Monday, June 18, 2012

Video: Potential debt problems in Spain



>> bertha coombs joins us live now. as i mentioned, everyone is talking about going into the weekend, what would happen in greece , and the way that the world really wanted it but now the bouncing ball of stress and worry has gone to spain and italy .

>> yeah. for investors a lot of it is very much what have you done for me lately. certainly the markets relieved that greece 's pro bailout new democracy party came out on top in the election there. the leftist party had vowed to undo the austerity measures that had been demanded by the european commission , european central bank , and the international monetary fund as part of that big $170 billion euro bailout package. but that new greek government still has to form a coalition to get a majority in parliament and they're going to face a lot of big issues ahead. so it's not going to be an easy fix. germany, which is a big part of the european commission , the biggest economy, angela merkel the chancellor, says there aren't going to be any changes in the understanding, the new government is going to have to fulfill its commitments quickly. the worries with spain ? well, spain is a much bigger economy and the countries that cost today are soaring to an all time high above 7%. that drove greece and italy and portugal before them to bailout. spain 's debt ratio is about half that of greece but with the much bigger economy the big problem there is they had a housing boom just like we did that went bust. they now have 25% unemployment after a lot of austerity measures putting big strain on their banks. the latest data show that spanish banks saw more than 8.7% of mortgage loans delinquent more than 90 days in april, tamron, so a lot of people can't work, they can't pay their loans. it's putting a lot of stress on the banks and that is putting a big strain on the spanish economy. big test tomorrow because the spanish government is going to need to raise some debt tomorrow. we'll see how the markets respond.

>> okay. what is the anticipation on how the markets will respond? by the way i recently read and maybe saw the wrong number here that the unemployment rate in spain was somewhere around 25%?

>> exactly. it's about 25%. greece 's is just a tad lower than that so that's part of the problem. you have a lot of people who can't pay their mortgages, those banks are saddled with huge amounts of -- the government already had to step in and shore up the biggest savings & loan already so that is partly government owned. tomorrow we'll see -- one of the things about spain is they have a lower debt ratio than they do in greece where it's like 150%. in spain it's about 79%. so they have a bit more room. they don't have to raise as much debt as frequently as countries like greece and italy but tomorrow will be a big test to see just how high an interest rate they will have to pay and investors will demand in order to buy their debt.

>> every day it seems now there is a big test daily. thank you very much. greatly appreciate it. thank you.

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