On the day when Germany and Italy voted to approve the permanent European rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, the scary results from the Spanish bond showed why the rescue fund is so important. In this morning’s auction the yield on the Spanish the 2-year bond rose to 5.302% from 4.483% at the June 7 auction.
Today the International Monetary Fund took an axe to its forecasts for global economic growth. The biggest change in today’s world economic outlook, the IMF’s first update since April, is that the International Monetary Fund now expects the no growth in the EuroZone of 2012 to lead to slower growth in 2013.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy this morning announced another 65 billion in budget cuts and new taxes (by 2014) to meet the conditions imposed by European leaders before they will provide 100 billion euros in rescue funding for Spanish banks. In other words, all the pain announced this morning falls on Spanish workers and taxpayers so that the country can bail out its most troubled banks.
The plan to break the link between troubled banks and troubled sovereign debt that came out of the June 28-29 summit of European leaders looks badly frayed this morning. The meeting of European finance ministers that began today and that really gets up to speed tomorrow has turned into a fight over what was actually agreed at the June summit.
Disappointing U.S. jobs numbers this morning quashed whatever optimism traders were feeling after yesterday’s more positive figures in the preliminary and never very accurate ADP report. And yields on Spanish 10-year bonds climbed back above 7%
Three of the world’s big central banks took action today to add stimulus to local economies—and global stock markets at best yawned. Here’s why
Recent economic data have been weak enough to convince investors that the odds of central bank intervention are rising. And yet not so weak that investors fear key economies are slipping toward recession.
