Spanish Bond Investors in Strike of Their Own

Much of Spain was brought to a halt by a general strike on Thursday, but the bond market vigilantes are also striking, by avoiding the country’s debt.

3月份的西班牙10年债券的收益率大幅上涨，超越了意大利主权债务的利率 - 另一种陷入困境的外围欧元区经济 - 自8月以来第一次。

意大利和葡萄牙的费率 - 在不同时光的情况下，在欧元区债务剧中的主导作用 - 在欧洲中央银行的决定之后，已经下降泛滥欧元区银行系统在2月的最后一天有数百千亿欧元的现金;重复其成功的12月倡议的行动。虽然这种流动性的流动性令人担忧的是，信贷紧缩可能遭到其他冒险的政府债券市场，但对西班牙的担忧已经上升，因为债券警惕通过销售西班牙债务或甚至缩短市场来抗议该国的财政问题。为什么是这样？

西班牙’s economy is in a dismal state, even by the grim standards of much of the rest of the euro zone. A spectacular bust in the labor-intensive real estate sector has pushed unemployment up to 23.3 percent — the highest among the 34 developed nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and almost three times the OECD average of 8.2 percent. The ultra-high level of joblessness has depressed tax revenue — leaving Spain’s fiscal deficit at a massive 8.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) last year.

由于西班牙通过关闭这一财政差距，因此，失业可能会进一步上升，因为西班牙通过关闭这一财政差距来平息其债券市场。这意味着，它不是提高政府支出使失业率降低，而是积极降低公共部门预算，这可能会推动失业。“由于财政紧缩措施越来越多地认为，”我们预计失业率将增加到25％，“在研究说明中的信用瑞士斯表示。美国银行Merrill Lynch担心长期后果，说：“作为长期求职者失去技巧并面临更大的障碍以恢复就业，持续的失业风险的持续性。”永久性高失业可能对公共财政来说是不可持续的沉重负担。

Many investors in Spanish bonds are fearful that the severe government cutbacks could damage Spain’s ability to finance its debt.

Mariano Rajoy, the Prime Minister, plans to push down the deficit to 5.3 percent of Spain’s total output this year. To achieve this, he announced cuts in ministerial expenditure of 16.9 percent in Friday’s austerity budget — an even larger reduction than had been expected. Slimming the deficit from 8.5 to 5.3 percent will take 3 percentage points out of GDP — almost certainly putting Spain into a severe recession. The central government predicts a contraction in output of 1.7 percent for 2012, and some private sector economists say the fall could be steeper. If their fears are proved right, Spain risks falling into a vicious spiral of heavy losses in tax revenue, triggering public sector layoffs — which would depress tax revenue even further.

但一些投资者对违反危险更令人担忧的是：Rajoy的裁决受欢迎方的可能性将不愿意或无法制造这些削减。

西班牙’s former prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, agreed with the EU to slash the country’s deficit to 4.4 percent this year, but Rajoy sent Spanish bond yields higher in early March by unilaterally announcing a change to a less ambitious target of 5.8 percent. The Spanish premier eventually hammered out a compromise of 5.3 percent with EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn. However, Thursday’s well-attended general strike, called to protest the government cuts and deregulation plans designed to ease layoffs, underlines the countervailing domestic pressure on Rajoy to let the fiscal target slip.

Moreover, Spain’s politically powerful regional governments have a long tradition of resisting attempts by the Madrid regime to curb their overspending — particularly if the party in power locally is different from the party in office at the center. On Sunday, March 25, concerns about the Popular Party’s ability to control the public sector’s purse strings grew after it failed to win an overall majority in an election in Andalusia, Spain’s largest autonomous region.

The collapse of confidence in Italy’s sovereign debt last year came not, at heart, from a sudden worsening in the mathematics of the crisis, such as disappointingly poor data for unemployment or GDP. The real cause was a progressive loss of trust in the Italian political class to take decisive measures to deal with Italy’s debt. Analysts fear that Spain could face the same crisis of credibility.

The yield on the benchmark Spanish 10-year closed on Friday at 5.39 percent — up 41 basis points since the end of February, though broadly unchanged on the day.