Roubini Global Economics - RGE Monitor -- Europe EconoMonitor
"I would now expect several eurozone countries with weak banking sectors to get into serious difficulties as the crisis continues. There is a risk of cascading sovereign defaults. If this was limited to countries of the size of Ireland or Greece, one could solve this problem through a bail-out. But solvency risk is not a problem confined to small countries. The banking sectors in Italy, Spain and Germany are increasingly vulnerable." Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times , 15 February 2009.
Investors are increasingly concerned that Ireland may default on its national debt as the government pledges more money to help troubled banks, the Sunday Times said. Credit-default swaps on Ireland’s government bonds reached record levels last week as debt investors rate the nation as Europe’s most-troubled economy, the paper said. Ireland has pledged financial help for lenders that would be more than double its annual economic output and the loans held by its banks are more than 11 times the size of its economy, the report said. Credit-default swaps on the five-year sovereign debt of Ireland, which is rated AAA by Fitch Ratings, jumped 49 basis points on Feb. 13 to a record 377, according to CMA Datavision prices. That’s 18 basis points more than the cost to protect the debt of Costa Rica, which Fitch rates BB, or 11 grades lower than AAA, from default. Bloomberg , 16 February 2009
Well push is, I think, now getting much much nearer to shove time, and we now wait restlessly to know what EU leaders are going to offer in the way of a second round of bank bailouts at the end of this month. As I argue in this post , and as Munchau also suggests, more than sweet words will be needed to honour the commitment made on October 12 2008 in Paris that no "systemic" EU bank would be allowed to fail, as a minimum we need a comprehensive mechanism financed by the issuing of EU bonds.
The most recent and most obvious example of the push coming to shove situation is the announcement by Spain's Banco Santander, yesterday (Monday), that its Banif property fund, the largest of its type in Spain, could not meet the avalanche of redemption requests it had been receiving, and consequently had asked the stock market regulator for permission to suspend payments for up to 2 years.
