There is a lot of talk out there of Austrian banks (who do the bulk of the business for Eastern European central banks) being very large EUR/USD buyers on this move higher and that the buying is linked to a sovereign debt maturity.
I can’t say that I can recall like we saw today based on a maturity. It would seem to me that if an Eastern European central bank borrowed in Euros to fund itself, it would have engaged in a currency swap at the time of issuance of the bonds.
Can anyone out there (with an honest-to-God bond market background, not uninformed speculation) enlighten us?
