Worried investors have been dumping Italian and Spanish bonds, driving their borrowing costs to record levels in recent days and sparking fears the world’s 7th and 12th largest economies could be engulfed by the same kind of crisis that forced far smaller Greece, Ireland and Portugal to request emergency bailouts. By intervening in bond markets, however, the bank could at least temporarily take some of the pressure off both nations by buying debt that private investors now see as too risky.
The ECB, as is customary, did not explicitly say it would buy Italian and Spanish bonds. But it strongly suggested in a statement that it would do so, with its move amounting to an admission that the bank’s tepid dabbling in bond markets last week did not go nearly far enough in calming investors. The bank’s governing council agreed after an 11th-hour emergency teleconference on Italy and Spain to take more drastic steps “to ensure [bond] price stability in the euro area.”
The move came as European leaders Sunday were scrambling to calm investors jittery over the crushing debt of wealthy nations. Without further steps from governments and central bankers, analysts fear more drops in global stock markets – with bourses in the Middle East, open on Sunday, tumbling ahead of the opening of key Asian trading.
A European official who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the issue said “a range of international discussions” was coming together Sunday. Those talks were set to include conference calls between G7 financial chiefs.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy issued a joint statement backing moves by Rome and Madrid on Friday to speed up austerity measures and adopt reforms to improve stagnant growth.
Opposition in fiscally conservative Germany, by far the largest economy in the 17-nation euro zone, to intervention by the ECB was seen as one major factor holding the bank back. But the ECB, in the text of its statement Sunday, appeared to interpret Merkel’s joint statement with Sarkozy as a sign of grudging acceptance from Berlin that more must be done.
With concern increasingly centered on Italy, whose debt amounts to a whopping 119 percent of its national economy, Merkel and Sarkozy “especially” welcomed the announcement by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi “to achieve a balanced budget a year earlier than previously envisaged.”
Raj Badiani, an economist with IHS Global Insight in London, called the ECB move “an attempt to provide a sharp jolt to the negative sentiment engulfing Spain and Italy.”
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