Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Spanish bill auction almost fails, 10-year on Thursday

Uh oh.
From the Financial Times's Money Supply blog:

Spain came close to its first debt auction failure on Tuesday, highlighting the funding problems for weaker eurozone economies.

The government’s difficulties in selling €6.44bn ($7.96bn) in one-year and 18-month bills sparked worries over its 10-year debt auction on Thursday.

Madrid had planned to issue €8bn, but only just attracted that amount of bids, with yields at record highs. This prompted debt managers to reduce the size of the sale by €1.56bn. Normally a government bill auction would be covered at least 1.5 times. More on ft.com.