Granite Group Advisors Blog

Bailout 2.0

Written by Granite Group | Jun 11, 2012 1:13:09 PM

Over the weekend the news broke that the Eurozone Finance Ministers are planning to bail out Spain’s banks with a credit line offer of 125 billion dollars.  The markets immediately reacted positively, in the belief that this was a good move to help stabilize the Euro as well as the entire Euro zone.  From our perspective, this is a short term move and not a long term solution to the problem.  Spain needs critical structural changes that promote growth.  This is the only way to  will fix the problem and unfortunately this will take a lot of time.  The current transaction just kicks the can down the road and buys Spain some time.  Ultimately, all you have to do is look at Greece to see what bailouts mean -- it does not change anything for the long term.  Greece will be right back where it was a few months ago.  The next European nation in line for help is Italy,  but again, we believe the Eurozone countries not only need to curb spending, but create an environment that promotes economic growth or we will be right back in this position again in the future.