Thereâs a Swine Flu joke in here somewhere⦠http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/04/27/213516/a-certain-sovereign-virus/ But if you want to take the temperature of the eurozone, so to speak, and see whether Greek crisis contagion is really catching on, look no further than Thursdayâs Italian bond auction. Italy is, of course, one of the forbiddenly-porcine acronym countries; comprising Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Burdened with some budgetary problems that bear a resemblence to those of Greece, this Club Med member already had something of a hiccup on a Tuesday morning bond auction. On that day the country sold â¬9.5bn of six-month bills. But crucially, received only â¬9.78bn in bids for the bonds â indicating a bid-to-cover ratio of just 1.02. Below 1 is considered a failed auction. Whatâs more, the average yield was 0.814 per cent, far more than analysts had expected and above the 0.567 per cent yield on offer at an auction of the same type of bonds last month. Thursdayâs sale of 2-year, 5-year and 10-year bonds is for a smaller amount of debt â between â¬5.5bn and â¬8bn according to Bloomberg â but it is the first Club Med bond auction since Standard & Poorâs cut Portugalâs sovereign credit ratings on Tuesday afternoon, and Spainâs on Wednesday. The auction starts at 10am BST. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/?segid=70409
Completely false. Sadly I don't expect nothing else but lies from the british/american press. But let's talk about the auction, how did it go ?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ajBKPsYCWIqk April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Italian two-year notes broke an eight-day slide as the nation raised almost all of the 8 billion euros ($11 billion) it aimed for in debt auctions, spurring demand for securities from Greece, Spain and Portugal. Greek two-year notes rallied after Italy auctioned 3 billion euros of 2012 notes, 1.16 billion euros of 2017 floating-rate debt and 3.5 billion euros of 2020 bonds, a total of 7.7 billion euros. European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said heâs confident that talks on a rescue package to buy Greece âbreathing space from pressures of financial marketsâ will conclude in coming days. âThe auction has gone well, and on a short-term basis this is definitely a good sign,â said David Schnautz, a fixed-income strategist at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. âWe had some relief, but overall the question is whether investors will take this as an opportunity to unload inventories. We are still in this political limbo situation, so from that perspective we arenât yet ready to give the all-clear.â