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Contagion 'Madness'?
Published in Pension Pulse. Chart above from Bill Marsh, NYT (Source: Bank for International Settlements).
Emma
Ross of Bloomberg reports, Greek
Quarantine Tested as Spain Denounces Contagion ‘Madness’:
Investors
are already testing the euro region’s efforts to contain the Greek
crisis.
Greek bond yields yesterday rose above
their level before the government agreed on a European Union-led
bailout on May 2 as escalating protests cast doubt on its ability to
drive through austerity measures. Spanish and Portuguese bonds also
renewed last week’s slide as investors question their ability to cut
budget deficits that are among the highest in the euro area.
“If the execution of the announced measures in
Greece faltered it would certainly make it more difficult to bring the
sovereign debt markets of Spain and Portugal into calmer waters,” said
Kommer van Trigt, who helps oversee 140 billion euros ($183 billion) at
Robeco Group in Rotterdam. “We want to see more evidence that measures
are really being implemented.”
European governments are hoping that Greece’s
110 billion- euro bailout will stop a crisis that Nobel Prize-winning
economist Joseph Stiglitz says threatens the currency’s survival.
Investors are speculating that Spain and Portugal may also eventually
need assistance, prompting Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez
Zapatero to dismiss such talk as “complete madness.”
That didn’t stop a selloff in Spanish bonds
yesterday. The extra yield that investors demand to buy its debt over
German bunds rose 21 basis points to a 14-month high of 117.8 points.
Spain’s benchmark IBEX Index, the euro region’s worst performer after
Greece, fell 5.4 percent to the lowest since July. Portugal’s spread
rose 40 basis points to 247 yesterday.
The euro weakened 1.4 percent to $1.3011, the
lowest in more than a year.
Flights
Greek unions plan
their third general strike of the year today after workers yesterday
occupied the Acropolis and shut down schools and hospitals at the start
of a 48-hour walk-out. Aegean Airlines SA, a Greek carrier, has
canceled all flights.
Workers are protesting
against the 30 billion euros of austerity measures agreed to by Prime
Minister George Papandreou in return for the bailout from the euro
region and the International Monetary Fund. Protesters will meet at
Pedio tou Areos Park in central Athens and will march through
Constitution Square, where the Parliament is situated.“We will continue with action as long as these
measures, which go against workers and are anti-social, continue to be
demanded,” Stathis Anestis, a spokesman for the GSEE union, said in a
telephone interview, predicting “massive participation.”
The yield on Greece’s 10-year bond climbed 90 basis
points to 9.84 percent yesterday compared with 9.343 percent on April
30.
Greek Opposition
More than 51 percent of Greeks said they won’t
accept new austerity measures before the rescue deal, according to a
poll of 1,000 people by ALCO for Proto Thema newspaper. That compared
with 33 percent who would accept them. No margin of error was given for
the poll, which was conducted from April 27 to April 29.
Unions have had some success influencing policy in
the past. In 2001 they forced then-Prime Minister Costas Simitis to
dilute proposals such as raising the retirement age. In 1985, unions
successfully opposed a government proposal to cut spending and boost tax
revenue, prompting Simitis, who was economy minister at the time, to
resign two years later.
Some economists say the terms are too harsh
for the country to bear. Greece expects its economy to shrink 4 percent
this year and 2.6 percent in 2011.
“The economic pain that such belt tightening will bring suggests that
it would be unwise to rule out a default further down the line,” Ben
May, an economist at Capital Economics in London, said in a note.
Wrangling
The danger for the euro region is that failure to
fix the Greece crisis after three months of wrangling by EU leaders
will prompt investors to shift attention to the deficits of Portugal and
Spain and dump their bonds too. Spain’s budget deficit was the
third-highest in the euro region last year, at 11.2 percent of GDP.
Portugal’s shortfall was the fourth at 9.4 percent of output.
The IMF yesterday published a statement denying
speculation that Spain had asked for a bailout.
“These rumors can increase the interest-rate differential compared
with German bonds and damage our national interests,” Zapatero told a
news conference in Brussels yesterday. “This is simply intolerable and I
can tell you that we will certainly combat it.”Ireland had the highest deficit at 14.3 percent and Greece’s was
13.6 percent.
While the Greek rescue “may
work for a little while, in the long run the fundamental institutional
problems are there, speculators are aware of these problems,” said
Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor, in an interview with BBC
Radio 4 yesterday. “The future of the euro may be limited.”
Everywhere you look, everyone is
talking about "contagion" and the beginning of a wave of sovereign debt
defaults. I tend to agree with Spain's Prime Minister that what is going
on right now is "complete madness". Spain's banks are among the best in
the world and they got trashed on Tuesday.
At
times like these, I like to take a step back and listen to reason. In a
sea of cacophony, very few have the insight of William Engdahl. Watch
both interviews below and listen carefully to his thoughts on Eurozone
warfare and the secular decline of the US economy. Both these interviews
are a must watch. No wonder European leaders are ramping up their
push for a new bond-rating agency.
»
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That is severe.
If you transfer the last 2 seconds of the 2nd clip to a tape system and turn on the audio in rewind mode he said buy chinese solar stocks on dips. Nice work Leo. Was William the 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll?
Tyler: Time to put "leo" out to pasture. Plagiarism is not 'a good thing.' Anyone who writes that "Spain's banks are among the best in the world" need to read ZeroHedge more often, but surely shouldn't be writing for ZeroHedge. "Leo" is not the brightest bulb on your front porch.
Is being one of the "best banks in world" something akin to being the prettiest woman in the bar at 2:00 AM?
Common denominator: desperation.
Settle down. My friend sent me that chart but not the link to the NYT article. As far as me not being the "brightest bulb on ZH", I can take you on in my sleep.
Leo you remind me more and more of Ziggy from The Wire
What about giving credits for the nice graphic to whom it belongs, to Bill Marsh with the New York Times, but not to your own blog, where the credits are missing too? What a blunt plagiarism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/weekinreview/02schwartz.html
Thanks for the link to Bill Marsh's chart. A friend sent me the chart but not the link to the NYT article. And just so we are clear, this chart is sourced from the Bank for International Settlements. I edited my comment to attribute the proper reference.
excellent .Leo, I imagine you did not buy todays dip! LOL
Figure you can take a joke. Nice submission by the way. I will check out this William Engdahl fellow. Perhaps my crazy german sister will listen to him. She didnt believe me about the Euro going down, but here it is. OH shit time. Bet those groceries cost more now!
On hartgeld.com (Austrian gold-bug website) are hints published that in Germany the Euro will be abandoned and the Mark re-issued.
Some Germans buy that rumour and exchange Euros for gold; mos bullion dealers there are almost sold out.
Excellent visual!
H1 BAILOUT CONTAGION:
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/05/h1b0-piigs-bailout-contagion....
Nice Work!
the visual SHOWS A PENTAGRAM IN THE BACK!!!
DOOOooommmmm!!
666
Snotadamus was right... :)
Great post. Thanks!
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