Nicolas Sarkozy

The French presidential campaign is entering its last and definitive leg as French citizens will cast their votes this coming Sunday, April 22 in a first round election that could see a first Socialist president in nearly 20 years. Socialist party candidate Francois Hollande and Conservative...

This weekend in Barron's online: Student-loan debt drags on the economy, a look at Kohl's and Seagate Technology, and what America's top 100 financial advisors are recommending. Cover Story "What a Drag" by Jonathan R. Laing. Student-loan debt is compounding at an alarming rate. Last month the...

The European Central Bank provided euro zone area banks with another 530 billion euros ($712 Billion) in cheap loans on Wednesday. The European Central Bank (ECB) hopes that the low interest loans that it gave to 800 euro zone banks will give the euro zone economies a boost and lower the borrowing...

For once there was good news coming out of Europe when France and Germany reported better than expected fourth quarter economic results. Although Germany's economy shrank by 0.2 percent, it was less than the 0.3 percent contraction that was widely expected. Germany also had its third quarter...

US equity markets traded lower on Monday morning, as the US dollar index rallied roughly 1%. Commodities across the board showed weakness—gold dropped below $1670. The US dollar index is a measure of the dollar against a basket of other currencies. Perhaps contributing the most to the index's gain...

British Prime Minister David Cameron has become the target of intense criticism over his veto of changes to the European Union treaty. Prime Minister Cameron said that he used his veto of the proposed EU changes at a meeting of European Union leaders on Friday in order to protect the interests of...

European politics have been one of the main forces moving the U.S. markets in the past couple months. Traders have become accustomed to comments by politicians whose names are unpronounceable and daily rumors that can cause the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing up and down hundreds of points...

On Friday, Eurozone officials will meet at a summit to decide on possible treaty changes affecting the general makeup of the European Union. Market commentators and euro officials alike have built up expectations for the summit, and many may be anticipating a form of a grand bargain that would...

On Monday, ISM Non-Manufacturing Composite for the month of November printed at 52.0, down from the prior reading of 52.9 and well below expectations of 53.8. The reading is a broad-based assessment of the state of the service sector in the US. Of its subcategories, the reading for employment...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the European Union needs to quickly enact treaty changes in order to better deal with the eurozone financial crisis. The German Finance Minister said that a treaty change was needed so that the European Union could have veto power over the budgets of...

Back in July, I wrote about the debt dominoes starting to fall, but no one was caring that much. The article related to the problems in the U.S., where we eventually saw S&P downgrade U.S. debt. Yet, the issue of a debt domino is easily just as applicable to Europe as well. Last week, when...

Yesterday, it seemed as if all hope was lost in Europe, that the issues between the banks, Germany, France, and the ECB were too many to get a deal done. Then around 10 p.m. last night, the futures started to move higher, and we learned that Europe had reached an accord, at least for now. "The...

We were "supposed" to get some kind of plan today out of Europe that would stabilize the financial markets, and have an actual concrete plan for saving the European Union from financial disaster. So much for that. Germany and France apparently still can not come to terms on a deal, and this mess...

France was warned for the second time this week by a major credit rating agency that its valuable triple-A credit rating could be downgraded in the near future. Standard & Poor's was the latest credit rating agency to say that the eurozone's second biggest economy was in danger of being...