Spain delays bailout, China growth slows

In Europe, the latest signals are that Spain will not take a bailout in the immediate term. Jay Bryson, a global economist with Wells Fargo Securities, says that politics may be to blame for the delay, “there’s an important election coming up in Catalonia, which has talked about succeeding from Spain, in November, and so it’s kind of politically embarassing to get a bailout right now.”

Outside of Europe, there are also economic concerns about China’s slowing economy. Bryson doesn’t expects a soft landing over a hard crash,”I don’t think we are going to be looking at a China growing ten percent again, if ever,” says Bryson, but the Chinese economy “is not overly levered, you look at consumers, they are not like American consumers back in 2007 with the housing crash.”

Increasingly though, consumer spending rather than investment is driving growth in China, which, says Bryson, “tends to grow slower.”