China will roll out measures to boost consumption this year as it strives to meet challenges posed by a global slowdown, Commerce Minister Chen Deming said.
The government is studying policies to encourage spending on energy-saving products, and will take other measures including the promotion of online shopping and tourism, Chen told the ministry
+%3Cp%3EMervyn+King%2C+vice+chairman+of+the+European+Systemic+Risk+Board%2C+said+Europe%92s+sovereign+debt+crisis+is+threatening+to+hurt+the+real+economy+and+the+outlook+for+financial+stability+has+worsened.+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EGrowth+prospects+%93have+deteriorated%94+since+September%2C+King%2C+who+is+also+governor+of+the+Bank+of+England%2C+said+at+a+briefing+hosted+by+the+European+Central+Bank+in+Frankfurt+yesterday.+%93Investors+lack+confidence+to+continue+to+provide+normal+levels+of+funding.+Dependence+on+central+banks+has+risen.%94+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EThe+ECB+loaned+banks+a+record+489+billion+euros+%28%24636+billion%29+for+three+years+on+Dec.+21+to+avert+a+credit+crunch+from+the+sovereign+debt+crisis.+The+central+bank+said+earlier+this+week+that+the+turmoil+has+taken+on+systemic+proportions+not+seen+since+the+2008+collapse+of+Lehman+Brothers+Holdings+Inc.+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EKing+said+the+outlook+for+financial+stability+has+%93worsened%94+since+the+last+ESRB+meeting+in+September%2C+and+while+intervention+by+the+ECB+is+expected+to+%93assuage+funding+problems+in+the+near+term%2C+in+the+longer+term+private+funding+markets+must+be+revitalized.%94+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EBank+shares+have+suffered+this+year+as+borrowing+costs+surged+in+the+euro+region.+The+Stoxx+600+Banks+Index+has+fallen+28+percent+since+the+end+of+June%2C+compared+with+a+12+percent+decline+by+the+Stoxx+Europe+600.+%3C%2Fp%3E+Capital+Plea++%3Cp%3EKing+also+appealed+to+banks+not+to+%93reduce+lending+to+the+real+economy%94+as+they+increase+their+capital+levels+to+meet+new+standards+set+by+regulators.+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3E%93We+are+very+conscious+there+is+extreme+risk+aversion+in+private+financial+markets%2C%94+he+said+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fus-fast-cash-now.com%22%3Ecash+advance%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%21–+.+–%3E.+%93We+want+a+more+robust+banking+system+so+that+whatever+risks+crystallize%2C+whatever+their+source%2C+the+banking+system+is+in+a+better+position+than+2008.%94+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EThere+was+%93no+discussion%94+at+the+ESRB+meeting+of+any+country+leaving+the+euro+area%2C+King+said.+Still%2C+%93all+financial+institutions+are+advised+to+prepare+for+a+wide+range+of+contingencies%2C%94+he+said.+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EAndrea+Enria%2C+the+second+ESRB+vice+chair+who+is+also+the+chairman+of+the+European+Banking+Authority%2C+said+he+is+%93disappointed%94+by+European+leaders+dithering+over+putting+rescue+measures+in+place%2C+effectively+delaying+Europe%92s+bank+recapitalization.+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3E%93We+have+always+been+quite+adamant+in+all+occasions%2C+also+in+the+debate+running+up+to+the+decision%2C+that+this+should+have+been+a+comprehensive+package%2C%94+Enria+said.+This+includes+%93recapitalization%2C+some+measures+–+funding+guarantees+–+addressing+the+funding+problems+and+strengthening+of+the+European+Financial+Stability+Facility+and+of+the+tools+to+deal+with+the+sovereign+crisis.%94+%3C%2Fp%3E+%3Cp%3EThe+ESRB%2C+which+aims+to+warn+of+brewing+risks+in+the+financial+system%2C+was+set+up+in+January+as+part+of+a+new+European+architecture+designed+to+ward+off+another+financial+crisis+such+as+that+which+followed+the+Lehman+collapse.+Its+65-+member+board+is+headed+by+ECB+President+Mario+Draghi.+%3C%2Fp%3E++%3Cp%3E%3Ca+href%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bloomberg.com%2Fnews%2F2011-12-23%2Fking-says-crisis-threatens-europe-s-economy-as-stability-outlook-worsens.html%27+rel%3D%27nofollow%27%3ESource%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E+
Working almost to exhaustion and persuading countries one by one, European leaders agreed Friday to redefine their continent _ hoping that by joining their fiscal fortunes they might stop a crippling debt crisis, save the euro currency and prevent worldwide economic chaos.
Only one country said no: Britain. It will risk isolation while the rest of the continent plots its future.
The coalition came together in a marathon negotiating session among the 27 European Union heads of government _ hard bargaining that began with dinner Thursday evening and ended after 4 a.m., when red-eyed officials appeared before weary journalists to explain their proposed treaty.
It was a major step forward in the long, postwar march toward European integration. It was two decades ago, on Dec. 9 and 10, 1991, that European negotiators drafted a treaty in Maastricht, Netherlands, to unite their politics, create a central bank and, one day, invent a common currency.
The agreement _ with 23 countries in favor and three more saying they are open to the idea _ would force countries to submit their budgets for central review and limit the deficits they can run.
A crisis over sovereign debt that consumed Greece and spread to Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain threatened to explode into a worldwide financial crisis capable for forcing the global economy into recession.
“This is the breakthrough to the stability union,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “We are using the crisis as an opportunity for a renewal.”
To prevent excessive deficits, countries in the treaty will have to submit their national budgets to the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, which will have the power to send them back for revision.
They must also bring their budgets close to balance. Except in special circumstances, the budget deficit of a country must not exceed 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, the amount of goods and services produced by its economy. An unspecified “automatic correction mechanism” would punish the rule-breakers.
Germany and France insist that fiscal union is the best way to regain market trust, badly shaken by the escalating financial crisis. Most economists think it will not be enough.
They say the euro countries need to have enough money on hand to guarantee everyone can pay their debts. Euro leaders put off until March a decision on whether to provide money on top of a euro500 billion, or $668 billion, bailout fund for euro countries.
European leaders did agree to add euro200 billion to the International Monetary Fund to help ailing countries.
Only 17 of the 27 European Union countries use the euro currency, and its stability has been threatened by the massive national debts of some of those 17. All but two of the non-euro countries _ Britain and Denmark _ are committed to adopting it eventually.
The countries that use the euro found they had friends among those that do not. At least six and as many as nine non-euro countries are willing to bind themselves to the euro countries in a pact aimed at having their economies converge.
Britain said no for two reasons: Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party includes a strong anti-EU element, and Cameron, despite trying deep into the night, failed to win an exemption from regulation for the British financial industry.
The other leaders would have none of it: Bankers and lack of regulation are viewed on the continent as a prime cause of the financial crisis.
“What was on offer is not in Britain’s interest, so I didn’t agree to it,” Cameron said. “We’re not in the euro, and I’m glad we’re not in the euro. We’re never going to join the euro, and we’re never going to give up this kind of sovereignty that these countries are having to give up.”
Britain, which prides itself on its fierce independence, joined the then-European Economic Community in 1973 _ only after French President Charles de Gaulle, who had vetoed the U.K.’s membership along with Germany’s leader, fell from power.
Since then, it has retained a frosty skepticism toward the ambitions of France and Germany to forge ever closer political and fiscal ties. It eschewed both the euro single currency and the Schengen open borders policy, fearful of losing power to determine its own fate.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy blamed the British leader for scuttling what could have been an EU-wide treaty. He said Cameron’s exemptions for British finance “seemed to us unacceptable.”
Some countries may face parliamentary opposition to the pact, which would allow for unprecedented oversight of national budgets.
Stocks and the euro climbed on the news of the treaty, even though it offers only a long-term solution and leaves many details to be worked out. Stocks rose 3.4 percent in Italy, 2.5 percent in France and almost 2 percent in Germany. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.5 percent and vaulted back over 12,000.
Borrowing costs for European countries fell, but only slightly, a sign of cautious confidence from the bond market. The yield on the benchmark Italian government bond fell to 6.33 percent, down about 0.05 percentage point. A yield above 7 percent is considered unsustainable.
One by one through the long night, the leaders of the 17 euro nations persuaded the non-euro nations to come along.
Hungary, the Czech Republic and Sweden said they would need to consult their parliaments. The six other EU countries that use currencies other than the euro _ Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania _ agreed right away. The leaders want the treaty written by March.
The countries hope to help European nations tame their long-term debt. Such an agreement is considered necessary before the European Central Bank and other institutions commit more money to lower the borrowing costs of heavily indebted countries like Italy and Spain.
How exactly that will happen remains unclear. Financial markets around the world had hoped the ECB would buy massive amounts of national bonds, flooding the market with money and lowering borrowing costs. But ECB President Mario Draghi dashed those hopes Thursday and said there was no plan to buy more bonds.
On Friday, Draghi called the treaty agreement “a very good outcome for the euro area, very good.
“It is going to be the basis for much more disciplined economic policy for euro-area members,” he said. “And certainly it is going to be helpful in the present situation.”
A breakup of the euro would have disastrous consequences. It would almost certainly trigger a financial crisis while banks figured out who owned what and while countries leaving the union awkwardly transitioned back to their own sovereign currencies.
Such a disorderly exit could cause banks to become fearful and stop lending money to each other. In 2008, a credit crisis followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers investment house and triggered a meltdown in the stock market.
Federal authorities are investigating a suspected embezzlement of potentially millions of dollars from a St. Louis area medical practice, according to a source close to the investigation.
The FBI and U.S. attorney’s investigation comes on the heels of the termination by Metropolitan Urological Specialists PC of Dunard Morris, who until recently served as its chief executive. The investigation focuses in part on whether money was diverted from the firm’s bank loans, the source said. The amount of missing money isn’t known but could be millions, the source said.
The medical practice also maintains that Morris subleased a $5,475-a-month luxury apartment using company funds without approval of the firm’s board of directors.
During the last two years, the company has shown signs of cash flow problems, including the buildup of about $1 easy payday loans.3 million in delinquent federal, state and local taxes, interest and fees, St. Louis County records show.
Asked about the federal investigation, U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan said Thursday, “I don’t want to prejudge anything, but it is a matter that has our interest.”
Morris did not return phone calls Thursday. One of his lawyers, Patrick Smith at DLA Piper law firm in New York, has declined to comment. “I’m not authorized to talk with you,” he said. Morris’ local counsel, Richard Sindel, declined to comment.
Metropolitan’s attorney, Mayer Klein, said the medical firm “terminated” Morris in mid-September but would not detail why. He did confirm that the company is investigating the missing money.
“There were some concerns with regard to prior management, and we’re working with everyone involved
Twelve former employees of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sued the newspaper today for fraudulent inducement and negligent misrepresentation, alleging the newspaper reneged on a promise to pay for health insurance for life.
The former employees sued the newspaper, publisher and president Kevin Mowbray and Astrid Garcia, vice president of human resources and labor operations, in St. Louis Circuit Court.
The Post-Dispatch denied the allegations.
“The St. Louis Post-Dispatch believes there is no basis for these allegations and that we will be vindicated in court,” spokeswoman Tracy Rouch said in a statement.
The former employees who filed suit are: Rayburn Jordan, Melinda Krummrich, Mary Delach Leonard, Samuel Leone, John Linstead, Linda Lockhart, Odell Mitchell Jr., John Naunheim Jr., Carolyn Olson, Kathleen Richardson, Suzanne Tarrant and Larry Williams.
The former employees allege in the lawsuit that they agreed in 2007 to voluntarily early retirements from the newspaper with benefits including payment for health insurance for life payday loans for bad credit.
However, all of the employees were notified in late 2010 by the newspaper’s parent company, Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises, that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch would stop paying for their health insurance effective Jan. 1, 2011.
“Had they known that the Post would renege on their promise for lifetime health insurance benefits, my clients would not have accepted the early retirement offer and buyout,” the former employees’ attorney, Staci Yandle, said in a statement.
The former employees are seeking an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages.
Ask the people who invest billions for a living to name their favorite picks for 2012 and you’ll get a smorgasbord worthy of a holiday party: Brazilian stocks, U.S. junk bonds, and government debt from Colombia. Ask them what they dislike and they’ll name one of the top-performing investments this year: U.S. government bonds.
Investors can rattle off a long list of reasons to avoid Treasurys. They pay next to nothing and are bound to plunge in value whenever interest rates begin climbing from their historically low levels. It seems nobody likes Treasurys, yet everybody keeps buying them anyway.
“Our least favorite asset is Treasurys,” said Christine Hurtsellers, chief investment officer for fixed-income at ING Investment Management during a recent press briefing. “We still have a lot, but it’s hard to make the argument for them.”
It’s a tricky problem for bond-fund managers at a time when everyday Americans are trusting them with more of their savings. Among investors, there’s a solid belief that Treasury prices must fall and push interest rates up at some point. But those who have bet on a Treasury market collapse this year got burned.
Bill Gross, the bond-world version of investment sage Warren Buffett, dropped nearly all Treasury holdings from the fund he manages at Pimco in early 2011. He argued that if Republicans held up lifting the government’s borrowing limit, the country would risk default. Borrowing rates would spike as the world’s investors dropped U.S. government debt, just as they have in Europe.
Most of what Gross predicted came true. The debt-limit fight raised worries about default and led to Standard & Poor’s taking away the country’s AAA credit rating in early August. But instead of spiking, U.S. borrowing rates plunged as traders sold everything else to buy U.S. government debt. The race into Treasurys helped drive the entire bond market up 3.8 percent from July to September. Gross got the big picture right but his big bet against Treasurys didn’t pan out. Pimco’s Total Return Fund lost 1.2 percent, its worst quarterly performance in three years.
It’s been a recurring story since the financial crisis hit in 2008. For three years running, pundits have predicted that investors will eventually refuse to finance the U.S. government’s $15 trillion in debt and the Treasury market will collapse. But worries over the U.S. economy and the perilous state of Europe’s financial system keep drawing banks and money managers from around the world back to the U.S. dollar and Treasurys.
That demand continues to push U.S. government bond prices up, the main reason why the Treasury market has returned 8.5 percent this year, despite microscopic yields, according to Bank of America-Merrill Lynch data. The benchmark for stock market funds, the S&P 500 index, has returned less than 1 percent, including dividend payments, and that’s with a 7.4 percent surge over the past week.
“It’s been a pretty strong year for bonds,” said Michael Gitlin, director of fixed income at T. Rowe Price, “and it’s largely a result of Treasurys.”
Judging by the gauges money managers usually check before making a move, buying Treasurys still looks like a bad idea. Consider this sample:
(asterisk) The benchmark 10-year Treasury pays just 2 percent a year. Take inflation into account and the payout on Treasurys equals negative 1.5 percent, what finance types call the real rate.
(asterisk) Treasury yields pay less than top-grade corporate bonds at 3.7 percent and even less than the stock market’s 2 percent dividend yield.
“My colleagues say there’s little value in 10-year (Treasurys) and I’d agree,” Gitlin said. “People have been saying there’s a fixed-income bubble. No, there’s a Treasury bubble.”
If there’s so little to like about U.S. government bonds, why are the world’s investors still buying Treasurys instead of dumping them? In a word, it’s Europe.
As the crisis seemed to spread from country to country this year, the world’s traders plowed more money into Treasurys. The higher the demand for U.S. debt, the lower the interest rate, or yield. So when it looked like Greece might default on its debts earlier this year, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note sank below 3 percent. And when attention turned to Italy and its government debts the yield sank even further, dipping below 2 percent in September. The shift of money out of Europe and into the U.S. has pushed Europe’s borrowing rates to dangerous levels while causing U.S. interest rates to sink.
“You can hate the budget situation and hate the low yield, but if there’s a panic it’s the asset that outperforms,” said Robert Robis, head of fixed-income strategy at ING Investment Management.
A good reason to hold Treasurys, in other words, is that the Treasury market remains the world’s favorite hiding spot. So, for many fund managers Treasurys aren’t exactly an investment. Buying Treasurys is like taking out an insurance contract, Robis said. They’re protection against global financial trouble.
The ING Global Bond fund, for instance, has 15 percent of its $641 million in Treasurys, less than the 20 percent in the benchmark Barclay’s bond index. Robis said having none would be like betting European governments will come to a quick solution to the region’s debt crisis and that the U.S. economy will soon recover its health.
“There’s still a need to hold Treasurys,” Robis said. “Just don’t expect to make a fortune off them.”
Bistate wage gender gap
The wage gap between men and women yawns wider in Missouri and Illinois than elsewhere, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The average full-time woman worker in Missouri made just 75 percent of the average man’s earnings in 2010. Women in Illinois did a little better at 78 percent. The national average is 81 percent.
The bureau doesn’t blame the gap on state-to-state differences in sexism. Instead, it cites “variations in the occupations and industries found in each state and the age composition of each state’s labor force.”
In Missouri, the median weekly wage stood at $813 for men and $616 for women. Illinois was at $814 for men and $634 for women. The national average is $824 for men and $669 for women. (Jim Gallagher)
Ralcorp in ‘buy’ mode
Americans’ confidence in the economy in November bounced back to its highest level since July, the latest sign that they are beginning to feel more cheerful about spending during the holiday shopping season.
The Conference Board, a private research firm, says Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index rose 15 points to 56.0. That’s up from a revised 40.9 in October _ the lowest level since the recession _ and the biggest jump since the 59.2 reading in July. The November number is encouraging, but far below the reading of 90, which indicates an economy on solid footing.
The confidence numbers are widely watched by economists because consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity. The confidence of U.S. consumers slipped after the summer amid renewed fears about a second recession. But Americans, who have been grappling with high unemployment and a weak housing market, have shown that they are feeling much more comfortable spending. Over the past weekend, for instance, they spent more than they ever have before during Black Friday weekend, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.
“Consumers appear to be entering the holiday season in better spirits, though overall readings remain historically weak,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center in a statement low fee cash advance.
Franco noted that consumers’ assessment of current conditions improved after six months of steady declines. Consumers’ anxiety regarding the short-term outlook for business conditions, jobs and income prospects eased considerably.
One barometer of the index, which measures how shoppers feel now, rose to 38.3 from 27.1. The other gauge, which measures how shoppers say they will feel over the next six months, rose to 67.8 from 50.0.
Consumers have several reasons to be more confident as there have been some signs of improvement in the economy. Earlier this month, for instance, the Labor Department reported that the job market improved modestly as unemployment rate nudged down to 9 percent in October from 9.1 percent in September. The month marked the 13th consecutive month of job gains.
If Toronto fireman Alexander Gunn was alive today, he might well feel like the Warren Buffett of his times.
The semi-detached home he bought in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood for $1,200 in 1906, sold in November for $825,000.
Conventional wisdom has it that buying a home is one of the smartest things we can do. If you have been lucky enough to live in the Greater Toronto Area, especially in the last 10 years when house prices have doubled, that would be true.
But over the long run, is home ownership such a great deal? To find out Moneyville took a close look at Gunn’s house over the last 105 years.
Here’s what we found: Adjusted for inflation, an investment in the stock market would have yielded a better return, including all the ups and downs — starting with the 1929 stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression.
Toronto was still rebuilding from the Great Fire of 1904 when Alexander Gunn was promoted to district captain after years of climbing the ladder at the city’s No. 3 firehall at Yonge and Carlton Sts. With his new responsibilities came a pay hike, from $850 to $1,000 a year.
It was the nod he needed to buy his first home.
The three-storey house in what is now known as Riverdale was brand new, part of a development on what had been fields where locals grew food to sell at market. It promised good luck: A shamrock had been crafted into its soaring gable, most likely by Irish immigrants who helped build these turn-of-the-century subdivisions.
Each day on his way to work, Gunn would have headed down Broadview Ave. with its sweeping view of the downtown and watched the burned-out city being rebuilt.
He would have kept warm at night in front of the house’s wood-trimmed fireplace and watched through its lead-glass windows as thousands more homeowners flocked to the area after 1912 when Danforth Ave. was paved and, later, the Bloor Viaduct erected across the Don Valley.
Gunn paid just a little more than a year’s salary for the modest house on a 20 foot by 112.5 foot lot. Today, a buyer would pay a fortune, relatively speaking — about five times their annual income given that the average price of a GTA home in October was $465,000 and the average household income $82,000, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
Gunn and his family lived at 56 Simpson Ave. for more than four decades, through two World Wars, the Great Depression and the remarkable transformation of Toronto.
The house changed hands just four times before its most recent sale. And the average annual gain over the 105 years, adjusted for inflation, was just 3.9 per cent.
“If I had to give new homebuyers some advice, it’s that houses aren’t always the ultimate investment. You should never bet the farm on the house, so to speak,” says Francis Fong, an economist with TD Economics.
Fong and his colleague Sonya Gulati helped Moneyville adjust prices for inflation and compare the appreciation of the home against Toronto Stock Exchange returns.
The challenge was to compare apples to apples. We had the home’s sale price going back to 1906, but the Bank of Canada’s inflation records don’t begin until 1914. Toronto Stock Exchange records start in 1919.
So we opted to track gains from 1947 onward, seven years after Gunn’s death, when the house sold for $6,300. We found that in those 64 years, the house appreciated at an average annual rate of 2.3 per cent, adjusted for inflation. (Inflation averaged 3.9 per cent during the same period, largely because of spikes in the 1970s and early ’80s.)
The TSX, on the other hand, did marginally better — producing average returns of about 3 per cent.
But when the everday costs of a house were included, things likes taxes, maintenance and upkeep, 56 Simpson fared much worse
“A house is not a good investment. It is a roof over your head,” says James McKellar, director of the real estate and infrastructure program at York University’s Schulich School of Business.
These days, homeowners in hot markets like Toronto and Vancouver may feel they have hit the jackpot: Most Toronto homes have virtually doubled in price over the last decade and in Vancouver they have almost tripled.
But once you factor in the other costs — interest on the mortgage, new kitchens, bathrooms, furnaces and electrical updates, “you’re lucky to make anything,” says McKellar. Studies have shown that it’s $800 a month cheaper to rent a 1,000-square-foot home than to own it, he notes.
“By any empirical study, houses do not inflate. They are a cost. But we all have to live somewhere.
“Calling a house a good investment is a process of rationalization. The last thing you want to admit is that, ‘I bought the house because I fell in love with it.’”
Catharine Grossi is proud to admit that. She and her husband Paul bought 56 Simpson for $462,500 back in 2001 because they were keen to move back to the city from the suburbs.
“When I saw that so much of the original house was there, and it was updated . . . That was good for me. I loved it as soon as I saw it.”
She became fascinated by the home’s history — she spent a day at the City of Toronto archives — and details such as its original fireplace, century-old exposed brick, the shamrock.
The house proved to be the perfect place for Grossi’s two sons and daughter to drop their bags after university or stints abroad.
Grossi wasn’t thinking so much about the gains she’s made, but rather the life she’s lived at 56 Simpson when the house sold Nov. 4. She and Paul are downsizing into a home two doors from their daughter and her newborn twins.
Grossi asked just one thing when her realtor called to say there had been an offer at asking price: “Do they love the house?”
James McKellar gets that.
He has lost money in the housing market: About $25,000 in the wake of the oil patch bust in Calgary in 1983 and $35,000 on a Boston home during the ’90s recession.
He now owns a home in Moore Park.
“The big drawback of renting is that it doesn’t give you the emotional satisfaction of owning,” he says with just the slightest chuckle.
“At the end of the day, when you go home and make dinner and relax, the numbers really don’t matter.”
Also read:
How we paid off our mortgage in three years
Why I sold my house and rent instead
Italy’s borrowing rates skyrocketed during bond auctions Friday, battering stock markets in Europe as the continent’s escalating debt crisis laid siege to the eurozone’s third-largest economy.
The auction results are another sign that Italy’s new technocratic government under economist Mario Monti faces a battle to convince investors it has a strategy to cut down the country’s euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion) debt. They are also likely to fuel calls for the European Central Bank to use its firepower to cool down a debt crisis that’s rapidly getting worse.
“Mario Monti has failed so far to impress bond markets he has the power and authority to do what is required,” said Louise Cooper, markets analyst at BGC Partners. “I don’t rate his chances either.”
Driving the markets fears is the knowledge that Italy is too big for Europe to bail out, like it has done with smaller nations Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Given the size of its debts _ Italy must refinance $300 billion next year alone _ the government has to continually tap investors for money. But when borrowing rates get too high, it fuels a potentially devastating debt spiral.
Friday’s auctions indicated that investors see Italian debt as increasingly risky. The country had to pay an average yield of 7.814 percent to raise euro2 billion ($2.7 billion) in two-year bills _ sharply higher than the 4.628 percent it paid in the previous auction in October. And even raising euro8 billion ($10.7 billion) for six months proved exorbitantly expensive. The yield for this auction spiked to 6.504 percent, nearly double the 3.535 percent rate in October.
Following the grim auction news, Italy’s borrowing rates in the markets shot higher, with the ten-year yield spiking 0.34 percentage point to 7.30 percent _ above the 7 percent threshold that forced other nations into bailouts.
Italy was not the only country in the 17-nation eurozone in experiencing a disappointing auction this week. Even Germany _ the region’s strongest economy and the main funder of eurozone bailouts _ suffered a shock Wednesday when it failed to raise all the money it sought, its worst auction result in decades. Spain too saw its borrowing rates ratchet sharply higher even after a landslide election victory for the conservative Popular Party, which has made getting Spain’s borrowing levels down its top priority.
Monti, who replaced Silvio Berlusconi as Italy’s leader earlier this month, has pledged to quickly implement new austerity measures followed by deeper reforms. He spent much of his first week in office meeting with European Union officials and the leaders of France and Germany laying out his plans.
During the meetings, Monti emphasized his intention to balance the budget by 2013 and to introduce “fair but incisive” structural reforms,” his office said in a statement following a Cabinet meeting Friday.
Monti also has pledged to reform the pension system, re-impose a tax on homes annulled by Berlusconi’s government, reduce tax evasion, streamline civil court proceedings, get more women and youths into the work force and cut political costs.
EU monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn told the Italian Parliament that “full and effective implementation will be key.”
He urged a “clear and ambitious roadmap for reform and an ambitious timeline” and expressed particular concern about low employment among Italian youth.
“Over the longer term, productivity will depend on a well-educated labor force,” Rehn said. “I am particularly concerned about high unemployment, which is a tremendous waste of talent that Europe simply cannot afford.”
Rehn was in Rome to monitor Italy’s compliance with promises to liberalize its labor market, reduce the bloated public sector and sell off some state assets.
There were also signs that contagion over Europe’s debt crisis was moving eastward. Moody’s downgraded Hungary’s sovereign debt to junk status _ from Baa3 to Ba1 with a negative outlook _ a decision Hungary hotly criticized. Hungary is not a member of the eurozone, but trades with many eurozone members.
This week’s developments have ratcheted up the pressure on the European Central Bank to step up its bond purchases in the markets, though Germany remains adamantly opposed. The current program is designed to support bond prices in the markets, thereby keeping a lid on the borrowing rates.
So far, the ECB has been buying limited amounts of bonds and has to sell an equivalent amount of assets. The ECB said Monday it bought bonds worth only euro4.5 billion last week, down from euro9.5 billion a week earlier.
Potentially, the ECB has unlimited financial firepower through its ability to print money and many countries in the eurozone, including France, want the bank to act more decisively to solve the debt crisis.
However, Germany finds the idea of monetizing debts unappealing, warning that it lets the more profligate countries off the hook for their bad practices.
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