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The euro extended its losses against the U.S. dollar in Asian trading Monday, falling to its lowest level since April 2006, as worries about Europe's fiscal situation persisted.

The euro extended its losses after falling below the $1.2300 level, falling as far as $1.2233 according to FactSet Research and reportedly touching $1.2234 on popular currency trading platform EBS.
The swelling public deficits in Portugal, Spain and Greece have plunged the eurozone into the biggest crisis in its 11-year life, presaging years of belt-tightening, analysts warn.

It is a vicious financial circle; the more fears over deficits and debts grow, the harder it becomes for the troubled eurozone nations to borrow money to stay afloat.
European governments kept up the pressure on Switzerland and its famed banking secrecy laws, with fresh reports from the Netherlands and Belgium raising the stakes in the battle to find tax evaders.

The Dutch government released data late on Tuesday showing wealthy savers last year declared more than 2 billion euros (1.74 billion pounds) hidden in overseas bank accounts, with a third of the ac
European regulators announced a probe on Monday into Anglo-Australian mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, adding to pressure on the pair from the world's biggest importer China. "The European Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation ... under European Union rules on restrictive business practices," said a statement from Brussels on plans to jointly extract western Australian i
A closely-watched indicator of investor sentiment in Germany fell more than expected in January, reinforcing expectations Europe's largest economy and the euro zone are set for a sluggish and potentially bumpy recovery in 2010.
European finance chiefs said Greece may have to step up its efforts to tackle a national fiscal crisis that threatens to spread to other countries across the region.

“The Greek government is aware of the magnitude of the problems facing the country,” Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters in Brussels late yesterday after leading a meeting of euro-area finance ministers that discussed
"What drives the market is the balance between fear and greed. If economic policy eliminates fear, only greed remains, and there is no mechanism to limit 'irrational exuberance'. This was the fundamental cause of the crisis. Moral hazard and herd behaviour are natural consequences," he writes. "Weak regulation and supervision were not the fundamental problems, although they can and should be impr
Ryan Streeter writes about how Chile’s recent ascendancy to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) represents a remarkable story of the triumph of liberty, economic liberalization, and free market reforms.
Up until the early 1980s, when the first round of economic reforms (1974–1983) were starting to have a positive effect, Chile’s economic performance was