Posted on 05/14/2010 5:34:33 AM PDT by blam
European Shares Slip On Economic Growth Concerns
Fri May 14, 2010 7:50am
By Harpreet Bhal
* FTSEurofirst 300 falls 2 pct; slips from 1-1/2 wk high
* Banks fall on euro zone debt worries, U.S. probe concerns
* EADS rises; weak euro helps
* For up-to-the-minute market news, click on [STXNEWS/EU]
LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - European shares fell on Friday, with growing concerns that tough austerity measures in euro zone peripheral economies could undermine growth, and banks fell as widening probes by U.S. authorities unsettled investors.
By 1120 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 .FTEU3 index of top European shares was down 2 percent at 1,029.12 points, after edging up 0.1 percent in the previous session to its highest close in more than a week.
The index is on track to post its best weekly gains since November 2008, but has had a choppy week after massive gains on Monday following the European Union and the International Monetary Fund's announcement of a $1 trillion emergency package to prevent a growing debt crisis in the euro zone.
Worries persisted that austerity measures taken by countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece to tackle their debt will hurt economic growth in the long term.
Southern European equity markets were heavily pressured, with Spain's IBEX .IBEX, Portugal's PSI 20 .PSI20 and Italy's MIB off 2.6 to 3.7 percent, while the euro fell to a fresh 18-month low against the dollar.
Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE, Germany's DAX .GDAXI and France's CAC 40 .FCHI fell 1.4 to 2.6 percent.
"There is a lot of money being put aside to help out countries such as Greece, Portugal and others but where does Europe go forward from there?
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Joe Weisenthal
May. 14, 2010, 5:26 AM
Should be a very interesting Friday.
There doesn't seem to be any overwhelmingly bad news out there. Nobody at the moment is contemplating the imminent disintegration of Europe or anything like that. And the economic news out of the US is far from horrible -- nothing that seriously undercuts the idea of a recovery.
But markets around the world are selling off.
To start, Asia had a bad night.
From WSJ:
Nikkei fell 1.5%.
Hong Kong fell 1.4%
Shanghai dropped .5%
Thailand -- in the midst of riots -- fell 1.2%.
As for Europe, we're seeing big declines across the board, most notably in France, which is off nearly 2%.
Finally, getting here we're looking at Dow futures off 50 and S&P futures off about 7 points.
[snip]
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
-~~Ludwig Von Mises
Gonna be an interesting day.
Investors have finally figured out that job creating capital is being sucked out of the market to fund government debt.
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