Another important person to follow: Jean-Michel Six

Jean-Michel Six, the chief economist of Standard & Poor, is the man to be watched closely in near term. World capital market, especially equity market is volatile at the moment due to unconcerted effort by the EU leadership in tackling the Euro Zone debt crisis. There is a lot of dilly-dally at the moment in decision making process. Jean is hinting risk of further downgrade in Euro Zone economic power house - France and Germany.

Dec 12 (Reuters) - The European Union will need more summits to resolve its debt turmoil and time is running out, although last week's deal was a significant step in resolving a "crisis of confidence", the chief economist of S&P Europe said on Monday.

"Let's not raise expectations too high, there will be more summits," the ratings agency's official Jean-Michel Six told a business conference in Tel Aviv. "Time is running out and action is needed on both sides of the equation, on the fiscal and monetary side."

The agency, which placed 15 euro zone countries on watch for a potential downgrade ahead of Friday's summit, wanted to send a strong signal that the countries were facing significant risk of a major recession next year and a credit crunch, Six said.

"There is probably yet another shock required before everyone in Europe reads from the same page, for instance a major German bank experiencing difficulties in the market," Six said. "Then there would be a recognition that everyone is on the same boat and even German institutions can be affected by this contagion."

The Who and Who in the European Debt Crisis

For the last six month, the financial world has been focusing on the development of the debt crisis expulsion in Europe. If you pick up any financial daily, there is news related to that almost everyday. It started with economist making noise that the the debt to GDP ratio in certain European countries are at the unsustainable level and has been warning on the melt down on the credit market as some of Greece's debts are due for repayment. As the more and more European leaders coming in the scene, a lot of new names, which never cross our mind start surface. As i read the financial daily, sometime was confused who is who and where they are from. Listed below are important names we need to know:

1. Angela Dorothea Merkel - Chancellor of German

2. Nicolas Sarkozy - France President

3. David Cameron - UK Prime Minister

4. Silvio Berlusconi - Italy Prime Minister resigned

5. Georgios A. Papandreou - Greece Prime Minister

6. Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde - IMF MD

7. Mario Draghi - EU Central Bank President
8. Mario Monti - new Italy Prime Minister since 16 Nov
9. Jose Manuel Barroso - EU President
10. Mervyn King - BoE Governor

The list will go on as add on new names.

MF Global

Gosh! Another episode of Lehman Brother collapse!

MF Global being a financial institution investing in financial derivatives has filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. Its exposure European soverign bonds turned bad due to 50% haircut agreed last week. However, fortunately, the size of the exposure is much smaller compared to Lehman case.

It is interesting to know who are the other investors that facing haircut issue.