“German bunds rose amid concern measures to increase the euro-region’s financial firewall will fail to stem the euro-area crisis, spurring demand for the region’s safest assets.
Italian government debt fell as it sold 3.82 billion euros ($5.11 billion) of bonds today. Ten-year bunds gained for the fifth time in six days after a German industry report predicted consumer confidence will decline in April. Finance ministers from the 17 euro nations will meet in Copenhagen on March 30 to discuss bailout provisions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave her first indication yesterday that Germany could let temporary and permanent rescue funds run in parallel.
“It’s far from certain that we will have an increase in the rescue funds’ capacity and also the devil will be very much in the detail, whether Germany would go ahead with raising the capacity of the permanent funds or not,” said Elwin de Groot, a market economist at Rabobank Nederland in Utrecht. “That will keep markets on guard. This confidence figure that we saw this morning was really a small dip, but overall consumers remain fairly downbeat.”…”
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