28 November 2011
Presseurop
Tom Janssen
Ratings for all European countries are at risk, warned Moody's on November 28. The warning comes at a time when Italy is under heavy pressure from the markets and proposals for solving the crisis are proliferating. But it may already be too late, worries the European press.
“Will the euro make it past Christmas?” The question asked by the Journal du Dimanche is haunting the EU. The Paris weekly is passing on the catastrophic forecast of essayist Jacques Attali, who believes that the euro’s demise will come before the end of the year if the leaders “fail to look any further than their own election calendars.” There’s only “a month left to save the euro,” the newspaper writes -
After Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the deadly virus has spread to Italy. This week the over-indebted peninsula has had to borrow at exorbitant interest rates. On Friday, its creditors called for 7.8 % for a two-year bond, up 3.2 points from two months ago. [...] If the third-largest economy in the eurozone falls into insolvency, the monetary union will not survive much longer. [...] The tension is at its peak. On the eve of the weekend Standard & Poor's downgraded Belgium. Next Thursday, Paris hopes to sell between three and 4.5 billion euros in bonds – a real test, knowing that creditors have turned away from the still more desirable Germany. This week, Berlin wanted to raise six billion euros in the markets. It got only 3.6 billion. A surprise.
“The euro crisis and the debt crisis have reached a milestone destined to leave its mark on the European economy and even the constitutional structures of the continent,” writes Corriere della Sera:
In a few weeks, nothing will be as it was before, but no one has any certainty that everything will pass off as set out in the schedule being drawn up [...]. Tomorrow, Italy will have to face a very delicate issue of debt securities. On the same day, the Eurogroup will review the French and (primarily) German proposals on what German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls the fiscal union. [...] These changes – if all goes to plan – will be ratified at the EU summit of December 9. The day before then, the ECB will decide on offering unlimited liquidity for two or (more likely) three years to pump oxygen into the banks. At the same time, Italy’s prime minister Mario Monti should have presented his ministers with measures to stabilise Italy. Everything will be in place for the ECB to act. The bank could signal differential thresholds for sovereign debt securities [the difference between the lowest and highest interest rates on government bonds], beyond which the bank would make unlimited interventions in the markets. In any event, however, the thresholds will be high enough to compel the states to do their part in lowering rates. This is the way to get through the crisis. Europe is now preparing to do just that, knowing that it too often in the past it has got lost on the way... finish @source
