MADRID (AFP) ― Spain rejected outright Tuesday any need for a rescue to avert a sovereign debt crisis even as European Central Bank intervention halted a market attack on its bonds.
Fears that the major European economies of Spain and Italy could be the next dominoes of a widening eurozone debt crisis have gripped financial markets.
A customer reads an edition of La Vanguardia newspaper with the front page headline “Maximum Alert” about the Spanish and Italian bond crisis in Madrid. (Bloomberg)
Those concerns have been overshadowed for now by an historic downgrade of the United States’ “AAA”-rated debt and by the shaky outlook for global economic growth, which have hammered stocks worldwide.
Finance Minister Elena Salgado said Spain could “of course” completely rule out the need for a financial rescue.
“Declarations from all the institutional representatives are the same, that Spain and our fundamentals are very far from needing a rescue, that what there is instability in the debt markets,” Salgado told Onda Cero radio.
The pressure on Spanish and Italian 10-year government bonds eased for a second day Tuesday after the European Central Bank intervened in the market as part of efforts to tame the eurozone debt crisis.
The yield or rate of return earned by investors on the benchmark Spanish 10-year bond fell to 5.063 percent from 5.138 percent on Monday, having briefly dropped below five percent.
“The debt market has stabilized in Europe this morning and that has been good news,” Salgado said.
