Bloomberg: Spain rules out bailout as de Guindos says banks funded

27 April 2012

Spanish Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, ruled out seeking a bailout hours before Standard & Poor's cut the country's credit rating to three levels above junk, and a report showed unemployment jumped close to a record.

“Nobody has asked Spain, either officially or unofficially” to turn to Europe’s bailout mechanisms, he said. “We don’t need it.” "This is not the real cure for the problems and the volatility of the market", de Guindos added. “I don’t think that we need any further liquidity injections after the two LTROs that the ECB has implemented over the last three or four months.”

“A growth pact has to be focused on structural reforms”, de Guindos said. “I do not see that the growth pact should involve any sort of fiscal boost or stimulus.” ECB bond purchases wouldn’t help to calm European markets either as governments instead need to show how they can fix their economies, de Guindos remarked. “We have to put on the table a much more comprehensive growth programme that has to be much more focused on performance on the structural side”, he said.

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