Chart of the Day: Kicking the Can Now Works for Only a Few Hours in the Eurozone

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The chart below comes via Brad Plumer, and it shows bond yields in Spain (orange) and Italy (gray). As you can see, when markets opened on Monday after this weekend’s bailout of Spanish banks, yields settled down to about 6%. Hooray! But instead of a few months — or at least a few weeks — of relief before everyone got jittery again, this time we got only a few hours. By noon, yields were well above 6% in Spain and touching 6% in Italy.

It’s pretty obvious that after four or five go-arounds in the eurozone crisis, financial markets just aren’t impressed with stopgap measures anymore. Not even for a short time.

So much has been written about the eurozone crisis, both by me and by others much smarter than me, that it feels pointless to write about it again. The eurozone needs more fiscal consolidation, it needs more transfers from rich to poor countries, it needs to stop running persistent internal trade deficits, and it needs to abandon austerity in the short term. All of these things are politically nearly impossible, and yet, they’re the only solution aside from a crackup. The financial markets are now making it clear that they’ve figured this out and won’t be bought off with anything less.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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