Wednesday – Waiting for the Other Shoes to Drop

$125Bn for Spain AND they are going to be given 5 years before having to pay back their loans and rumor has it that it will be a 10-year payment period at 3%.  Sure, why not?   At least that way we can pretend they are going to pay everyone back, rather than watch them default just a few months after we lend them the money, like Greece.

As we expected, Italy is the next crisis on deck as their 10-year bond yeilds climb over 6% as Italy's $2.4Tn debt (120% of GDP) running at 6% interest ($144Bn a year = 7.5% of GDP) is going to require a lot more than $100Bn to stop the bleeding.  At the same time, Mr. Monti's tax-heavy austerity measures have choked economic growth, causing Italy's economy to contract 0.8% in the first four months of the year.  

Mr. Monti lashed back at an Austrian minister on Tuesday for questioning whether Italy might need financial assistance to ride out the crisis.  "I find it completely inappropriate that representatives of other governments in the European Union are talking about the situations of other countries," Mr. Monti said during a news conference, adding that his government was "continuing to work to guarantee the financial stability of the euro zone."

Clearly the honeymoon is over for Monti with a poll last week finding that only half of Italians supported political parties that form Mr. Monti's parliamentary majority, down from 63% two months ago. Confidence in Mr. Monti among those surveyed fell to 34%, compared with 71% when Mr. Monti took office.  The steady erosion of public support for Mr. Monti's government is also prompting some politicians to question whether Mr. Monti can still push through the tough changes demanded by EU leaders.

You can see from the chart on the left what a tremendous drag the global markets (down 12.5% in a year) are becoming on the S&P (down 2.5%).  If nothing is going to happen to snap the Global markets up – well, you do the math…

IN PROGRESS