Get ready for the Spanish bailout

No one can pretend to know whether Spain is illiquid or insolvent without gauging the size of the black hole that is the country’s banking sector. The Spanish government is finally starting to do this: Bankia and other banks are reportedly set to receive a capital injection from Madrid. With the Spanish economy contracting sharply and with unemployment soaring, it was inevitable that the government had to bail out the banks. But this only deals with one piece of the puzzle. Without growth, the Spanish sovereign will need a bailout as well. Read more of this post

EU Summit Reaction: Sum of the Parts is No Greater than the Whole

After 11 hours of negotiating behind closed doors, eurozone leaders emerged in the wee hours of the morning on October 27th to announce that they had agreed a series of principles. The markets rebounded later that day as everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief that at least the EU summit hadn’t ended the same way an Italian parliamentary meeting had earlier that day, in a fist fight. EU leaders found agreement on Greece, bank recapitalizations and a leveraged EFSF as I expected. As investors and analysts begin to dig into the details of the communiqué, a number of gaps will emerge in the plan, indicating it is nothing close to the “comprehensive solution” to the crisis originally promised. Read more of this post

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