Monday, November 29, 2010

Spain Reminds Me of Lehman Brothers

Last week, Spanish prime minister Zapatero said “I should warn those investors who are short selling Spain that they are going to be wrong and will go against their own interests.”

Meanwhile, the yield on the Spanish 10-year government bond is up 25 basis points today. Oops!

2 comments:

Taylor Conant said...

CP,

For people like Zapatero, whose social function in society is nothing more than a glorified, "king" public bureaucrat, these guys sure seem to think they've got a lot of special entrepreneurial insight that the rest of the participants in the marketplace lack.

Takes a lot of, what I believe the Spanish refer to as, "cojones."

As for the short sellers, if I were one, I'd probably respond to Zapatero with a "chupa mis huevos, hombre"!

CP said...

I can't, personally, think of a case where a CEO publicly acknowledged or commented upon short sellers where the company in question did not have severe problems or experience a spectacular blowup.

Here's a related example:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/dick-fulds-fantastic-revisionism/