A month ago we warned that loan delinquencies in Spain were bad and getting worse at a concerning rate. The most recent data update, which revised that 'bad' print to absolutely dismal, has broken records for just how ugly things are for Rajoy and his fellow countrymen. Spanish bank loan delinquencies rose to an all-time (50-year) record 9.86% with the last four months seeing simply unprecedented acceleration in the rate of bad loans. Numerically, this means that an absolutely whopping €172 billion of the €1.7 trillion in Spanish financial assets is now money bad, and will no longer generate cash flows. This amounts to about 17% of total Spanish GDP. In GDP-equivalent terms, this would be equivalent to $2.5 trillion in US bank loans being "bad." Which, when one cuts all the prevarication and lies, is probably what the true status of the US financial system is. Add to this the now relentless deposit flight which is depleting Spanish bank coffers and one can see why the European credit death spiral is very aptly named.

 

Elsewhere, as Bloomberg calculated, the full impact of the European crunch is most evident when observing deposit outflows, which now amount to a stunning $425 billion out of Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece in the past 12 months. The fragmentation of credit and a two-tiered banking system continues to block any hopes of growth as companies' funding costs in peripheral nations suffer contagiously from their sovereigns' deterioration.