Friday, December 23, 2011

More Bad News For the ECB's LTRO

If the record amount of cash deposited  at the ECB for 2011, a large part, nearly 24% for the entire year coming in the days following the LTRO, wasn't bad enough, further evidence that the Centrally planned, cash for crap LTRO has been an utter failure (a carry trade buying Italian and Spanish debt was the plan and best case scenario), Italian BTPs have now crossed the 7% mark today. What does this mean? For 1) The LTRO didn't have the intended effect because Italian yields would be falling if banks were using the money to buy debt and 2) 7% is the yield that is considered absolutely unsustainable and it is the same yield that forced Greece and Ireland to seek bailouts as there was no way they could afford to go to the market for their funding needs at 7%, they would have and still may, defaulted.

So now Italy is back above 7% and the Euro is just shy of the $1.30 mark, watch for the market to get jittery.

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