Spain

Spain has become the new Greece. Actually, in many respects Spain is now worse than Greece. The Spanish unemployment rate is already so high and unlike Athens, Madrid has made no headway in reducing its public debt levels (whereas the…

Ever since Willem Buiter mentioned the probability of a Spanish bailout some time in 2012, speculation has been rife about a Spanish bailout. In this column I argue that Spain is still too big to bail and that any bailout for Spain must…

"We believe that the Kingdom of Spain's budget trajectory will likely deteriorate against a background of economic contraction in contrast with our previous projections. At the same time, we see an increasing likelihood that Spain's…

Collapsing credit demand ultimately leads to a loss of banking capital, which is the exact opposite of what the LTRO program was set up to achieve. Interestingly, as the charts below show, banks seem to think that there will be a slowing of…

Ireland dealt fairly quickly with its property market bubble by effectively and forcefully nationalizing and recapitalizing its banking sector. They clearly still have a serious problem on their hands, but the nation has been aggressive in…

The concept of German decoupling from the Eurozone recession may have been wishful thinking. The latest German Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) has converged with that of the Eurozone as a whole. Manufacturing PMI is a closely…

In last week's weekly newsletter, I explained why Spain was in big trouble. Today I want to present the full context euro zone-wide and why there will be more sovereign defaults to come in the euro zone. This will be a very comprehensive…

Today's big news was the bond auction in Spain. Spain's auction went off without a hitch but at a cost. Spain sold 2.5 bln euros ($3.3 billion USD). The Spanish Treasury sold a 1.1 bln euro bond maturing 31 Oct 2014 (average yield: 3.463%,…

Most of the focus these days is on Spain and the periphery - and for good reason. Spain's bond yields are putting it into a potential debt death spiral from which the only escapes are a bailout or default. Moreover, the whole of the…

I think this should be obvious to everyone by now, but peak oil is a clear factor in the Argentina/Spain oil crisis. Here's what happened.