Out Fox The $treet

Spain's Treasury had a very positive auction this morning leading to plunging rates for 3 & 6 month bonds. Though getting some play in the media, these auction results are being somewhat ignored. Not that the market has ignored them with the roughly 3% rise in US markets. Spain was able to sell a little over $7B in 3 & 6 month bonds at interest rates 300 bps below the previous auction in November. That is an incredible drop as follows: sold €3.7 billion in three-month bills at 1.735%, compared with 5.11% in November  sold €1.9 billion of six-month paper at 2.435%, compared with 5.227% last month.  What debt crisis? Or at least in the case of Spain. Maybe it will only be a short term phenomenon as this comes one day prior to the ECB launches new three-year lending facilities for the area's banks. Of course, Spain had another good auction a week or so ago when it sold more bonds than planned. Either way, it's a good sign that some of the European programs...

Guess its good news that the European Union members continue to reach for solutions to the debt crisis. The bad news is that none of these grand ideas ever get implemented. Its only been a month since the last solution was announced but never implemented. Now it appears the solution is for the ECB to lend the International Monetary Fund money to lend to Italy. The amount being floated amounts to roughly $800M. Presumably this would be enough to stave off the markets for 12-18 months in order to give the new Mario Monti government time to implement reforms. Reducing the interest rates back down to 4-5% is crucial for a huge debt load. Imagine if Japan or the US had to start paying considerably high interest rates. Both countries would be sunk as only the absurdly low interest rates is holding us above water.  Whether this new idea works is debatable, but it is a solution of significant size to give Rome time for reform. The IMF has been successful in Iceland and Ireland alread...