Spain

Spain is now ranked ninth for default probability just behind Ireland, with an expected 40% chance of default in the next five years. The Spanish 10-year bond yield has fallen back to 6.70% after reaching a record euro zone high of 6.834%…

The euro zone sovereign debt crisis is reaching the end of the line. Spain and Italy are both simply too big to be bailed out. Yet as we speak, the yields on Spanish and Italian 10-year bonds are soaring, Spain's reaching a record 6.807%.…

Two weeks ago I argued Europe is on the brink of something very big. But the Spanish deal is not it. After the deal, markets rallied initially but soon afterwards, Spanish and Italian sovereign bonds sold off and are at the still elevated…

As I first described here in late April, the Spanish bailout is looking like a bailout of Spanish banks instead of the sovereign. Spain's debt to GDP is still relatively low and so the thinking is that the sovereign debt problems there are…

As I indicated on 27 April on Why the Spanish bailout may be to recap the banks instead of sovereign, I don't believe the Europeans are going to bail out the Spanish sovereign. Instead, given that Spain has low sovereign debt to GDP, the…

The euro zone continues to dominate the headlines, with both Spain and Greece on the verge of collapse. Ireland, however, has voted in a referendum today to decide whether it accepts the fiscal treaty that Germany has been pushing for in…

We are now in another existential crisis for the euro zone with yields on sovereign debt from Spain and Italy spiking well over 6%. We have been here before, most recently in November. Then, it was Italy in Spain's position as the lead…

As always, I have a lot of links on Monday. Three or four stories have dominated the news in each market for the past week. In the US, it is about either JPMorgan Chase's escalating losses, Facebook's IPO or the general aimlessness of the…

By Michael Pettis Normally I don’t like to write about European prospects in the midst of a very rough patch in the market because in that case there isn’t much I can say that isn’t already being said. I find it more useful to wait for…

The fact that Spanish bank shares have rallied today (3.1% at pixel time) and have easily outperformed the market (IBEX up 0.3%) following Moody's downgrade of 16 Spanish banks should be understood as a bit of a fluke. Some observers will…