Archive - Sep 29, 2010 - Story

The EURUSD was last seen well north of 1.36. The reason for this strength certainly was not based on news flow out of Ireland, where Anglo Irish just saw its Tier 2 debt downgraded to CCC, on what the rater called a "clear and present risk" of a restructuring of this debt. Yet this is likely irrelevant in the grand scheme of moral hazard things: after all, as the FT reports, Ireland is about to unveil an "additional capital injection expected to be about €5bn (£4.3bn). That would bring the bail-out costs for Anglo Irish to €30bn, shy of the €35bn forecast by credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s." Nonetheless, Ireland’s cost of borrowing on Tuesday hit record levels with yields on 10-year government bonds jumping 25 basis points to 6.72 per cent. And to make things delightfully surreal, the Irish unemployment rate was reported to jump from 13.0% to 13.7% in one month.

RANsquawk European Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc. – 29/09/10