Debt crisis: EU leaders set to announce €750bn Spain and Italy bailout deal [View all]

[Berlin Expat]

Last edited Tue Jun 19, 2012, 04:16 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: The Daily Telegraph (U.K.)

Pan-European Government funds are set to be used to buy Spanish and Italian bonds, which have recently hit record highs – in a move which will send a strong signal to financial markets that the German administration is prepared to back its weaker economic neighbours.

Angela Merkel and other European leaders have come under intense pressure at this week’s G20 summit to take radical action to stem the growing euro crisis which has pushed up the cost of Spanish bonds to unsustainable levels.

Francois Hollande, the French President, said: “It will be more on mechanisms that allow us to fight speculation”.

The French president said rates paid by Spain and Italy to borrow on debt markets were “unacceptable”. “We must show a much faster capacity for action,” Mr Hollande said.



Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9342727/Debt-crisis-EU-leaders-set-to-announce-750bn-Spain-and-Italy-bailout-deal.html

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So, DU'ers, what say you? A stroke of brilliance? A colossal blunder?

On a personal note, man........I wish I'd had the foresight to start a bank about 25 years ago. Hell, I'd have enough money to buy myself a small country somewhere.

To paraphrase the recently departed Henry Hill, "All my life I wanted to be a bankster. For me, being a bankster was better than being President of the United States."

And to paraphrase another character, the fictional Lt. Col. Kilgore this time; "Smell that? You smell that? Taxpayer-funded bailouts, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of bailouts in the morning."
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Update 22:20 CET. The German government has denied that any such agreement has been reached.

"Secondary market bond purchases are one of many instruments available to the EFSF and ESM," a German government official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But he added: "There was no discussion here in Los Cabos about any concrete intitiatives" related to such purchases. - Reuters