Spanish and Italian borrowing costs soar

Euobserver

The cost of insurance against a Spanish default reached another record on Monday, with Italy's borrowing costs also rising sharply amid continued market fears about the fate of the eurozone. "With a risk premium at 500 points, it is very difficult to raise finances," Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Monday (28 May) in a press conference. His country's 'debt risk premium' - the default insurance investors demand on Spanish bonds compared to German bunds - that day leapt to a eurozone record of 514 basis points.

But Rajoy insisted Spain was not seeking financing from the eurzone bail-out fund, but rather alluded to earlier calls for the European Central Bank (ECB) to resume its bond-purchasing or cheap bank loans programmes which last year helped both Spain and Italy lower their borrowing costs. "We need a clear, forceful and energetic defence of the euro," Rajoy said. Last week he noted that ECB money is a more pressing issue than the theoretical discussion about further political integration of the eurozone.

Part of Spain's problem is its troubled banks. The government on Friday pumped an extra €19 billion into Bankia, its fourth-largest lender, in what is so far the biggest Spanish bank bail-out. Madrid already injected €4.4 billion earlier this month. Reports suggest another €30 billion may be needed - with an independent audit under way to examine the state of Spanish lenders.

Fears about a possible Greek exit from the eurozone, labelled "Armageddon" by some senior bankers, are affecting Spain as it seeks funding from the markets. Charles Dallara, the manager of the International Institute of Finance, an umbrella group of the world's largest banks, last week said a Greek exit would cost more than €1 trillion and seriously damage other southern countries. “Those who think that Europe, and more broadly the global economy, are really prepared for a Greek exit should think again," Dallara told Bloomberg in an interview.

Similar to Spain, Italy's borrowing costs also spiked on Monday, with two-year bonds selling at extra costs of over four percent, compared to a 3.3 percent rate last month before the Greek elections. Meanwhile, German bonds last week sold at a record of zero-percent interest, as investors are flocking to these 'safe-haven' treasury papers. European Parliament chief Martin Schulz, himself a German national, said last week that this widening gap between Germany and other eurozone countries is "destroying Europe" and urged the German chancellor to change policies.

A meeting called by Italy's premier Mario Monti next month in Rome with Rajoy, France's Francois Hollande and Germany's Angela Merkel is likely to see more pressure put on the German leader to accepting some form of joint debt issuing - the so-called eurobonds.

The prospect of having these joint bonds could help alleviate the borrowing problem for southern countries in the long run and lift the pressure from the ECB to continue buying up debt or injecting cheap loans into the eurozone banks. But Germany, who borrowing costs would rise under such a scheme, has said this is a long term solution only.

Hollande pushes EU to talk about joint euro bonds

French President Francois Hollande, standing firm in the face of stiff German opposition, said on Wednesday that European leaders should broach the possibility of jointly-issued euro bonds and that no option to resolve the bloc's crisis should be taboo. 

Hollande, due to join other European Union leaders later on Wednesday for talks over dinner, said all options should be put on the table because the gathering was about exchanging views before a decision-making summit at the end of June."This is not about entering into conflict with others," the Socialist president told a news conference in Paris. "Everyone should go into this in the best spirit."

Hollande, who held the news conference jointly with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy after the two met, reiterated that he was committed to debt and deficit reduction but that helping economic growth was a necessary part of that objective. He said he would raise a panoply of ideas including the role of the European Central Bank and the European Financial Stability Fund on the one hand as well as euro bonds.

"It's not just about project bonds, which will also be proposed," he said at the news conference at the presidential Elysee Palace, referring to the idea of the EU backing bonds issued by managers of infrastructure projects. "It's about thinking of a means of financing that will allow all countries that have made the necessary effort to fix their public finances to gain access to financing at the lowest rates possible, sheltered from speculation or doubt in some markets," he said. "Is it acceptable that some sovereign debt has to be refinanced at rates of 6 percent when others, admittedly better regarded, can access funding at rates of close to zero in the same monetary and budgetary zone?" he asked.

Germany sold bonds offering investors no regular interest rate payments for the first time on Wednesday. Strong demand for the bonds underscored investors' desperation to find a safe place to park their euros. By contrast, investors trading in the open market were seeking returns of around 4.2 percent and 3.6 percent respectively on comparable bonds issued by vulnerable debtors Spain and Italy.

Hollande vowed during the campaign that swept him to power in a vote on May 6 where he unseated Nicolas Sarkozy that he would seek changes to a European pact on deficit reduction to add more concrete commitments to shore up economic growth. Hollande said at the news conference in Paris that he also intended to address the role of the ECB and EFSF and banking liquidity in the talks with other European leaders. "The top priority is injecting liquidity into the European financial system to ensure that European banks, all European banks, can be consolidated," he said. "It's at the end of June that we must produce solutions and do so together but it would be a shame to not go all the way on proposals," he said in defense of his position ahead of the EU meeting on Wednesday.

Reuters

Greek Crisis at G8

The leaders of the Group of 8, emphasizing growth as well as fiscal discipline at their meeting on Saturday, made a strong plea for Greece to stay in the euro zone and the European Union. Despite efforts at official reassurance, no one really knows the consequences of a Greek exit from the euro zone, or how rapidly big countries like Spain and Italy, and their banks, will feel the effects.

However cavalierly some European officials talk of “managing” a Greek exit, the political and financial costs would represent a fundamental challenge to the European Union and its credibility, and the point of no return may be approaching faster than anyone anticipated.

“Anyone who thinks a Greek departure would be cleansing and not cause systemic contagion is deluding themselves,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London. “Already we’ve seen a sharp increase in spreads and the beginnings of capital flight in other struggling euro zone economies,” with the risk of a full-blown banking crisis in Spain, where 16 banks and four regions have just been downgraded by Moody’s Investor Service.

The stresses on the system are now so great that to contain panic and contagion, while protecting countries too big to bail out, would require political choices and financial commitments that many countries, including Germany, Finland and the Netherlands, seem unlikely to make — the prime reason they would prefer that Greece remain.

The problems of Greece and Spain are complicated enough, but the pressure on euro zone leaders to resolve the evident contradictions in the common currency and to move faster toward more political and fiscal integration is rising by the day. The election of François Hollande, a committed European, as president of France may help push Berlin toward more collective responsibility for the euro zone, but Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany , with her own domestic political concerns, has rarely been willing to move quickly or boldly, which many believe has prolonged and deepened the euro crisis.

Even the British prime minister, David Cameron, warned Europe of the urgent need to fix its economic imbalances and structure. Britain is outside the euro zone and has no intention of joining, so Mr. Cameron’s words were resented. But they rang loudly. Europe, he said, “either has to make up, or it is looking at a potential breakup.”

While Greece is only a small part of the euro zone — and European officials concede it should not have been allowed to join in the first place — its exit is likely to be more expensive and complicated than figuring out a way for it to remain. That would subject, of course, to Greek voters producing a functioning government in new parliamentary elections on June 17.

Ms. Merkel is now talking of special stimulus programs for Greece to help ease the pain of austerity, but any new deal with Athens will have to be negotiated with a real government, and there is no guarantee that the next elections will produce a working majority. They might even lead to a governing coalition that is hostile to the loan agreement that Germany has insisted is not open to significant renegotiation.

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CNBC

Görög kormányválság

Görögországban ügyvivő kormányt neveznek ki, miután eredménytelenül zárultak a kormányalakítási tárgyalások. Francois Hollande és Angela Merkel kiáll Görögország euróövezeti tagsága mellett. 

A görög államfő hivatala kedden jelentette be, hogy eredménytelenül értek véget a kormányalakítási tárgyalások, ezért új választást írnak ki. A választásokig szerdán, május 16-án ügyvivő kormányt neveznek ki az ország élére. A hírek hallatára a piacok nyugtalansága növekszik, több elemző cég továbbra is a görögök euróövezetből való távozását prognosztizálja. 

A pénzpiacok nyugtalansága annak ellenére is nő, hogy Angela Merkel német kancellár és Francois Hollande új francia elnök a tegnapi napon kiálltak Görögország euróövezeti tagsága mellett. Angela Merkel elmondta: maguk a görögök is azt szeretnék, hogy hazájuk a közös európai fizetőeszközt használó uniós tagállamok között maradjon. Berlin és Párizs hajlandó támogatást nyújtani ehhez, akár „pótlólagos gazdaságösztönző” lépésekkel is, ha Athén ezt igényeli. Ugyanakkor a görög félnek be kell tartania a nemzetközi pénzügyi támogatáshoz kapcsolódó megállapodást – szögezte le.

Euvonal

EU Carries Out Airstrikes on Somali Pirates

European naval aircraft fired at a pirate base on the Somali coastline for the first time in an escalated use of force against piracy threatening oil shipments that pass the Horn of Africa.

A European Union naval force helicopter attacked the base early Tuesday, targeting several skiffs the pirates were storing in the area, officials said. Nobody was injured in the attacks, officials said. 

A new EU policy permits naval officials to shoot pirate strongholds onshore, as well as offshore, which has long been permitted. The EU's action and its move to publicize the shooting signaled the seriousness of its response to the continuing piracy problem.  

(...)
Link

EU predicts 0.3 pct eurozone contraction in 2012

The European Union estimates that the economy of the 17 countries that use the euro is in recession in the wake of a debt crisis that has prompted savage spending cuts and a jump in unemployment to record highs.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, forecasts that the eurozone economy will contract by 0.3 percent in 2012 and grow by 1 percent next year. Its prediction for 2012 is far weaker than the one it gave last November, when it predicted growth of 0.5 percent. A year ago it was predicting growth of 1.8 percent.

Friday's forecasts provide clear evidence of the impact of Europe's debt crisis on the eurozone economy over the past year as governments have struggled to introduce deficit-reduction measures and business and consumer confidence has taken a dive.

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Greek elections

Greek voters on Sunday (6 May) punished the two ruling parties responsible for the last EU bail-out and its austerity measures by giving the radical left the second highest number of votes and allowing a neo-Nazi party into the legislature for the first time.

Early official results after 10 percent of the votes were count show that the centre-right New Democracy party has gained the most votes (19.2%) but it is not enough to re-make the current ruling coalition with the Social Democrats (Pasok). Instead, Syriza, a coalition of radical left parties (16.3%) opposing the austerity rules of the €130 billion bail-out, but in favour for Greece to stay in the eurozone, pushed Pasok into third place. The right-wing Independent Greeks, a splinter party from New Democracy also openly against the bail-out, scored over ten percent. 

(...)

Vying with Syriza as the biggest news of the election is the score of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. It is to hold 21 seats in the parliament after it convinced almost seven percent of the voters.  The Communist Party and the Democratic Left - bolstered by defections from Pasok - also scored above the five-percent threshold. They may be drawn into a leftist government if Samaras fails to form a majority and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras is given the same task.

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Euobserver.com

Francois Hollande lett Franciaország új elnöke

A hivatalos eredmények szerint a szocialista Francois Hollande 51,56 százalékkal megnyerte a francia elnökválasztást. A konzervatív Nicolas Sarkozy leköszönő államfő 48,44 százalékot ért el az elnökválasztás vasárnap tartott második fordulójában.

Hollande-nak államfőként a rekordméreteket öltő, több mint tíz százalékos munkanélküliség, a deficit és az államadósság lefaragása lesz a legfőbb feladata, valamint kezelnie kell a franciáknak a Brüsszel által megkívánt strukturális reformokkal és megszorításokkal szembeni, egyre növekedő elégedetlenségét is.

Francois Hollande egy korábbi beszédében mondta a következőket: „A forduló másnapján, ha mandátumot kapok, memorandumot fogok intézni az (uniós) államfőkhöz a paktum újratárgyalásáról.” Ennek négy fő pontja: eurókötvények létrehozása infrastrukturális ipari projektek finanszírozásához, az Európai Beruházási Bank finanszírozási lehetőségeinek felszabadítása, pénzügyi tranzakciós adó bevezetése, valamint az európai strukturális alapok fel nem használt maradványainak mozgósítása különböző projektekhez – mondta.

Euvonal.hu