Bid-Ask Prices on Bonds Show Market ‘Frozen’ in July

Spreads between bid and ask prices on government bonds in July indicated that markets were “frozen,” said Franco Passacantando, a Bank of Italy official said.

“In July, we know that the markets were almost completely frozen,” Franco Passacantando, the Bank of Italy’s Managing Director for Central Banking, Markets and Payment System, said at a conference in Milan today. ‘They were almost completely blocked” and “the ECB began buying bonds, starting with Greek and Portuguese bonds, and then Spanish and Italian. And now they are almost exclusively buying Spanish and Italian bonds.”