The final 3Q GDP reading is expected to show a 0.1% contract amid an initial forecast for a 0.3% drop in the growth rate, and the data is likely to encourage an improved outlook for the region as policy makers see the economy emerging from the worst recession since the post-war period.

The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) raised its growth outlook or the economy in 2010 from 0.4% to 0.7% as household spending and construction activity is expected to be stronger than previous estimates.

Consumer price inflation is what everyone is counting on. The debts of the past need to be reckoned with.

The financial world keeps working its way through this period of great confusion and uncertainty. Nobody knows what to think. Nobody knows what anything is worth. Nobody knows what to do.

Debt is going down largely because households are defaulting.

We are clearly starting to get some better data points here and there, but it is going to be a recovery in the statistics and not in the things that count, such as income and employment.

In a world of charts and indicators and support and resistance levels, we tend to venerate price activity above all else.  But price is often not the master, but rather the slave to news.

Markets are closer to living things than to inanimate objects.  They have hearts, souls, and a sense of humor.

For the more definable sense of risk in this coming week's economic docket, there is plenty of data to feed the more established fundamentals trends.

The euro’s biggest fundamental driver is the health of the US dollar.