A senior Portuguese banker has said that the European Central Bank pressed the country’s lenders to stop increasing their use of its liquidity – setting in train events that led Lisbon to ask for a bail-out this week.
António de Sousa, head of the Portuguese Banking Association, said that the message from the ECB and Portugal’s central bank not to expand their exposure to ECB funding further came a month ago. Read more
“It is necessary to refer to available funding mechanisms in the European framework.” This, grimly, from Portugal’s finance minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, according to Portuguese paper Journal de Negocios. Portugal is also holding talks on a bridging loan with the EU.
The news follows a punitive auction of 6-month bills today, at which the cost of debt to the government rose to 5.11 per cent, up from 2.98 per cent a month ago for comparable debt. More than €4bn longer-term debt is due to expire in April, leaving the central bank with a significant shortfall if it cannot issue new bonds at manageable levels. Today’s auction strongly suggests this would not be possible.
Answering a set of questions in writing, the finance minister said, via Google Translate:
Business: Portugal must now ask for help as they appeal the bankers and economists in general? The debt that you have to pay in a year do not worry you?
Fernando Teixeira dos Santos: The country has irresponsibly pushed a very difficult situation in financial markets. Given this difficult situation, which could have been avoided, I think it is necessary to refer to available funding mechanisms in the European framework as appropriate to the current political situation. This will require also the involvement and commitment of major forces and political institutions.JDN: How do you assess the results of the auction today, particularly with regard to interest rates?
Cast your mind back to the good old days, when a high yield meant 6 per cent and nervous market talk might culminate in whispers of a bail-out. Compare and contrast with the situation now, where two states have long since passed the point of bail-out and there is real and present danger of a default.
Much focus is on Portugal, lined up somewhat unwillingly for the next cash injection. It must make an unappealing prospect as two already-medicated patients have just taken a sharp turn for the worse. Yields on Irish bonds rose nearly an entire percentage point during trading yesterday to touch 10.7 per cent. As a reminder, Irish yields were about 8 per cent at the time of the bail-out. And it bears repeating: Irish yields are above bail-out levels even though Ireland has been bailed out. Ditto Greece.
Eurozone leaders are due to begin a scheduled meeting in Brussels about now. They’ll have plenty to discuss. A possible bail-out of Portugal will certainly be on the agenda but it might not make the top of the list. After all, Read more
Despite record yields, no bonds bought by the ECB settled last week – that’s two in a row for the eurozone central bank. The stock of ECB-bought bonds therefore remains at €77.5bn. Next week might be different, however, as demand for Portugal’s unexpectedly successful bond auction last week might have been driven by ECB purchases.
In future, buying government bonds at auction is a role that might pass to the eurozone’s rescue fund, the EFSF. A deal struck between eurozone heads of state over the weekend agrees that the fund can intervene in primary market (i.e. government debt auctions) in exceptional circumstances. This would not entirely replace the ECB’s role, as they have bought debt in the secondary (i.e. resale) bond market, too. Of €77.5bn ECB bond purchases, we do not know the split between primary and secondary debt – though anecdotally, secondary market purchases seem to have been bigger. Read more
A look at the data on Greece and Ireland should stay the hands of policymakers keen to bail-out Portugal. If those two bail-outs were intended to reassure markets, they have failed. Clarity on bondholder rights might be a better target.
Ireland was bailed out in November. Despite knowing €85bn is on tap, markets priced Ireland’s ten year cost of debt at a record high yesterday: government bonds trading in the secondary market closed at 9.39 per cent. See green line on chart, right. (Note: this number does not affect the Irish government directly since they do not finance their loans from the resale market: it is a proxy for the rate the government would have to pay to borrow from the market at auction.) These record levels are more than a percentage point higher than levels that prompted the bail-out, and just higher than the previous record which occurred post bail-out (since yields, bizarrely, rose).
Greece was bailed out in May. But Greece’s ten year cost of debt touched a record 12.82 per cent during yesterday’s trading. Their ten year debt closed at 12.68 per cent, second only to a rough patch in January. Bail-outs are useful when there’s a temporary cashflow problem – but continued and rising market stress should tell us that something else is at play. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Chris Giles has been the economics editor of the Financial Times since 2004. Based in London, he writes about international economic trends and the British economy. Before reporting economics for the Financial Times, he wrote editorials for the paper, reported for the BBC, worked as a regulator of the broadcasting industry and undertook research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies. RSS
Michael Steen, Frankfurt bureau chief, covers the ECB and the eurozone's economies. He joined the Financial Times in 2007 as Amsterdam correspondent and later worked as a front page news editor in London. Before joining the FT, he spent nine years as a correspondent at Reuters, mostly in foreign postings that included a previous stint in Frankfurt, as well as Moscow, Kiev and central Asia. He read German and Russian at Cambridge.RSS
Robin Harding is the FT's US economics editor, based in Washington. Prior to this, he was based in Tokyo, covering the Bank of Japan and Japan's technology sector, and in London as an economics leader writer. Robin studied economics at Cambridge and has a masters in economics from Hitotsubashi University, where he was a Monbusho scholar. Before joining the FT, Robin worked in asset management and banking. RSS
Ralph Atkins, capital markets editor, has been writing for the Financial Times for more than 20 years following an economics degree from Cambridge. From 2004 to 2012, Ralph was Frankfurt bureau chief, watching the European Central Bank and eurozone economies. He has also worked in Bonn, Berlin, Jerusalem and Brussels. RSS
Claire Jones is Money Supply economics team writer, based in London. Before joining the Financial Times, she was the editor of the Central Banking journal and CentralBanking.com. Claire studied philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. RSS
Older entries
