EU Summit: Some Good Progress, But Any Game Changers?

This EU summit marked many firsts for eurozone crisis era EU summits: it was the first time Greece hasn’t been discussed in years, it was the first time Italy and Spain bonded together and it was the first time President Hollande attended an EU summit. By dinner time on Thursday, the EU summit seemed a colossal failure, with Spain and Italy refusing to sign off on a growth initiative without some short term measures to alleviate pressure on those two countries in the bond markets. EZ leaders went back to the negotiating chambers and emerged around 4am on Friday morning with a deal. The measures agreed exceeded market expectations, though based on Merkel’s pre-summit assertion that Germany would not be signing up to anything significant, expectations were not difficult to beat. The markets rallied, but was investor euphoria justified, or was this just another EU summit fudge? Some important steps were taken at this summit, but none of them game changers and a number of details have yet to be hashed out. Read more of this post