Posted on 06/18/2012 8:32:26 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Europe's leaders have vowed to mobilise all possible means to counter the region's escalating crisis after Spain's borrowing costs threatened to spiral out of control.
Yields on 10-year Spanish bonds surged to a record high of almost 7.3pc as investors ignored the victory of pro-bailout parties in Greece's elections.
The closely-watched two-year yield rocketed by 65 basis points in a matter of hours, signalling a near-total collapse of confidence in Spain's €100bn (£80.3bn) rescue from the EU last week to shore up its banking system.
Cristobal Montoro, the economy minister, warned that Spain is now in a "critical" condition and pleaded with the European Central Bank to act with "full force" to defeat markets hostile to the euro project.
Bank of America said Spain may need a second rescue to tide it through the next three years, pushing the total loan package towards €450bn – a sum that would test the EU bail-out machinery and cause serious knock-on effects for Italy. A draft communique from the summit of G20 leaders in Mexico said Europe will take "all necessary measures" to hold the eurozone together and break the "feedback loop" between sovereign states and banks.
A separate text for next week's EU summit vowed to "mobilise all levers and instruments", though details were thin. Italy said it would push for "semi-automatic mechanism" – probably involving the ECB – to cap bond yields of states in trouble.
Bill Gross, head of the world's biggest bond fund Pimco, told Bloomberg TV that Spanish bonds were no longer a "safe environment" and warned that Germany itself had become a "credit risk" as the crisis metastasises. Spain's economy is twice the size of Greece, Portugal, and Ireland combined.
Spain's financial daily Cinco Dias said the bond rout had been a "massacre
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The Med is getting choppy.
Here it comes. Ahold be an interesting day on Wall St.tomorrow.
Sleep well everyone. Sleep well.
FYI.
A rather unfortunate visual from The Wizard Of Oz springs to mind.
When the Central banks run out of bullets look for them to inflate debt away on our backs.
This one will end in war, and soon.
I have been saying it since the EU was formed.
It will likely be economical war since they have no standing army’s.
The rest of us with army’s will be drawn in.
For some strange reason the adage “Socialism can only last until it runs out of other peoples money” (Margaret Thatcher) keeps coming up in my mind. I do not know for sure if it is applicable in this instance, as well as Greece, Portugal etc.
I also keep on wondering why it should be up to the Germans to support people in other countries so they can continue with a life style they have become accustomed to. I feel the same way for tax payers in this country, why on earth should my tax Dollar be used to support union people (GM) so they can have a trouble free ride even so many of us have a rough time in this economy.
I am quite sure there may be some experts on Free Republic to correct my faulty thinking and tell me where I went wrong.
The Swedes and the French are major arms producers.
And it only takes five months to train an unemployed youth with few prospects into a soldier.
The Southern economies have everything to gain by both defaulting and nationalizing everything foreign owned. Actually, every nation other than Germany comes out ahead that way.
Expect the Muslim situation to be resolved in the genocidal way Europe has cyclically solved similar situations for thousands of years.
You think the Germans have a burden of ungrateful aid recipients you should try to tally up US foreign aid.
Penalize something and you’ll get less of it. Subsidize it and you’ll get more. This applies to tax funded social programs and foreign aid just as well as it does to anything else, and it’s exactly what has occurred.
Leftists have never been able to grasp this simple, basic truism.
IMO, maybe so much money shouldn’t have been moved between countries in some ways. That said, though, capitalism is not the problem. It’s the best general answer that we can find, but moving much wealth from countries emphasizing manufacturing to those with greater emphases in tourism and grand social schemes (examples) might have been an error.
It’s easy to fall in love with a partial culture presented by people wearing faces tailored for the “upscale.”
Europe is a feudal place despite the hype.
They always have been.
Where’s it going to run? That’s been the catch, or the saving grace for the US several times since 2007. Precious metals? Holding paper is suspect, physical is difficult, and it’s already had a huge runup. Real estate is a safe haven historically but that’s the original bubble that set the whole conflagration off in the first place, it’s still deflating.
It is a basic unbending law of nature.
Yet the lefties continue to pile on more pain and suffering trying to defy it without ever realizing they were doomed from the start no matter how “brilliant” their latest charge...
Maggie’s still alive. I’d kill for a 15 second commercial which plays the bite of her saying that, and then a fade to her - modern day - saying,
“I do hate being right about such things.”
Raw low tax real estate?
Productive farmland still appears to be appreciating but nothing indicative of a mad rush. Being in the southeast, to me raw low tax real estate would be held for timber primarily. Not sure about the market demand going forward. Oil shales and fracking would likely change that equation radically but the enviros have gotten a head start on shaping perceptions. Land I own in rural northwestern NC could have potential in that regard but the county passed a resolution opposing it, for whatever legal weight that might carry.
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