I am in Boston to attend the Fixed Income Leaders Summit and was invited to join Alix Steel, Joe Weisenthal, and Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg TV. We talked about the peripheral in Europe, especially Portugal, Italy and Spain.  

Each has a pressing issue. In Portugal, yields have not fallen as much as in other peripheral countries. In Italy, they are belatedly addressing the recapitalization of Italian banks, but by the end of next week the bank-financed backstop that is barely a couple months old, would have like used close to half of its funds. After the December election failed to produce a government, Spain is going back to the polls at the end of the month to try it again.