Despite the onslaught of confidence-inspiring flim-flam from leadership in Europe and a Spanish Prime Minister (and finance minister) desperate to distract with "soft" survey based data, the hard numbers keep coming in and keep getting worse and worse. The latest, seemingly confirming the IMF's fearsome forecast that European banks face massive loan losses in the coming years, is Spain's loan delinquency rate. Bad loans across Spanish banks amounted to $247 billion in August - a new record-breaking 12.12% of all loans outstanding (now 30% higher than any previous crisis in the history of Spain). Credit creation continues to implode with a 12.3% plunge in total loans outstanding but of course, none of that matters (for now), as Spanish bond spreads (and yields) press back towards pre-crisis lows...
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Charts: Bloomberg