Spain

By Sober Look As expected, more of Spain's regions are asking for a bailout. The program to help the regions was set up in July (see discussion) to create Spain's internal version of the "Stability Bond". With the regional fiscal problems…

By Michael Pettis In the last issue of my newsletter much of the first half was dedicated to a discussion of recent events in Spain and Italy and why they reinforce the argument that several countries will be forced to leave the euro and…

Here’s round two of the links, this time on Europe. It is mostly about the ECB and the rumours about unlimited liquidity. I have already written about this twice today so I won’t say any more. But I will note the Reuters article on how…

This week's second weekly-length post is just another review of the Price Waterhouse Coopers study that is big news in the German press. I have now seen the numbers in a bit more granular detail and I wanted to run through them for me…

Some maintain that Italy and Spain risk losing market access for their sovereign bonds despite drops in yields. A recent Vox column by Francesco Giavazzi suggested that Italy could and should avoid a bailout. This column argues that in…

It is clear that lending to Spanish banks is now funded entirely via TARGET2 (borrowing from the rest of the Eurosystem) rather than with deposits. In fact deposits at the Bank of Spain by the Spanish government and Spanish banks (excess…

Quick post here to highlight then continued losses in Spanish property markets and the effect on Spanish banks. House prices in Spain were down 11.2% year-on-year in July. That's the largest fall since March 2011 and it brings all in losses…

In the German press, there have been a number of stories recently that indicate that the German government will not commit any more money to bailouts in the euro zone. Specifically, the reports of greatest interest have to do with Germany's…

Simply cutting the deficit back and cleaning up bank balance sheets won’t get the economy back to growth. Indeed this habit of continually getting behind the curve, and trying vainly now that the economy is spiralling almost out of control…

I am going to try a different format for the daily today because I have a number of foreign language articles. This time, I am going to give a brief synopsis of each article rather than just having a main talking point at the outset. This…