and agree a common plan to solve the debt crisis. Also helping the Euro back to near seven-week lows was another downgrade from ratings agency Fitch, this time for Portugal, where their sovereign bonds were cut to junk status BBB-; the Euro opening this morning at 1.3340 against the Greenback and the Yen sitting quietly around 77.1 after some recent gains were pared early yesterday.