Saturday, June 09, 2012

[Updated] THE IMF has released its report on Spain's financial system: you can read the press release of the full report (pdf).

Having read it diagonally, my impression is that what it says shouldn't surprise anyone, really: it states that the Spanish banking system is resilient but faces important vulnerabilities (duh), with financing needs between 25 and 40 billion, which is big but at the same time it's at the lower range of the estimates that several organizations, ratings agencies, and international banks have been issuing this week.

The report was supposed to be out on Monday. Why did they release it sooner? The plausible speculation is that it allows the Spanish government to ask for a 'soft bailout' (for the banking, not the sovereign, debt) during the Eurogroup emergency conference call scheduled for this afternoon at 4pm Central European Time (10am Eastern).

Stay tuned.

UPDATE. Minor typos fixed. Oh, and welcome Instapundit readers!

UPDATE III. Done deal, with some uncertainties. Here's the Eurozone statement (pdf)