Shares in Bankia tumbled 30% after El Mundo reported that more than €1bn of deposits had left the bank in the last few days

European stock markets suffered fresh losses on Thursday amid reports that nervous customers at Spain’s fourth-largest bank had begun withdrawing funds.

Shares in Bankia, which was nationalised just a week ago, tumbled 30% at one stage after Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that more than €1bn ($1.26bn) of deposits had left the bank in the last few days. Although Bankia denied it was suffering a bank run, the reports fuelled fears that Europe’s banking sector might crack under the escalating pressure from the ongoing eurozone financial crisis.

In Greece, a caretaker goverment was sworn in under the leadership of supreme court judge Panagiotis Pikramenos, who will run the country until new elections on 17 June.

Warring Greek political leaders swung into election mode, with Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party saying Greece would face a “nightmare” of plunging wages and bank deposits if it left the euro. But Alexis Tsipras, the head of the rival Syriza party, reiterated that he would renegotiate the terms of Greece’s austerity plan if he won power.

In London, the FTSE 100 index of leading shares had fallen by 60 points, or 1.1%, by lunchtime, with French and German markets showing similar falls.

The US dollar hit a new four-month high of €1.2668 against the euro, as investors once again put their money into safe-havens.

City experts remained split over whether European leaders could hold the eurozone together in its current form.

“I don’t think a Greek exit from the Euro will take place in the very short term – as policy compromise is likely,” said Graham Neilson, chief investment strategist at Cairn Capital “But the broader impact of a Greek exit, which still looks inevitable longer term, is still being underestimated.”

The crisis will dominate this weekend’s meeting of G8 world leaders, which will be hosted by Barack Obama. Four European leaders – David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Mario Monti and François Hollande – are expected to hold a video conference call later on Thursday.

In the UK, David Cameron urged eurozone leaders to do a better job of balancing austerity and growth, following data on Tuesday that showed there was no economic growth across the region in the first three months of 2012.

]]> http://masterbisnis.com/european-markets-slide-on-fears-over-spanish-banks/feed/ 0 http://masterbisnis.com/eurozone-crisis-live-spains-bankia-denies-suffering-run-on-deposits/ http://masterbisnis.com/eurozone-crisis-live-spains-bankia-denies-suffering-run-on-deposits/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 13:20:06 +0000 Master http://masterbisnis.com/eurozone-crisis-live-spains-bankia-denies-suffering-run-on-deposits/

• El Mundo: €1bn taken out since Bankia nationalisation
• Spanish bond yields jump at auction
• Vince Cable: Germany can solve the crisis
• Prime minister will urge eurozone leaders to take urgent action to stem the crisis
• CEBR: Crisis could cost $1 trillion

2.05pm: Breaking news: Spain’s Bankia has called on savers to remain calm. The bank has responded to today’s reports that more than €1bn of funds had flowed out of the company in recent days.

Bankia issued a statement to the Madrid stock market in the last few minutes. In it, new chariman Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri said:

Depositors at Bankia can be absolutely reassured that their savings are safe.

The statement went on to say that it had only seen a seasonal evolution of deposits during the first half of May, with no substantial changes in balances of deposits expected in the coming days (Reuters reports).

So, a clear signal that a bank run is not taking place.

1.26pm: It appears that Spain’s economy minister Fernando Jimenez Latorre has calmed the worst of the crisis by insisting that Bankia was not suffering from an outflow of deposits (see 12.54pm)

Shares in Bankia have struggled back a bit, now down 13.6% at €1.43. Still a hefty fall.

1.08pm: Today’s plunge in Bankia shares comes just a week after Spain’s government stepped in to partially nationalise the bank. Under that deal, €4.5bn of state loans are being converted into shares, giving the Madrid government 45% of the company.

Like the rest of the Spanish banking sector, Bankia has suffered massive losses because of the country’s property crash. This has left it sitting on around €30bn worth of bad debts to developers, or losses on land and buildings which have been repossessed.

12.54pm: Spain’s economy secretary has just denied that Bankia is suffering a bank run, Reuters reports from Madrid.

Asked about today’s reports that Bankia customers had withdrawn more than €1bn since it was nationalised last week, Fernando Jimenez Latorre told a press conference that:

It’s not true that there is an exit of deposits at this moment from Bankia.

According to news flashes from Madrid, Jimenez Latorre also said that Bankia has everything it needs for succes, and should be given time….

12.32pm: The euro has just slipped to a new four-month low against the US dollar, as fears over the eurozone crisis swept through the foreign exchange markets again.

The euro hit a low of $1.2668, its lowest level since 17 January this year. The dollar was also rallying against other currencies, hitting a four-month high against the Swiss franc.

As well as the sitation in Bankia, traders were reacting to a report that Moody’s would announce updated ratings for 21 Spanish banks tonight. City analysts fear that many of the banks could be downgraded, with the news now expected at 8pm BST.

12.05pm: European stock markets have fallen sharply following the news that Bankia’s shares had tumbled.

In London the FTSE 100 is down 57 points, or 1.05%, at 5348, with Barclays shares falling 3.7%, and IAG (British Airway’s parent company which also owns Spain’s Iberia) down 3.8%.

Spain’s IBEX is down 1.5% at 6510, a new low since 2003.

Italy’s FTSE MIB has dropped almost 2%, with its own financial stocks falling.

The French CAC is down 0.8%, losing 24 points to 3023, while the German DAX is down 0.6%, or 40 points, at 6343.

11.51am: Shares in Spain’s Bankia have now fallen by as much as 26% on the Madrid stock market, following those reports of customers withdrawing funds (see 11.17am for more).

Bankia was previously classed as ‘under auction’ (Reuters reports) — which indicates that a large buy or sell order was passing through the market, or that the Madrid exchange was struggling to match buy and sell orders due to a mismatch.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong to state that Bankia shares had actually been officially suspended, as some City traders also thought. It appears that market volatility was causing trading to be interrupted (with thanks to Pablo Rodriguez of El Mundo, which was the first to report that some Bankia customers have been withdrawing funds.

11.31am: Vince Cable, the bisnis secretary, said this morning that Germany can save the eurozone from disaster, pointing out that Europe’s largest economy has done very well out of the single currency.

Cable told my colleague Dan Milmo that he was not “Apocalypse Now” about the crisis. Speaking from Ellesmere Port, where more than 2,000 Vauxhall car manufacturing jobs have been saved this morning, Cable said he confident of a positive outcome to the Greek crisis.

I am not Apocalypse Now about the European Union and the Eurozone. There are risks around Greece but Greece is a very small country. The significance of Greece is if you get contagion but I think that it is possible to be reasonably optimistic that Germany understands those risks and will put mechanisms in place. There are risks and worries and I am not minimising that. But there is every reason to believe that the EU will pull out of this crisis as Britain will.

Asked what ‘mechanisms’ he was referring to, Cable added:

We are talking about the firewall, the willingness of the European Central Bank to intervene, the understanding of the Italian and Spanish governments that if they play their part they will get back-up from, particularly, Germany. The Eurozone has advanced quite a long way from the peak of the crisis

It ultimately comes back to Germany thinking they have done extremely well out of the Eurozone, the competitive exchange rate. They have everything to gain from making sure this succeeds. And they are not just going to let it go down the pan.

11.17am: Shares in Bankia, Spain’s fourth-largest bank, have tumbled by as much as 26% this morning. This follows a report that worried customers have withdrawn more than €1bn from their accounts since it was partially nationalised last week.

The El Mundo newspaper reported this morning that Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri, the bank’s new chairman, gave Bankia’s board the information at a meeting this week.

Bankia, which was created from seven ‘cajas’ (savings banks) last year, was only floated on the stock market last July.

This graph shows how its share price tumbled in recent weeks, and is down 70% since flotation. That means huge losses for the many retail investors who took part.

10.31am: David Cameron has begun giving his speech in Manchester, warning about the dangers of the eurocrisis. He began by saying:

We are living in perilous economic times. Turn on the TV news and you see the return of a crisis that never really went away. Greece on the brink; the survival of the Euro in question. Faced with this, I have a clear task: to keep Britain safe. Not to take the easy course – but the right course. Not to dodge responsibility for dealing with a debt crisis – but to lead our country through this to better times.

Andrew Sparrow is covering the whole event here, in his Politics Live blog.

10.23am: A striking poster urging a No vote in Ireland’s referendum on the EU fiscal treaty was erected overnight in Central Dublin:

It shows a European fist squeezing Ireland until it bleeds, and was put up by the Mandate union over its headquarters in Dublin’s Parnell Square.

It appeared as the latest opinion polls send a warning sign to the Republic’s governing parties. Just over a third of the Irish electorate remain undecided about what way to vote in a fortnight’s time, according to respected polling firm Milward Brown.

From Dublin, Henry McDonald reports:

Around 35% of voters are in the “Don’t Know” category with 37% saying they will vote Yes and 24% indicating they will vote No. This latest snapshot of Irish public opinion was taken amongst 1,000 voters on Monday and Tuesday for today’s Irish Independent newspaper.

Of the two ruling parties Labour has the toughest task in securing a Yes vote on 31 May with 50% of their supporters saying they oppose the EU fiscal treaty, the poll found.

However a substantial majority of voters want the Republic to remain inside the euro currency zone with three out of every four polled stating they do not want Ireland to exit the euro.

The increase in the “Dont Knows” indicates that the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his team still have a fight on their hands to persaude the Irish people to ratify a treaty that ties his government and all other states in the EU into tight budgetary controls.

The opposition to the treaty ranges from Sinn Fein and the United Left Alliance over to pro free market multi millionaire bisnisman Declan Ganley and his Libertas organisation.  Even the British eurosceptic UKIP have entered the fray distributing tens of thousands of leaflets across Ireland urging voters to reject the latest EU treaty.

10.12am: The word from Westminster is that Downing Street officials are confirming that prime minister David Cameron will hold a conference call with François Hollande, Angela Merkel and Mario Monti this afternoon.

This will give the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy a chance to talk ahead of this weekend G8 meeting, where Barack Obama is expected to urge Merkel to back a new eurozone growth package.

9.54am: Spain has seen its borrowing costs jump sharply at an auction of government bonds. That’s worrying, but the good news is that it raised the funding it needed.

The interest rate, or yield, on €1.09bn Spanish bonds maturing in 2016 jumped to 5.106%, compared with 3.374% at a similar auction in March. That underlines the fears swirling through the eurozone.

Spain also sold €1.02bn of 2015 bonds at an average yield of 4.375%, up from 2.89% in April (a much calmer month).

In total, Spain managed to raise €2.5bn, which means it has met 55.8% of its gross funding programme for 2012.

Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy said it would be “painful” for the Spanish Treasury to be selling debt at such prices.

Spain is selling its debt at punitive rates against a rapidly deteriorating domestic and external backdrop. Eurozone “break-up contagion” is seeping into Spanish yields.

The Greek crisis is placing huge strain on peripheral eurozone bonds and European bank shares. Spain is on the sharp end of these fears. The Spanish government itself can do very little to shore up confidence in the near term.

Unless there is a bold and decisive response on the part of the eurozone, sentiment towards Spain will deteriorate further. This is a very slippery slope right now.

9.49am: More developments in Greece – Antonis Samaras, the conservative New Democracy party leader, has addressed his parliamentary group this morning saying “we are the front of resistance against catastrophe.”

From Helena Smith in Athens:

The unilateral withdrawal from the EU-IMF sponsored loan deal keeping the Greek economy afloat would be tountamount to the destruction of the country, he said, attacking Syriza for its “lack of preparedness and inability” to govern.

Samaras spelt out “the nightmare” that would ensue if Greece gave up the euro.

Reverting to the drachma would mean wages being “cut in half, deposits being cut in half” and property prices being devalued. The price of imports would skyrocket particularly for food and gas.

“This is the nightmare that those who speak of a unilateral condemnation [of the loan accord] will bring us.”

Looking visibly shaken, the ashen-faced Samaras who had been a vociferous supporter of Greeks going to the polls “as early as possible” after the emergency interim government of Lucas Papademos took over last November, said Greece’s national interests would also be threatened.

“Greece in Europe is protected nationally and geopolitically,” he said. “If we become isolated we will find ourselves totally vulnerable with many around us being tempted to exploit our weakness,” he said.

With the new caretaker government in power the speech in effect kicked off the electoral campaign. Alexis Tsipras’ will also address his parliamentary group at 1:30 PM (11.30am BS) (as I type, his speechwriters are sharpening their pens).

9.30am: We’re hearing that Alexis Tsipras, the head of the Syriza party whose popularity has surged recently, will travel to France and Germany next week to discuss the crisis.

More from Helena.

Senior cadres in Syriza, the radical left group which looks poised to emerged as the biggest party in next month’s elections, have just confirmed that Alexis Tsipras, its leader, will be visiting Berlin and Paris for talks next week.

The 38-year-old, who has sent shockwaves through EU capitals saying that Greece can no no longer commit to the onerous terms of €130bn loan agreement it has signed up to with the EU and IMF, will be departing from Athens for Berlin on Monday.

It’s not clear yet who Tsipras will be meeting.

9.25am: News in from Greece, where our correspondent Helena Smith says the country’s interim caretaker government has just been sworn in.

Helena writes:

In what will go down in modern Greek history as one of the smallest cabinets ever, it is comprised of 16 ministers, mostly university professors and diplomats.

The swearing in of the new cabinet followed a similar ceremony for new prime minister Panagiotis Pikramenos. In another first the make-up of the new government was announced at dawn. A high court judge, Pikramenos takes over from former vice president of the European Central Bank Lucas Papademos who left the post warning that Greeks hadn’t made sacrifices for “an empty shirt” but to put the debt-stricken Greek economy back on track. “There are those who are waiting to benefit from the chaos that will follow the humbling exit of the country from the common currency,” he said.

9.15am: Benedict Brogan of the Daily Telegraph has a good take on David Cameron’s upcoming address in Manchester:

‘The Prime Minister’s speech is the verbal equivalent of grabbing the Germans by the lapels and shouting ‘do something’.

8.51am: Shares have fallen in major European stock markets today, but we’re not seeing a repeat of Wednesday’s selloff.

FTSE 100: down 19 points at 5384, – 0.36%
CAC: down 10 points at 3038, – 0.34%
DAX: down 3 points at 6380, – 0.06%

Mike McCudden of Interactive Investor said markets remain on a “negative trajectory”, despite some traders reckoning that the crisis might prompt yet more quantitative easing from the world’s central banks.

Volatility will remain until the markets have some comfort over Greece and the elections on the 17th June are looking more like a vote on whether they stay in the Euro despite local public opinion.

8.48am: There are reports from Italy this morning that Mario Monti, Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, David Cameron and Herman Van Rompuy will hold a videoconference this afternoon, ahead of a meeting of G8 leaders this weekend. Nothing official yet…

8.38am: New economic data from Spain has confirmed that its economy shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of 2012, which put it officially back into recession.

No relief for the Madrid government, as it battles record unemployment and the crisis in its banking sector.

Spain will be in the spotlight this morning, as it holds an auction of government debt.

8.35am: $1,000,000,000,000. That’s the cost of a disorderly, badly managed Greek exit from the eurozone, according to the Centre for Economics and bisnis Research.

The CEBR warned this morning that the end of the euro in its current form is certain. But while a well-managed Greek exit might only knock 2% off global GDP, the worst-case would see a 5% drop in global output (or $1 trillion).

CEBR’s Douglas McWilliams said: “The economic consequences depend on the timing and the way in which the euro splits. There is no doubt that when the euro breaks up it will be costly.

Some countries will lose around 10% of annual GDP. But this will happen anyway – the choice is between a period of austerity followed by the impact of the end of the euro and then some eventual recovery OR facing the trauma of the end of the euro early and then starting to get the recovery underway.”

More details in our front-page story here.

8.15am: The fact that David Cameron will make such a blunt intervention on the eurozone later today underlines the desperately serious nature of the crisis.

The prime minister’s message to Europe will be delivered in the city of Manchester. It appears to be partly a message to his European counterparts, and partly a signal to domestic voters that he will do everything possible to keep Britain safe.

Here’s what we expect the prime minister to say:

Either Europe has a committed, stable, successful eurozone with an effective firewall, well capitalised and regulated banks, a system of fiscal burden sharing, and supportive monetary policy across the eurozone, or we are in uncharted territory which carries huge risks for everybody.

“But be in no doubt: whichever path is chosen, I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect this country and secure our economy and financial system.

Cameron may also repeat his line from Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday that the eurozone “either has to make up, or it is looking at a potential break-up”.

Our politics editor, Patrick Wintour, also reports this morning that Treasury insiders has been criticising Germany for demanding too much from peripheral countries. UK sources claim the Westminster government has long been pushing for eurobonds (collective borrowing) and a looser monetary policy.

But while Britain is badly exposed to the eurocrisis, Cameron’s ability to influence events is limited. As political commentator Gaby Hinsliff points out this morning, it’s not ideal for governments to be warning of problems they can’t solve.

..& that’s a dangerous position for govt to be in. warning of perils ahead, sounding rather powerless to stop it.

— Gaby Hinsliff (@gabyhinsliff) May 17, 2012

8.10am: Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the eurozone financial crisis.

Coming up … David Cameron is due to warn of the desperate consequences of a eurozone break-up. In a sign that the crisis is dominating the political world, the UK prime minister will argue that eurozone leaders must urgently create closer fiscal ties and an effective firewall to prevent their currency union imploding.

More on that shortly.

In Greece, the new caretaker government will be sworn in this morning. Outgoing prime minister Lucas Papademos has warned that the country stands at a “critical crossroads”, but insisted that it can return to “stability, sustainable development and social prosperity”.

In the financial markets, yesterday morning’s mood of panic has been replaced by a sense of weary unease. Asian markets have clawed back some losses overnight, as traders hunker down for weeks of uncertainty until the Greek elections of 17 June.

]]> http://masterbisnis.com/eurozone-crisis-live-spains-bankia-denies-suffering-run-on-deposits/feed/ 0 http://masterbisnis.com/intro-for-may-17-2012/ http://masterbisnis.com/intro-for-may-17-2012/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 13:11:01 +0000 Master http://masterbisnis.com/intro-for-may-17-2012/ May 17, 2012 13:01:25 Posted at May 17, 2012 13:01:25

Photos:
Wenn, Gareth Cattermole/Getty

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Photos:
WENN

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Banks have cut back their exposure since 2011 as they were instructed by the UK’s regulators to plan for a Greek exit

Britain’s major banks have a maximum of just £6bn of exposure of Greece, according to the most recent Bank of England data.

The data covers the period to the end of September, and since then banks have cut back their exposure even further as they were instructed by the UK’s regulators to put contingency plans in place in case Greece was to leave the euro.

More recent data shows that banks have minimal exposure to Greece. HSBC, for instance, has $600m (£380m) of exposure to Greece as of the 31 March 2012.

On the same timescale, bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland has £884m – a higher figure than rivals because of its takeover of Dutch ABN Amro, a bank in the eurozone.

The Bank of England describes the UK banks as having £192bn of exposure to “vulnerable Europe”, which includes Greece, Portugual, Italy, Spain and Ireland. RBS and Lloyds Banking Group are most exposed to Ireland while Barclays is exposed to Spain as it has a high street operation there following the acquisition of Banco Zaragozano a decade ago.

]]> http://masterbisnis.com/greek-crisis-uk-banks-have-just-6bn-exposure/feed/ 0 http://masterbisnis.com/james-kwak-because-they-can/ http://masterbisnis.com/james-kwak-because-they-can/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 13:00:41 +0000 Master http://masterbisnis.com/james-kwak-because-they-can/ It seems as if the Republicans, meaning both John Boehner and Mitt Romney, are trying to turn the national debt back into a major political issue. Now, a visitor from Mars might wonder how this is possible. How could a party that (a) passed the massive tax cuts that were the single largest legislative contributor to today’s record deficits, (b) increased spending rapidly the last time it controlled the federal government, and (c) cannot talk in detail about anything except deficit-increasing tax cuts possibly think that calling attention to deficits could be a political winner?

Well, despite the Republican Party’s abysmal record when it comes to fiscal responsibility, it could still turn out to be smart politics, for a few reasons. One is that many Americans reflexively associate large deficits with excessive spending, even though reductions in tax revenues have played just as big a role since George W. Bush became president. (Compare, for example, receipts and outlays in 2000 and 2011 as a percentage of GDP.) Then they associate excessive spending with Democrats, although the only president to reduce spending significantly in the past forty years was Bill Clinton. It turns out that if you repeat the same tired attack lines year after year — Democrats are all tax and spend liberals, for example — people believe them.

The other, more important reason why Republicans like talking about the national debt is that Democrats don’t have a good response. Sure, Democrats have lots of policy proposals, and theirs make a good deal more sense than the Republicans’; it was President Obama who proposed trillions of dollars in spending cuts and tax increases, which is what people supposedly want (according to opinion surveys, at least).

But most Democrats just don’t like talking about deficits and the national debt. They think it’s a distraction from talking about jobs and unemployment, or they think simply broaching the subject is succumbing to a vast right-wing conspiracy to slash entitlements, or both. The result is that there is no liberal progressive position on the national debt. There’s the Republican one (Romney, Boehner, Ryan), which is to cut taxes (boggle); and there’s the Obama one, which is basically the Republican-Lite position of George H. W. Bush, and which many liberal Democrats run away from. On the left, all there is is a vague belief that you can balance the budget by increasing taxes on the rich, but no one really wants to come out and say it. (Also, the numbers don’t add up unless you’re willing to boost the tax rates on millionaires to very high levels; just, say, repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich won’t cut it.) Instead, the strategy is to demonize RyanCare, which is effective as a short-term tactic, but doesn’t really amount to a coherent message on the national debt.

This is one reason why I wrote White House Burning. I say “I” because Simon probably wouldn’t call himself a liberal, but I do call myself a liberal, and I think liberals need to have a coherent message on the national debt. I think the message should be something like this: the national debt is a real problem that needs to be addressed; we need to address it in the way that’s best for the American people as a whole; that means preserving the social insurance programs that almost everyone depends on; and we can preserve those programs, while bringing the debt under control, through a set of policy changes that make sense on their own grounds (eliminating distorting subsidies, eliminating tax expenditures, introducing Pigovian taxes like a carbon tax and a financial activities tax).

You don’t have to agree with our recommendations. But as long as the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has nothing to say about the national debt, conservatives will be free to lead the debate, and the most likely outcome will be some sort of compromise between the moderate Republican Barack Obama an the now-”severe” conservative Mitt Romney. And you can expect the Republicans to bang on this drum from now until November.

James Kwak is the co-author of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters To You, available from April 3rd. This post is cross-posted from The Baseline Scenario. Read more from the Fiscal Affairs series here.

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White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You

by Simon Johnson, James Kwak

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown

by Simon Johnson, James Kwak

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The Atlantic:

What’s better than stocks for the long-run? Stocks for the short-run. As long as you pick the right short-run.

The above chart compares real GDP with quarterly inflation-adjusted S&P prices, both indexed to 100 in 1947. They’ve gone up roughly the same amount the past 65 years. They’ve just taken very, very different paths to get there.

Who cares? The top 0.1 percent, that’s who.

Read the whole story at The Atlantic

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The New York Times:

JPMorgan Chase is too big to fail. As the largest bank holding company in the United States, with assets approaching $2.5 trillion as reported under standard American accounting principles, it is inconceivable that JPMorgan Chase would be allowed to collapse now or in the near future. The damage to the American economy and to the world would be too great.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

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Job seekers fill out applications at a job fair in Queens, New York.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits was flat last week, marking yet another sign of lackluster hiring in the spring.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that 370,000 people filed new jobless claims in the week ended May 12. That was the same as the week before, after the government revised last week’s figure up by 3,000.

It was also slightly weaker than expected. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast 365,000 people would file new claims.

Initial claims are a volatile number, but because they’re closely correlated with layoffs, economists consider them to be a key gauge of the job market. Seasonal distortions seemed to push the number higher in late April, but since then, the figure has fallen only gradually.

There were also 18,000 more people receiving continuing unemployment benefits, as that reading for the week ended May 5 — the most recent week available — rose to 3.3 million. 

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Beberapa rumor menyebut bos The Blues, Roman Abramovich, bersedia menukar Torres dengan Falcao. Namun hingga saat ini manajemen Atlectico belum menerima penawaran apapun.
 
Cerezo menegaskan, pihaknya menolak Torres kembali ke Vicente Calderon. Cerezo meyakini Falcao merupakan salah satu ujung tombak terbaik dunia.

“Pertukaran dengan Chelsea untuk Torres? Itu tidak benar. Rumor-rumor itu sengaja dikembangkan media massa,” tegas Cerezo kepada radio Kolombia Caracol seperti dilansir Goal.com, Kamis (17/5).

“Kami belum pernah menerima tawaran konkret untuk Falcao. Ia masih terikat kontrak selama empat tahun bersama Atletico, dan kami tetap tenang,” tambahnya.(goal/wtr6)

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