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Dec. 16, 2009, 7:00 p.m. EST · Recommend (6) · Post:
By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Rumors of a debt disaster are swirling around Europe, from Athens to Madrid and all the way to London.
Investors have rushed to sell Greek bonds since the newly elected government of George Papandreou made a startling revelation: the deficit will soar to over 12% of gross domestic product this year, well above previous official projections.
Greece's predicament has escalated concerns about contagion in other European countries whose finances are in poor shape. Just this month, the ratings of Greece have been cut both by Fitch Ratings, and, late Wednesday, by Standard & Poor's, and major agencies have warned Spain and Portugal of possible cuts.
The market reaction has been swift, and brutal. The euro has dropped below the key $1.50 level. Credit-default swaps on Greek government debt -- essentially, bets that Greece will default -- have ballooned.
The ASE Composite stock-market index /quotes/comstock/! (XX:??? 2,222, +52.16, +2.40%) has dropped more than 20% since mid-October, dragged by shares of lenders including Piraeus Bank, EFG Eurobank Ergasias and National Bank of Greece /quotes/comstock/13*!nbg/quotes/nls/nbg (NBG 5.24, +0.20, +3.97%) .
Irish and Spanish institutions also have seen extreme bouts of turbulence of late.
The most vulnerable countries like Greece and Spain indeed confront a mounting debt burden, which will likely lead to more ratings downgrades and more market sell-offs. The path to fiscal health will require painful, unpopular reforms.
But, most analysts agree that the European Union will, if necessary, bail out its members and never let a country's fiscal situation deteriorate to the point of sovereign default. Those rescue expectations continue even as terms of euro entry explicitly forbids such moves. See story on the EMU fudge.
"If you think Greece is going to default, you should sell all the bonds of Spanish and Italian and Portuguese companies, because you think the euro will fall apart," said Philip Gisdakis, credit strategist at UniCredit. "And that is something that I think is completely exaggerated."
"There is a lot of misunderstanding in the market about the importance of Europe and the euro-zone on a political level," he said. "Europe is a question of warranties. They are going to support countries like Greece and Ireland."
The members of the European Union -- which is both a political and an economic alliance -- are closely interconnected and have too much to lose if one of them defaults.
That is especially true for those 16 countries which share the euro as their common currency. See story on playing the crisis.
Greece's debt troubles are hardly new; it has been running high public deficits for years, and the state of the economy is not making things any easier. Real growth will be nearly flat next year after falling into a recession in 2009. The economic slump, together with high budget deficits, is projected to push public debt from 112.5% of GDP this year to over 135% of GDP by 2011, according to European Commission estimates.
Projections of weak growth and rising borrowing costs make it very challenging for Greece to repair its finances. The closely watched yield spread between Greek and German government bonds has widened significantly. For ten-year bonds, for example, Greece has to pay 2.5 percentage points more interest than Germany.
- Maritalfinancier | 7:54 p.m. Dec. 16, 2009
Investors who breathed a sigh of relief over Intel Corp.'s epic settlement with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. last month were rattled Wednesday by new antitrust allegations, this time from the Federal Trade Commission.
12:21 p.m. Dec. 16, 2009 | Comments: 8
Debt disaster fears rumble from Athens to London
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