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Three cheers, everybody! We’re saved! Spain and Italy have saved the world!

Italian and Spanish financial market regulators extended temporary bans on short selling of financial shares that were introduced last month in a bid to stem market volatility.

The European Securities and Markets Authority announced the extension by the two countries in an e-mailed statement. The Spanish ban will remain “until the market conditions allow it” to be lifted, the country’s financial regulator said in an e- mailed statement. Italy’s restriction, and another enacted by France in August, will both last until Nov. 11.

Amazingly, Europe is still in disarray:

The European Commission is resisting a push to impose bigger writedowns on banks’ holdings of Greek government debt than those agreed on at a July 21 summit, a European official said.

The commission, the European Union’s executive body, opposes ideas being floated by some government officials to get banks to accept bigger so-called haircuts and doesn’t want to have talks about any such attempt, the official said on condition of anonymity because the deliberations are private. Germany and the Netherlands are leading a drive by as many as seven euro-area countries for more private-sector involvement in the second Greek package, the Financial Times reported today.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2011 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.