Over the past few years, Citi's Matt King notes that the future never seems to become quite bright enough to offset the underlying economic and political realities. When we have been in this situation before, something has happened to make the markets nervous again, and then the outlook has darkened. Typically it’s been because of back-pedalling by policymakers on reforms, or doubts about central banks’ willingness to continue injecting liquidity at tighter spread levels. Recent headlines about limiting the scope for bank recapitalization by the ESM, sequestration probabilities, and about central banks’ growing nervousness that markets are running ahead of economic reality make us doubt that this time is any different.
