Experts lower one-party state’s country risk score after sudden death of Kim Jong-il

After the death of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il, his youngest son-of-three is named as the "Great Successor"

Nomura's chief political analyst releases the following update

Economists score the UK lower for country risk than France, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Finland

Decision by S&P to put Europe’s sovereigns on negative outlook backed up by steady decline in country risk scores.

Fresh off the wires - German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler and the association of German public lenders, VoeB, hit back at the potential S&P downgrade

The Brazilian central bank’s decision to remove the IOF tax on international investors’ equity investments in the country seems to have both excited and annoyed debt bankers in equal measure

Investors, economists, politicians and other policy-makers across Europe and the rest of the world are calling ever more urgently for the ECB to step in and buy European government bonds. With the EFSF a clear bust, large-scale ECB intervention looks the only way to prevent a financial market meltdown in Europe with potentially disastrous consequences for the global economy.