While all eyes are fixed on Italy’s ever-increasing borrowing rates, a far larger
problem may well be emerging. The EU bailout fund, set up to help countries who can’t borrow, may itself have trouble borrowing very soon.
A sale this morning of 10-year bonds by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) had a very muted response, barely bringing in the €3 billion it was meant to. This despite the fact that the offer was priced at a much more enticing yield, some 90 basis points (or 0.9 percentage points in non-market lingo) above a previous sale.
Mind you, that’s better than last week’s sale, which had to be postponed due to lack of interest. The EFSF was set up as a fund that lends to eurozone companies that are finding it hard to raise money. After the latest and supposedly last set of crisis talks, the EU sent envoys to China to drum up support for the fund.
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