by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /Well that so called investor "risk appetite" took a surprise hit yesterday (and from an unexpected quarter). It wasn't the worries about US fiscal deficits that caused the panic, but problems in the European banking system. a href="http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/06/16/57171/investor-fears-cut-risk-appetite/"Gwen Robinson reports/a:br /br /blockquoteRisk appetite suffered a sharp deterioration on Monday as fresh uncertainty about the global economy prompted investors to shift from equities, commodities and emerging market assets into the perceived safety of government bonds and the dollar. Markets were further unnerved by warnings on the economic outlook from the head of the IMF and an ECB report saying eurozone banks face another $283bn in writedowns on bad loans and securities this year and next./blockquotebr /As Izabella Kaminska notes, a href="http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=117027956538h=wHY-pu=bc40uref=nf"it is Southern Europe that is now getting all the attention/a.br /br /blockquoteThis time it’s the turn of 25 Spanish banks, all of whose senior ratings ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /The title to this post poses an interesting question I think, since the answer you give to it would seem to depend more on the meaning you attribute to the word "really" than on any consensually agreed objective fact. This is especially the case since Spain itself has at least two "official" unemployment numbers, so the backround to (and reason for my asking) the question is the apparent divergence between these two numbers (one from the national statistics office, and one from the employment office INEM), both of which were given extensive international press coverage recently, with the ensuing "spread" between one reading and the other causing general confusion and even leading some to question the very validity of the whole Spanish "headcount" process. br /br /As we shall see, what we have here is not necessarily a simple "fudging" of numbers, but rather ...