Schaeuble assurance sends bonds higher
Greek government bonds rose on Monday, pushing 10-year yields to the lowest level since the nation?s debt was restructured in March, after German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said a Greek default ?will not happen.?
?Most important are the comments Schaeuble made over the weekend, basically ruling out a sovereign default for Greece and dismissing any speculation Greece will exit the euro area,? said Norbert Aul, a rates strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in London.
?This is a pretty clear commitment by the German finance minister so should be the key reason for the performance of Greek yields on Monda.?
The yield on Greece?s 10-year bond fell 47 basis points, or 0.47 percentage point, to 17.58 percent at 6.36 p.m. Monday after dropping as low as 17.38 percent.
?It will not happen that there will be a ?Staatsbankrott? in Greece,? Schaeuble said at a forum in Singapore on Sunday. ?Greece has had to take a lot of very serious reforms? and an increasing majority of the population ?does understand that being a member of the common European currency is in the best interest of Greece,? he said.
However on Monday Germany rejected a second debt write-down for Greece, digging in against suggestions for European governments to accept losses on Greek holdings. ?A new haircut is out of the question as far as the German government is concerned,? Steffen Seibert, Chancellor Angela Merkel?s chief spokesman, said at a regular news briefing in Berlin. ?We are working on sensible solutions with the Greeks and our European partners.? [Bloomberg]
