Showing posts with label spain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spain. Show all posts

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Gloom beats boom as house prices fall faster here than anywhere else


By Thomas Molloy
Wednesday September 19 2012


IRISH house prices continue to fall faster than anywhere else in the world, the IMF says in a new report. The Greeks are next, while Germans and Brazilians are seeing steep price gains.
The three countries with the steepest declines in the 12 months to March, when adjusted for inflation, are the three bailout countries of Ireland, Greece and Portugal.
Spain, which has already received a banks bailout, and which is widely expected to seek a formal bailout sometime next month, had the fourth worst decline.
At the other end of the spectrum, house prices in booming Brazil are up more than 15pc while those in Germany have gained more than 10pc. Other countries which have also had increases include the Ukraine and the Philippines.
While plunging house prices have caused well-documented problems here, rising prices are also leading to widespread angst in Germany and Brazil, where many people have been priced out of the market and rents are soaring -- creating challenges for policy makers and worries about inequality.
The IMF working paper finds that Irish prices are no longer misaligned, but are still more expensive than countries such as Germany when wages and other factors are taken into account.
Australia, which is enjoying a commodity-inspired bubble, has the most "misaligned" prices in the world, according to the study of 54 countries.
While many believe that our house price collapse was the worst in the world, the IMF study suggests that Estonia holds that distinction.
House prices fell further in Estonia, the Ukraine and Lithuania.
However, declines here have continued for longer than most other countries, which means that we may yet chalk up the worst bust in history.
The report says that house prices in the US have started to pick up a little recently, but globally prices are still on a down trend. While overall the trend is mixed, there is no sign of an uptick in the global index of house prices.
The findings suggest that long-run price dynamics are mostly driven by local factors such as income and population growth. The effect of more globally connected factors such as interest rates appears to be less strong.
Credit market conditions can have an impact in the short run and, ultimately, when the correction starts, affect both financial stability and the overall economy.
House price growth can be explained by several short-run factors, such as growth in incomes, asset prices, and population, and long-run-factors, such as the ratio of house prices to incomes.
The difference between actual house prices and those predicted on the basis of these fundamental factors gives another indication of whether prices may have more room to fall.
- Thomas Molloy
Irish Independent

Monday 23 July 2012

Q&A: Spain's debt crisis and what it means for the eurozone and Britain

Stock markets are tumbling as Spain's borrowing rose to new record highs. Here is a look at why this is happening and what the implications might be.

Debt crisis: Shares drop, euro hits low on Spain woes
Investors are concerned that Spain, one of the eurozone's biggest economies, might need a full-blown bailout. Photo: AP
Q: What has happened to Spain's borrowing costs?
A: Spain's borrowing costs rose to the highest level since the euro was created on Monday. The yield on benchmark 10-year yields rose to 7.5pc, where the higher the yield the lower the demand for Spanish debt.
Anything above 7pc is considered unsustainable. The Spanish government will not be able to afford to borrow indefinitely at such high levels, which means it will need a bailout if costs do not come down.
Q: Why now?
A: The crisis in Spain has escalated. It has been clear for weeks that Spain's banks needed emergency bailout funding, but now fears are mounting that the country will also require a full-blown sovereign bailout. European leaders on Friday agreed to grant up to €100bn (£78bn) of funds to Spain's banks.
Markets have been spooked by news that two of Spain's regions - first Valencia and now Murcia - have been forced to seek emergency funding from the Spanish government, and others might follow.
There have also been further warnings on prospects for growth, as officials in Madrid warned the economy was likely to shrink throughout 2013. Spain is battling with a tough austerity programme as the government tries to bring down its debt mountain. The unemployment rate is 24pc, and roughly half of young people are out of work.
Q: What does it mean for the rest of the eurozone?
A: Eurozone leaders were already struggling to convince the rest of the world that the single currency has a sustainable future. They now face an even tougher job. Financially and politically, a bail-out for Spain would prove a huge challenge. And as we have seen with Greece, it is unlikely that it would be enough to permanently put to rest fears over Spain, and indeed other financially vulnerable countries including Italy and Portugal. Noise about a potential break up of the euro is once again building.
Q: What does it mean for Britain?
A: Europe is Britain's largest trading partner so continued problems in the region will weigh on demand for UK goods. The eurozone crisis is also damaging confidence among British businesses and consumers, who are unwilling to spend and invest at a time of heightened uncertainty. If one or more countries did ultimately exit the euro, the knock-on effect for the global economy would be huge, and Britain's recession prolonged.
Q: Is Spain the biggest problem in the eurozone?
A: Spain is an immediate concern, but so too is Greece. Greece's international creditors - the so-called "troika" comprising the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank - will arrive in Athens on Tuesday to assess whether the government is making sufficient progress to earn another cash injection.
The visit is crucial: without further bailout funding Greece will be unable to meet its debt obligations or keep up with salary and pension payments. "If the current government fails, the next one will be a government of the drachma," said Costis Hatzidakis, the Greek development minister. Beyond Spain and Greece, there are also mounting concerns over Italy, as the government's borrowing costs rise.

Monday 4 June 2012

Spain is in 'total emergency’, the EU in total denial



After a Spanish exit from the euro, there would be nothing left to exit from.

Greece on brink of collapse - Spain is in 'total emergency’, the EU in total denial
Greece in turmoil: but its significance has shrinked in comparison to the possibility of a spectacular crash in Spain, the fourth largest economy in the EU Photo: AFP/GETTY
I’ve never actually heard the term “total emergency” before, at least not in the context of global economics. It sounds like the title of a disaster movie. When it is uttered in sober tones by the elder statesman of an advanced democracy to describe his country’s financial condition, the effect is rather startling.
The man who delivered this apocalyptic judgment, former Spanish prime minister Felipe González, being a socialist, might be expected to detest austerity programmes that require cuts to government spending. But there seemed to be few disinterested observers of Spain’s economy prepared to quibble with his assessment.
Forget Grexit. Greece’s teeny, tiny economy is a footnote now. As is Ireland’s decision – which seemed more like a sigh of resignation than a plebiscite – to engage in however much self-flagellation the EU gods insist on, for however long it takes. What might have seemed dramatic a week or so ago has now shrivelled in importance by comparison to the realistic possibility of a spectacular crash in the fourth largest economy in the EU. Spexit (and Spanic) are lodged in the lexicon, and have become part of the psychological reality that moves markets. The equivalent of more than £55 billion was withdrawn and transported out of Spain last month – and that was before the country’s largest bank was nationalised. No one seems to be kidding himself that the collapse of the Spanish economy could be somehow weathered and overcome, as the default of Greece might be.

Read more here:

Saturday 3 December 2011

Spain's banks hold billions of euros in properties that will be tough to sell


The Real Threat Facing Spanish Lenders

Spain's banks hold billions of euros in properties that will be tough to sell



One analyst estimates it could take 40 years for banks to unload their holdings
One analyst estimates it could take 40 years for banks to unload their holdings Denis Doyle/Bloomberg


While Europe’s sovereign debt crisis grabs all the headlines, distressed real estate may pose a bigger threat to the Spanish banking system. The country’s lenders hold about £30 billion ($41 billion) of unfinished homes and land that’s “unsellable,” according to Pablo Cantos, managing partner of MaC Group in Madrid. MaC Group is a risk adviser to several leading Spanish banks. “I’m really worried about the small and medium-size banks whose business is 100 percent in Spain and based on real estate growth,” says Cantos. He adds that only bigger, more diversified lenders such asBanco Santander (STD), Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), La Caixa, and Bankia are strong enough to survive their real estate losses: “I foresee Spain will be left with just four large banks.”
Spain’s central bank tightened rules last year to force lenders to set aside more reserves against property seized in exchange for unpaid debts and is pressing them to sell assets rather than wait for the market to recover from its four-year decline. Yet unloading the real estate may be difficult or impossible. Bank-owned land “in the middle of nowhere” and unfinished residential units will take as long as 40 years to sell, Cantos predicts. Fernando Rodríguez de Acuña Martínez, a consultant at Madrid-based adviser RR de Acuña & Asociados, has a more dire view. About 43 percent of unsold new homes are in exurbs far from city centers, he says, and “if you take into account population growth for these areas, there’s no demand for them. Not now or in 10 years.”
Dozens of Spanish banks have failed or been absorbed since the economic crisis ended a debt-fueled property boom in 2008. The cost to taxpayers of cleaning up the industry’s books has come to £17.7 billion so far. Banks may face increased pressure following Nov. 20 national elections that propelled the conservative People’s Party to power. Its leader, Mariano Rajoy, has said the “cleanup and restructuring” of the banking system is his top priority.
“Stricter provisioning rules for land need to be implemented,” says Luis de Guindos, director of PricewaterhouseCoopers and IE Business School Center for Finance. De Guindos has been named by newspapers as a contender for finance minister in a Rajoy government. “Many banks will be able to deal with it, but others won’t.”
Idealista, Spain’s largest real estate website, currently advertises 45,912 bank-owned homes there, up from 29,334 in November 2010. In 2008 it didn’t list any.
Spanish home prices have fallen 28 percent, on average, from their peak in April 2007, according to a Nov. 2 joint report by Fotocasa.es, a real estate website, and the IESE Business School. Land values fell 33 percent nationwide. Fernando Acuña Ruiz, managing partner of Taurus Iberica Asset Management, a Spanish mortgage servicer, expects the slide in home prices to continue. “Spain has 1 million new homes that won’t be completely absorbed by the market until the middle of 2017,” he says. “Prices will fall a further 15 percent to 20 percent in the next two to three years.”
Banks are reluctant to acknowledge the size of the declines. There is an “enormous” gap between prices offered by lenders and what investors are willing to pay, preventing sales of large property portfolios, MaC Group’s Cantos says. He estimates that prime assets can be sold at a 30 percent discount, while portfolios comprising land, residential, and commercial real estate may sell only after 70 percent discounts. “Therein lies the problem,” he says. “Banks have already provisioned for a 30 percent loss, but if you are selling at 70 percent discount, you have to take another 40 percent loss. Which small and medium-size banks can take such a hit?”
The bottom line: With home prices down 28 percent from the peak, real estate losses may swamp smaller lenders, leaving Spain with four big banks.
Smyth is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Spanish stocks fall 5%

Spanish stocks fall 5%
May 5, 2010 - 7:54AM
AFP

The Spanish stock market plunged more than 5.0 per cent on Tuesday on investor fears the Greek debt crisis could spread to other eurozone countries - such as Spain - struggling to contain public deficits.

The benchmark Ibex-35 share index shed 5.41 per cent led by losses in banking stocks amid concern that Spain could be hit with fresh credit downgrades following a cut by Standard & Poor's last week.

The stock market was also hit by market rumours that Spain would ask for 280 billion euros ($A398.58 billion) in aid from the International Monetary Fund, which were dismissed by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as "absolute madness".

"These rumours are intolerable," he told a news conference in Brussels.

The head of the OECD meanwhile insisted that the situation in Greece was not comparable to that in Spain or another eurozone state seen as vulnerable, Portugal.

On Sunday, European nations endorsed an unprecedented 110-billion-euro ($A157.62 billion) bailout package to save Greece from bankruptcy and shore up the euro single currency.

Both the Moody's and Fitch agencies said Tuesday they were not reevaluating their rating for Spain, which is currently AAA, the highest possible rating.

"At the moment that I am speaking to you, the rating for Spain is still triple A, with a stable outlook," a Fitch spokeswoman told AFP in Paris.

S&P on Wednesday lowered Spain's long-term sovereign credit rating to AA from AA+ amid fears its recession could further weaken its public finances.

The move on Spain came one day after it cut Portugal's long-term credit rating by two notches and reduced Greece's rating the junk status, the first eurozone country rated less than investment grade since the launch of the euro.

Spain, which has the eurozone's third-largest deficit after Ireland and Greece, was last cut by S&P in January 2009 when its credit rating was lowered one notch from AAA.

Markets are especially sensitive to Spain's fiscal situation because of the size of its economy, which is Europe's fifth largest. European banks also have far greater exposure to Spanish debt than to Greek or Portuguese debt.

While Greece's public deficit was equal to 13.6 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) last year, in Spain it was 11.2 per cent.

Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio is 115.1 per cent, compared to just 53.2 per cent in Spain.

Spain will on Thursday issue five-year bonds with a proposed interest rate of 3.0 per cent that will expire on April 30, 2015. It hopes to raise at least two billion euros.

© 2010 AFP

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/spanish-stocks-fall-5-20100505-u7t6.html

Saturday 6 February 2010

Fears of 'Lehman-style' tsunami as crisis hits Spain and Portugal

Fears of 'Lehman-style' tsunami as crisis hits Spain and Portugal

The Greek debt crisis has spread to Spain and Portugal in a dangerous escalation as global markets test whether Europe is willing to shore up monetary union with muscle rather than mere words.


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 7:29PM GMT 04 Feb 2010


Julian Callow from Barclays Capital said the EU may to need to invoke emergency treaty powers under Article 122 to halt the contagion, issuing an EU guarantee for Greek debt. “If not contained, this could result in a `Lehman-style’ tsunami spreading across much of the EU.”

Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring bankruptcy risk on Portuguese debt surged 28 basis points on Thursday to a record 222 on reports that Jose Socrates was about to resign as prime minister after failing to secure enough votes in parliament to carry out austerity measures.

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Parliament minister Jorge Lacao said the political dispute has raised fears that the country is no longer governable. “What is at stake is the credibility of the Portuguese state,” he said.

Portugal has been in political crisis since the Maoist-Trotskyist Bloco won 10pc of the vote last year. This is rapidly turning into a market crisis as well as investors digest a revised budget deficit of 9.3pc of GDP for 2009, much higher than thought. A €500m debt auction failed on Wednesday. The yield spread on 10-year Portuguese bonds has risen to 155 basis points over German bunds.

Daniel Gross from the Centre for European Policy Studies said Portgual and Greece need to cut consumption by 10pc to clean house, but such draconian measures risk street protests. “This is what is making the markets so nervous,” he said.

In Spain, default insurance surged 16 basis points after Nobel economist Paul Krugman said that “the biggest trouble spot isn’t Greece, it’s Spain”. He blamed EMU’s one-size-fits-all monetary system, which has left the country with no defence against an adverse shock. The Madrid’s IBEX index fell 6pc.

Finance minister Elena Salgado said Professor Krugman did not “understand” the eurozone, but reserved her full wrath for the EU economics commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, who helped trigger the panic flight from Iberian debt by blurting out that Spain and Portugal were in much the same mess as Greece.

Mrs Salgado called the comparison simplistic and imprudent. “In Spain we have time for measures to overcome the crisis,” she said. It is precisely this assumption that is now in doubt. The budget deficit exploded to 11.4pc last year, yet the economy is still contracting.

Jacques Cailloux, Europe economist at RBS, said markets want the EU to spell out exactly how it is going to shore up Club Med states. “They are working on a different time-horizon from the EU. They don’t think words are enough: they want action now. They are basically testing the solidarity of monetary union. That is why contagion risk is growing,” he said.

“In my view they underestimate the political cohesion of the EMU Project. What the Commission did this week in calling for surveillance of Greece has never been done before,” he said.

Mr Callow of Barclays said EU leaders will come to the rescue in the end, but Germany has yet to blink in this game of “brinkmanship”. The core issue is that EMU’s credit bubble has left southern Europe with huge foreign liabilities: Spain at 91pc of GDP (€950bn); Portugal 108pc (€177bn). This compares with 87pc for Greece (€208bn). By this gauge, Iberian imbalances are worse than those of Greece, and the sums are far greater. The danger is that foreign creditors will cut off funding, setting off an internal EMU version of the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, gave no hint yesterday that Frankfurt will bend to help these countries, either through loans or a more subtle form of bail-out through looser monetary policy or lax rules on collateral. The ultra-hawkish ECB has instead let the M3 money supply contract over recent months.

Mr Trichet said euro members drew down their benefits in advance -- "ex ante" -- when they joined EMU and enjoyed "very easy financing" for their current account deficits. They cannot expect "ex post" help if they get into trouble later. These are the rules of the club.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7159456/Fears-of-Lehman-style-tsunami-as-crisis-hits-Spain-and-Portugal.html

Acronym: PIGS = Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain

Wednesday 22 April 2009

Spain’s Falling Prices Fuel Deflation Fears in Europe

Spain’s Falling Prices Fuel Deflation Fears in Europe

The company Fermax has reduced prices by a third on the video intercoms it makes for homes and apartment buildings, hoping to increase sales.

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
Published: April 20, 2009
VALENCIA, Spain — Faced with plunging orders, merchants across this recession-wracked country are starting to do something that many of them have never done: cut retail prices.
Prices dipped everywhere, from restaurants and fashion retailers to pharmacies and supermarkets in March. Hoping to increase sales, Fernando Maestre reduced prices by a third on the video intercoms his company makes for homes and apartment buildings. But that has not helped, so, along with many other Spanish employers, he is continuing to fire workers.
The nation’s jobless rate, already a painful 15.5 percent, could soon reach 20 percent, a troubling number for a major industrialized country.
With the combination of rising unemployment and falling prices, economists fear Spain may be in the early grip of
deflation, a hallmark of both the Great Depression and Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s, and a major concern since the financial crisis went global last year.
Deflation can result in a downward spiral that can be difficult to reverse.
As unemployment rises sharply and consumers cut spending, companies cut prices. But if sales do not pick up, then revenue can decline further, forcing more cuts in workers or wages. Mr. Maestre is already contemplating additional job and wage cuts for his 250 employees.
Nowhere is this cycle more evident than in Spain. Last month, it became the first of the 16 nations that use the euro to record a negative inflation rate. The drop, though just 0.1 percent, had not happened since the government began tracking inflation in 1961, and Spanish officials have said prices could keep dropping through the summer.
Some of the decline came as volatile food prices sank; the cost of fish fell 6.2 percent, and sugar was down 5.7 percent. But even prices in normally stable sectors like drugs and medical treatments fell 0.7 percent in March, and there were slight declines in footwear, clothing and prices for household electronics.
“Alarm bells are going off,” said Lorenzo Amor, president of the Association of Autonomous Workers, which represents small businesses and self-employed people. “Economies can recover from deceleration, but it’s harder to recover from a deflationary situation. This could be a catastrophe for the Spanish economy.”
Deflation is not just a Spanish concern. Luxembourg, Portugal and Ireland have reported price drops, too. While the declines have been slight — and prices rose modestly after factoring out food and energy prices, which can fluctuate widely — other figures released this month suggest the risk of deflation is growing.
In Germany, wholesale prices dropped 8 percent in March from a year ago, the steepest fall since 1987. In Japan, wholesale prices fell 2.2 percent on an annual basis. In the United States, the Consumer Price Index fell 0.1 percent in March, year over year, the first decline of its kind since 1955, though prices rose 0.2 percent excluding food and energy.
“It doesn’t mean it will spread here to the U.S., but we need to look closely at Spain and other places to understand the dynamic,” says Simon Johnson, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. “It’s like the front line of a new virus outbreak.”
The trends have unnerved even well-established businesses. “There is such a huge lack of confidence in the politicians, in the European Union and in the banks,” said Arturo Virosque, 79, president of Valencia’s chamber of commerce and the owner of a local logistics company. Ticking off crises going back to the Spanish Civil War in his youth, he said, “this is different. It’s like an illness.”
After price cuts by competitors, Mr. Virosque’s company reduced charges for storage and transportation, and slashed its work force to about 170, from 250. “The worst thing is that we have to cut the young people,” he said, because higher severance makes it too expensive to fire older workers.
While unemployment traditionally is higher in Spain than in much of Europe, the sharp increase has many here nervous. The jobless rate for those under 25 is at a Depression-like level of 31.8 percent, the highest among the 27 nations of the European Union.
Before cutting prices in early 2009, Mr. Maestre ordered several rounds of job cuts at his company, Fermax, as sales of the intercoms collapsed with Spain’s housing bubble.
“It’s a question of survival for everybody,” he said. Still, the lower prices have not translated into higher sales. Fermax’s orders fell 25 percent in the first quarter. Prices for some intercom parts that he buys, like video screens, have also come down, but it is not enough to make up for the sales drought. “Prices have to come down more and we will have to spend less,” he said.
The effects of this downward spiral are evident at Valencia’s principal soup kitchen, in an imposing stone building constructed a century ago as an alms house. Each day, a line forms around the block by noon. The Casa de la Caridad, or House of Charity, is helping three times as many people as it did a year ago. More than 11,000 meals were served in March, and it expects to top 12,000 this month.
As the economic decline has broadened, so has the range of people seeking help. In the past, most were out-of-work immigrants or the homeless, said the center’s director, Guadalupe Ferrer. Today, “it’s more and more people like us who had a house, a respectable job, but are now unemployed.”
The employed worry that falling prices will endanger their jobs as well.
Yolanda Garcia has worked as a butcher under the arches of Valencia’s soaring Art Nouveau central market for a decade, but she’s troubled that a drop in the price of chicken, to 5.99 euros a kilo, from 6.99, has not attracted more customers to her stall.
“Of course, we’re worried the boss will have to reduce staff,” said Ms. Garcia, 38, whose husband, a construction worker, was laid off two months ago.
All this has made deflation, once a subject largely reserved for economists who studied the Great Depression, into front-page news here.
The American economy is less vulnerable to deflation, in part because of the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates to near zero and increase lending by $2 trillion. The European Central Bank has also cut rates, though more slowly, and it has resisted the lending measures adopted by the Fed and the Bank of England to prop up spending.
When Spain had its own currency, the peseta, the central bank could have simply devalued it, or cut interest rates to zero. But that is not an option in the era of the euro, when monetary policy is controlled from the European Central Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt, said Santiago Carbó, a professor of economics at the University of Granada.
“If we enter into a deflationary period, we won’t have the monetary tools to sort it out,” Mr. Carbó said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/business/global/21deflate.html?em

Tuesday 20 January 2009

S&P threatens to strip Spain of top AAA rating

S&P threatens to strip Spain of top AAA rating
Standard & Poor's has threatened to strip Spain of its coveted AAA rating as country's budget deficit explodes, offering the clearest warning to date that even wealthy states are running out of room to borrow.

By Ambrose Evans-PritchardLast Updated: 7:31AM GMT 13 Jan 2009

Standard & Poor's has threatened to strip Spain of its coveted AAA rating as country's budget deficit explodes
The move caused fury in Madrid and revived fears in the currency and bond markets about the underlying health of Europe's monetary union.
Spanish officials are irked that S&P has placed Spain's debt on "CreditWatch Negative", a notch lower than the "outlook" alert issued on Irish bonds last week. It is the first time that a AAA country has suffered such a harsh verdict since the start of the global financial crisis.
Such a move typically precedes a downgrade within weeks but the finance ministry insisted last night this would not be allowed to happen. "There's not going to be a rating downgrade because we are taking measures to overcome the crisis," it said.
Trevor Cullinan and Myriam Fernández, the agency's analysts, said the housing crash had set off a downward spiral in Spain that would drive the budget deficit above 6pc by 2006, double the EU's Maastricht limit.
"We expect a substantial worsening in the Kingdom's public finances," it said, predicting 2pc contraction in 2009 and a long slump as years of credit excess are slowly purged.
Spain is discovering the limits of action within the eurozone. It can no longer let its currency take the strain, or follow the US, Switzerland, Sweden, Britain, in slashing rates. Indeed, Frankfurt raised eurozone rates last July at a time when Spain's housing crash was already under way. Unemployment has surged to 13.4pc, breaking the 3m barrier.
Michael Klawitter, from Dresdner Kleinwort, said Spain was now crumbling on every front. "Tax revenue is collapsing. There is a banking crisis and a massive deterioration linked to housing. It is arguable that Spain has already let matters go past the point of no return," he said.
"We are going to see fresh talk about the sustainability of monetary union and it is going to get messy. Spain is the most pro-EMU of the big states so there has not been any backlash against EMU, but who knows what will happen," he said.
Ian Stannard, a currency strategist at BNP Paribas, said Spain needs to raise €70bn (£63bn) this year on the bond markets, both to roll over old debts and to pay for a fiscal rescue package worth 1pc of GDP.
Europe's bond supply will reach €765bn this year, up 15pc from 2008. It is far from clear whether the markets can absorb so much debt. Although Spain's public debt is modest at under 40pc of GDP, this may not prevent a downgrade.
"The economy is less resilient than any other AAA state. It is more dependent on real estate and tourism, and there is very high corporate debt. Household debt is close to levels in Britain and the US," said Mr Fernandez.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/4224453/SandP-threatens-to-strip-Spain-of-top-AAA-rating.html

Thursday 15 January 2009

Spanish-style catastrophe

Staying out of the euro has spared us a Spanish-style catastrophe
Half-built flats and soaring unemployment show that the boom has turned to gloom on the Costa del Sol. And it's a fate that could easily have befallen Britain.

By Jeff RandallLast Updated: 5:43AM GMT 09 Jan 2009
Comments 227 Comment on this article
Marbella
For a place that's called the Sunshine Coast, Spain's Costa del Sol was unusually wet and cold last week. Friday and Saturday were particularly miserable in Marbella, as the rain lashed across the main promenade, forcing restaurants to bring in tables and pull down shutters.
It was as though the weather gods had decided to reflect the country's economic outlook – which is becoming darker by the day. What many in Spain had regarded (foolishly) as an eternal summer of expansion, driven by a breakneck construction boom, has turned into a winter of plunging property prices, failing businesses and an epidemic of redundancies.
Spain's traditional new year greeting is próspero año nuevo. But even in this part of Andalucia, a favourite playground of wealthy sunseekers and golf fanatics, it is hard to find locals who are expecting prosperity in 2009. For a growing number of workers and small-business owners, anything better than a sharp decline in income will be greeted as a triumph.
Like the toros bravos that die in the corrida, Spain's bull market began with impressive vigour but ended up being dragged off through the dirt. Unemployment hit three million yesterday, about 13 per cent of the workforce (double the rate in the UK), the worst it has been for 12 years. Nearly one million of those without jobs have lost them during the past 12 months.
The speed of descent, from fiesta into crisis, has shocked the country's political class and commentariat. Inflation has dropped from 5.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent since the summer. According to the newspaper El Pais: "This situation was impensable [unthinkable] in July".
As historians begin to assess damage from the credit crunch, Spain will surely be singled out as a classic study for what can go wrong inside a monetary union when the policy requirements of its members become hopelessly misaligned. It is simply not possible to pursue the best interests of every participant when some nations are running trade and fiscal surpluses while others clock up huge deficits.
Ten years after it was launched, the euro is propelling Spain towards disaster. In giving up control of domestic interest rates to the European Central Bank, Madrid handed over a vital instrument of macroeconomic management. It is learning to regret that.
For the early part of this millennium, that loss of power seemed not to matter: Spain's outrageous (and in some cases illegal) construction frenzy hid a multitude of sins. At the peak, about 800,000 homes were being built annually on the basis that demand from foreign buyers was limitless.
That dream has vanished, along with the over-supply of cheap money that funded it. Drive down the E-15, the main motorway link between Malaga and Gibraltar, and you will see block after block of half-built apartments, connected neither to essential utilities nor to financial reality. They stand as temples to a religion that ceased to exist when the bubble popped.
The Spanish economy is weak; it needs lower interest rates and a softer currency. Such a prospect, however, doesn't suit Germany, the eurozone's dominant force, so Madrid has to sit and suffer while its people cry for help.
Discomfort is palpable in tourist centres where the purchasing power of British visitors and second-home owners has played a pivotal role in boosting local enterprise. Germans and Swedes have been important, also, but it is on the British that the leisure sector in southern Spain has depended most.
A quick scan of the exchange-rate charts explains why. In the summer of 2000, about 18 months after it was launched, the euro was out of fashion on the world's currency markets. At that time, £1 bought €1.75, making British travellers feel especially wealthy when holidaying in Spain.
Today, however, as the British economy sinks into recession, prompting the Bank of England to slash interest rates to 1.5 per cent (the lowest level in the central bank's 315-year history), it is sterling that looks like a six-stone weakling.
Many in the queue at Gatwick airport's Travelex desk last weekend were shocked to discover that the pound had fallen to below parity against the euro. For them, Spain has become an expensive experience. Old jokes about Costa Notta Lotta are no longer relevant, much less funny.
I was treated by a friend to a round of golf at Rio Real, a middle-ranking course, that is by no means among the priciest. He was charged £172 for two (no buggy). Dinner for three in a modest pizza joint came to £75. One must assume that hoteliers from Morecambe to Margate are cheering wildly.
Competing currencies invariably fluctuate on a daily basis, but not all in the City are expecting a swift recovery of sterling against the euro (even though it has picked up in the past few days). HSBC believes: "In the UK… a weaker currency seems desirable to policy makers… in our eyes all roads lead to a stronger euro."
If that analysis proves correct, parts of Spain will face devastation, and social policies that seemed generous during the go-go years will quickly become unaffordable. For example, in some instances the state pays 70 per cent of salary for up to two years when a worker is made unemployed. How will that be funded if, as some are predicting, Spain's jobless total reaches four million in 2010?
Adding to Madrid's woes is the extraordinary influx of five million immigrants, who boosted the population by about 15 per cent between 1998 and last year. It was always assumed that in tough times many would return home. But for penniless fruit pickers from Africa, life in Spain, even in the harshest economic climate, is often better than what they left behind. The number of foreigners claiming dole payments has doubled and there are mounting tensions as native job-seekers slip down the food chain.
Marbella is not used to life on a budget. Shopkeepers, newspaper vendors and bar staff seem baffled by the downturn in their fortunes. On Sunday, my family and I had dinner in a seafront bodega and were the only customers all night. "What has happened to los Ingleses?" asked the waiter.
The answer is that the United Kingdom never joined the euro. As a result, our government and monetary authorities are free to adopt policies that suit our needs. In today's circumstances, that means the freedom to live with a devaluing currency. This hurts those of us who can still afford to visit Spain, and is unfortunate for British pensioners living abroad, but is a small price to pay for the revival of our domestic industries.
Had Britain been locked into Europe's single currency, at an exchange rate far higher than today's, there is good reason to believe that we, too, would be suffering double-digit unemployment. You won't read this very often under my byline, but Gordon Brown played a blinder in keeping us out.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/4177828/Staying-out-of-the-euro-has-spared-us-a-Spanish-style-catastrophe.html