As
analysts look deeper under the hood of Spain's public finances, they
are finding an increasingly unstable engine. It's not just the
growth in the debt to GDP ratio that worries people but also the
"contingent" liabilities and other debt not yet included in this
ratio. In many cases the central government will be stepping in to
bail out regional governments,some of which are in trouble
(sometimes unable to pay vendors such as garbage collectors, etc.).
FROB (Fund For Orderly Bank Restructuring) that gets consolidated
into government's balance sheet has contingent liabilities to the
banking system. And the government continues to guarantee
bank-issued unsecured bonds that banks use as collateral at the ECB
to borrow funds. That allows them to buy more Spanish government
paper to support Spain's bond auctions. The chart below shows how
government guarantees have grown in the past few years - both on an
absolute basis as well as the percentage of the GDP.
|
Spain's government guarantees |
Italy is also facing some of the same issues. But at this point
market participants' view is that even though
Italy
has more debt to roll, Spain's issues are more extreme -
particularly the banking sector. The market views the
recent
announcement of Eurozone's support for Spanish banks as lacking
in detail and insufficient in size. Many view Spain's
property market bubble as dwarfing that of Italy.
Italy to Spain 10-year spread has hit a record (as did the
Spanish yields, spreads, and CDS levels this morning). In fact
some in the market are now putting on Italy to Spain spread
trades (long Italy short Spain).
|
Italy 10y yield minus Spain 10y
yield. |
With the Greek elections out of the way, Spain will now be the
primary focus.
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