Saturday 27 August 2011

What will make the main pain in Spain go away again?


Spain is in the cross hairs of the bond bears. With sovereign debt equal to three delinquent peripheral Eurozone countries - Greece, Ireland and Portugal - put together, it is potentially very scary if Spain's yields move to levels where refinancing costs push it into a negative debt spiral. The 10-year bond yield topped 6% recently but the latest Eurozone package plus European Central Bank buying pushed that back to 5%. Even that seems high in a world where yields are much lower in some places, like USA and Germany. It is a bit ironic that 5% seems high given that it would have been quite normal a few years ago. But the simple arithmetic is that when you have debt problems you need to keep your bond yield at or below your nominal GDP growth rate i.e. real growth plus inflation. Spain is some way off that as it's real growth has slowed to a crawl. But the Spanish are not sitting on their hands and are in the process of passing a balanced budget constitutional amendment which has the support of both the ruling party and the opposition. The QSL is from the COPE radio chain broadcasting from Valencia (home of the 2009 America's Cup) heard in Johannesburg in 1991 on AM, one of quite a few Spanish medium-wave QSLs I've picked up over the years.

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