As the Eurozone experiment unravels, German industries eagerly await their consolation prize — a period of ultra-competitive exports.

The Dow is down over 2.0% on worries over the European sovereign debt crises as investors move into less risky assets. Gold is up to nearly 1200.

It was a pretty violent night in euroland, with the battered currency trading in the $1.27s before trading back above $1.28.

As this chart from Waverly Advisors shows, it’s Europe that’s ‘s the ever-larger and growing percentage of China’s export economy.

Even if Greece wanted to leave the Eurozone, it’s far from clear how they could do so legally.

Just yesterday we were talking about $1.30 on the euro like it was a big deal, and how it’d be stunning if the currency fell below it.

The euro is trading at its lowest level since 2008, close to its 1.30 EUR/USD break point.

The relentless fall in the euro is just unbelievable! As we said earlier today, we’ve gotten to where we reflexively just check the euro when we want to see the mood. Suffice to say: The mood right now is very bad.

As the Eurocrats prepare to wheel the latest Trojan Horse bail out scheme into the Reichstag for a vote this week, it remains to be seen if German politicians have the stomach to face the voters wrath in a lame effort to bail out the profligate spending of fellow fiscally […]

Dow futures are now down 70, NASDAQ futures are off 15, and now the euro, which had a rough overnight, is screaming to new lows, threatening to take out $1.30.

Despite news of a $147 billion Greece bailout from the IMF and Europe, Greek bonds have begun routing again.

[credit provider=”www.lightmatter.net” url=”http://www.lightmatter.net/gallery/albums.php”] As we noted just a moment ago, you can usually reverse engineer the overnight news just by looking at a chart of the euro.If it’s down, then you can probably find some ugly headlines about Greece, and indeed that’s what we have today.

When it did become that the first thing we check every morning is a chart of the euro? Were not sure exactly, but you can see why. Usually, you can reverse engineer the morning’s headlines simply by looking at it.

Currency traders don’t seem to be expressing a wild amount of confidence in the euro despite yet another bailout of the continent’s biggest problem child, Greece. Look closely and note that the currency briefly opened higher. Suckers.

The mayor of the southern Athens suburb of Elliniko, Christos Kortzidis, launched a hunger strike yesterday to protest a municipal government overhaul, according to Kathimerini.

(This is a guest post from the author’s blog.)

This is beginning to feel like a bad play.

Typically the closing of normal business hours in Europe is kind of bullish for the currency and for US stocks, as all the fears over Greece and the PIIGS are put to rest for the night.

Its now clear that the European debt crisis could take a huge chunk of the euro zone with it. Greece, Portugal, and Ireland are already in tough debt positions, while larger states like Spain and Italy might soon be.

With several hours to go before the opening bell, the mood is similar to yesterday, which saw selling (a very, very rare occurrence for a Monday).

This is why markets are terrified to hold Greek debt, despite the prospect of an imminent financial lifeline from the IMF.

What a wild day in day in euro-ville. Greece continues to spiral, and once Europe went to bed, the euro took another huge gap down.

This is one of the ugliest days we’ve seen for Europe in a long time, as spreads are blowing out, and everyone on the continent is freaking out.

Euro longs have a serious case of trigger fingers.

(This is a guest post from Forex Playbook.)

Amazing. As Ashraf Laidi points out, the euro has now given up the entire spike it saw last weekend after the “bailout.”

Gorge Soros said at an Economist conference in London that he believes the U.K. will be in a far better position to manage its finances than the Eurozone, once upcoming U.K. elections are past.

Just a reminder — George Soros is still quite bearish on the prospects for the Eurozone.

Art Cashin of UBS spoke on CNBC late yesterday about what he, and many traders on the floor, are thinking about treasury auctions and actions in the euro. Conspiracies abound.

Amazingly, the story right now is in Greece.

Stock futures are heading off, and once again, the Euro is selling off (no doubt connected to the ongoing Greek bond yield blowout).

The Economist has an excellent interactive primer on the PIIGS and their problems. You can see details about each nation’s deficits, debt, (lack of) competitiveness, and other variables.

Maybe this is why bond markets aren’t buying Europe’s latest support plan for Greece.

The European Council, dominated by Germany, thinks that fiscal discipline could have stopped all past and future problems in the Eurozone.

Greece apparently has more faith in the dollar — falling — than in its own currency the euro.

Here are the five things that you should be aware of this morning:

Here are the five things you need to know before markets open:

After weeks of discord, Europe’s leaders have agreed to an emergency facility for Greece backed by the International Monetary Fund and bilateral loans from eurozone states.

Here’s an interesting piece of perspective, courtesy of Mr. Market.

There was a day when markets would laugh at the notion that some Chinese minister could slam the euro with his mere words. Things have changed.

John Taylor, CEO of FX Concepts LLC, was on Bloomberg this morning speaking about the Euro’s continued fall against the dollar.

Fitch has downgraded Portuguese debt, emphasising the fact that Europe’s sovereign debt worries are not yet over.

[credit provider=”commons.wikimedia.org” url=”http://commons.wikimedia.org”] Things are getting tense in old Europe, as top politicians sense the clock is ticking on them.There’s a strong desire to get a deal done this week when leaders meat for a summit in Brussels.

The euro was down again overnight, and lazily you’d say it’s due to the ongoing Greece crisis.

According to the graphic below from Der Spiegel, In April Europe’s PIIGS will be forced to roll over almost twice the amount of debt as March. Afterward, monthly debt maturities will be higher than March for each month until October. One wonders if credit markets will increasingly demand higher, more […]

[credit provider=”AP”] Angela Merkel faces pressure from the right not to bail out Greece, and so she’s been insistent that no direct aide would be forthcoming from Germany. At most, she’s offered “support,” whatever that is.But the politics are different in France.

The political leadership of Greece is trying to convince Europe it can rescue the Hellenic Republic from its debt crisis without spending a dime.

[credit provider=”commons.wikimedia.org” url=”http://commons.wikimedia.org/”] It’s time to start worrying that credit markets may be seriously underestimating the probability of losses arising from a Greek funding crisis. European credit markets have been way too subdued this week. It seems that the market is discounting the insistence from Germany’s Angela Merkel that there […]

Investors in Greek sovereign debt, sellers of credit protection on Greek debt or those with long positions financial institutions with large exposure to Greek sovereign debt should be very worried about the anti-speculation noise coming out of Europe. The threats against “speculators” in credit default swaps are eerily reminiscent of […]

The Greek austerity program could work but its domestic economic consequences might be so devastating that it precipitates its own crisis. Whether it could work or not may be entirely academic. If the bond market doesn’t believe it will work, Greece will never have a chance to try it.

[credit provider=”AP”] Are the Germans just trying to spook the bond market?A pair of contradictory statements coming out of Germany today has us scratching our head.

The Greek premier is now threatening to go to the IMF for help if the Eurozone won’t come up with hard bailout numbers soon.

Bloomberg is reporting that Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has issued a challenge to Germany, setting a one-week deadline for the EU to come up with a bailout lending facility.

We already mentioned the spiking dollar — a result of rumours the the Fed is about to hike the discount rate again — but here’s a little more food for thought, provoked by currency guru Ashraif Laidi on Twitter.

ATHENS, Greece (Associated Press) – Greek taxi drivers and many gas station owners are striking against a proposed overhaul of tax laws under the government’s efforts to overcome its debt crisis. Taxi drivers are planning a protest march through central Athens later Thursday.

The European Union may have a plan to save Greece should the need arise, but leaders are insisting that they will never have to use it. Still, German commentators say that the plan spells the end of the stability pact, designed to prop up Europe’s common currency.

Could this be the start of a new down leg?

Greece may be doing all the right things to revive our economy, but not everyone may want us to succeed.

(This post was published on VoxEU.org.)

Those strong industrial production numbers, combined with the end of the Greek crisis has done wonders for the euro — a currency whose existence was questioned mere days ago.

EUR/JPY.

Earlier on Bloomberg TV, Harvard University professor Martin Feldstein claims that “panic selling” is the reason behind the euro’s 10% decline since November. He also gives a strong claim to hold concern over the dollar in the coming years:

Anti-austerity protests are raging right now in Athens, with public transport idle, flights grounded and hospitals left with emergency staff according to the Associated Press.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek unions say nationwide strikes will shut down all public services, closing schools, customs and tax offices, halting public transport and grounding flights for 24 hours.

While the news on export weakening this morning is pushing the pound downward, Goldman’s Erik F. Nielsen is arguing that the UK is in much better shape for a rebound than continental Europe.

Confirming yet again the the euro and US equities basically trade the same, we see the direction of both is down this morning.

(This post by Marshall Auerback and Robert Parenteau was published on Newdeal20.org.)

Jim Rogers is everywhere today.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Commission is discussing the idea of creating a European Monetary Fund with the 16 countries that use the euro.

Thursday’s successful sale of a 5 billion euro of 10-year bonds appears to have quelled many fears about an impending crisis. The yield offered by the Greeks to bond investor was very high but it didn’t reach catastrophic levels.

[preserve] [/preserve] What do people know about the financial struggles in Greece? Is a bailout the answer for the debt-ridden nation? Find out in the video above!

Despite escalating street violence that saw masked youths attack the head of Greece’s biggest union, the Greek Parliament just passed Prime Minister George Papandreou’s austerity package.

Greece successfully pulled off a five-billion euro bond issue that was massively over-subscribed, indicating the investors loved the 6.5% yield:

[preserve] [/preserve] Is the euro doomed? One (unlikely) solution proposed by Charles Hugh Smith is to devolve the currency into two: Euro 1 and Euro 2. Mercantilist nations such as Germany and France would make up Euro 1, and the debt-and-asset-bubble-dependent consumer nations would utilise Euro 2.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde just said that there is no Franco-German aid plan for Greece.

The executives from a Greek stockbrokerage firm were locked up in jail yesterday after an appeals court decided that they posed a public threat.

I’ve got a bad feeling about the Euro: the structural imbalances I presented yesterday irrevocably doom the single currency.

You know a company/country/continent is in trouble when authorities start cracking down on short bets against it.

Disappointed that gold isn’t regularly busting to new highs like it did last year?