Spain

Last week Moody's cut the ratings of 12 British lenders, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. This week the other two ratings agencies, S&P and Fitch cut the ratings of 10 Spanish lenders.

Moody's decision to place Popular's ratings on review for possible downgrade is driven by our view that the combined entity emerging after the integration with Pastor is likely to have a weaker credit profile than Popular's standalone…

Whether the writedowns make investors feel relieved because of the alleged balance sheet transparency remains to be seen. However, the balance sheet woes at Erste highlights how active banks within the EU are in cross-border relationships.

This is a Friday night massacre over in Europe. Fitch, the ratings agency, first downgraded Italy one notch, from AA- to A+, following in Moody's footsteps for earlier this week. Then, just a few minutes later, Fitch cut Spain's credit…

I don’t follow the Spanish banking sector well enough to know what hidden value Banco Pastor has but I find it curious that it is the subject of a takeover bid at a 31% premium by Spain’s fifth largest bank, Banco Popular.

As I see it, we cannot continue with the existing currency arrangement. Countries like Spain (I am reverting to my habit of calling all the deficit countries “Spain” and all the surplus countries “Germany”) simply will not adjust quickly…

Spain appears to have dropped off radar screens. In part, a disorderly outcome of the Greek crisis continues to be threatened. Italian bond yields and CDS prices have risen above Spain's. Yet, ironically, earlier this week, Spain's central…

Here’s what I am hearing. At the end, I will tell you how far-fetched I think these things are.

Dangerous stuff being kicked around at a dangerous time. Our sense is both leaders were relieved by the success of ECB intervention to bring down Spanish and Italian bond spreads and they will continue to rely on Trichet’s monetary bazooka…

It is also worth stressing that this solution is far from perfect. We do not live in an ideal world. It is only one possible way of breaking the vicious circle into which the Euro Area countries have now fallen. It is one possible way, and…