Thursday, November 24, 2011

Euro leaders meet amid bond crisis

Italy's Mario Monti is meeting Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy later, for the first time since Mr Monti took office.

They are likely to discuss Italy's economy and wider eurozone issues.

Germany and France currently disagree about whether bonds should be issued by the whole of the eurozone instead of individual countries.

On Wednesday, Germany sold just 3.6bn euros ($4.8bn; £3bn) worth of 10-year bonds, from 6bn euros on offer.

"In my conversations with analysts, traders and officials I'm finding more and more of them are talking about the end game for the euro. Not the end, necessarily, but a moment of truth very soon that will either force a big leap forward, or a wrenching break-up," said BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders.

"Even Germany cannot be a safe haven if this crisis goes critical."

On Wednesday, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso launched a consultation on whether the 17 eurozone countries could issue joint stability bonds.

But Mr Barroso stressed that the creation of the bonds would require much greater scrutiny of the budgets and economic policies of individual members.

Germany opposes both the issuing of joint bonds and greater involvement for the European Central Bank (ECB) in bailing out troubled economies.

Its government is concerned that joint bonds would reduce pressure on member states to reduce their debt burdens.

On Thursday, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that it was "urgent" that the ECB be allowed to intervene in the debt crisis.

"It's urgent. It will be discussed this very day in Strasbourg," he told France Inter radio.

Germany has said that EU treaties prevent the ECB from buying bonds as the lender of last resort.

There has been much discussion of the implications of the failure to place all of the German bonds on offer in Wednesday's auction.

It may be that demand for low-yielding bonds is limited or that it was a result of the Bundesbank taking an unusual approach to pricing its bonds.

"But nearly everybody thinks the auction does not bode well," Stephanie Flanders concluded.

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