Common Sense: Record Prices Mask a Tepid Art Market

The art market would seem to be going through the roof. But is it?

Despite the headlines and the hyperbolic enthusiasm of many auctioneers and dealers, the broad market for fine art is in the doldrums, according to experts who track sales data. Many works are selling near or below their low estimates or failing to sell at all.

As measured by the Mei Moses World All Art Index, a widely cited benchmark, the market for fine art declined 3.3 percent in 2012, and gained 2.2 percent through November, even with the recent record-setting sales. Strip out traditional Chinese art, the value of which has been surging for years thanks to the interest of wealthy Chinese buyers, and the performance would be much worse.

By comparison, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index gained 13.4 percent in 2012 and is up more than 27 percent so far this year.

At Sotheby’s, where “Silver Car Crash” set a record for Warhol, another image of a car crash, this one in green called “5 Deaths on Turquoise,” sold for just a little more than $7 million. A Warhol portrait of Liz Taylor with a yellow background went for $18 million (not counting commissions), below its $20 million to $30 million estimate. And at Sotheby’s, another Rockwell with a religious theme, “Walking to Church,” sold for just $2.8 million before the buyer’s commission, below its $3 million to $5 million estimate. (Estimates don’t include commissions.)

But at least they sold. Sanford Robinson Gifford’s Civil War masterpiece, “Sunday Morning in the Camp of the Seventh Regiment,” which was on loan to the White House and had hung in the Oval Office for over 20 years, didn’t sell at this week’s auction at Christie’s, which must have come as a shock to New York’s Union League Club, which had owned the painting since 1871. It was estimated to fetch $3 million to $5 million.

A Christie’s spokeswoman said afterward that “there was steady client interest” in the painting before the auction, “given the painting’s exceptional rarity and historical significance.” But at the auction, the bidding “simply did not meet the reserve price.” The spokeswoman, who declined to be named, citing Christie’s policy, added that interest in the work was still “very much alive.”

What explains the sharp gap between perception and reality?

“What we’ve seen is that the explosive prices represent only a tiny, tiny subset of lots,” said David Kusin, a former Metropolitan Museum of Art curator who also worked on Wall Street and now runs Kusin & Company, a consulting firm in Dallas that specializes in the economics of the art market. “They get all the press, but we’ve seen relatively stable hammer prices in most categories over the past few years.”

And just two distinct categories have pushed up the averages.

“Postwar, contemporary art — artists active from 1950 to the present — which includes Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, has been doing extremely well for the past 25 years,” Michael Moses, a retired professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a co-founder of the Mei Moses Art Index, told me this week. “And traditional Chinese art — works created before 1900 — has been doing even better.”

Mr. Moses said his data indicated that traditional Chinese art had gained a compounded annualized rate of return for the 10 years ending in 2012 of 15.5 percent. Postwar and contemporary art gained 11.6 percent. By contrast, old master paintings gained only 3.3 percent and American paintings just 1 percent. And the overall index gained 7.4 percent.

Some find the whole notion of an art market to be distasteful. Michael Findlay, author of “The Value of Art,” and a director at the Acquavella Galleries in New York, said: “What I believe in is the social and aesthetic value of art. We live in a society where everything is so monetized, the only way people can talk about art is in terms of money.”

DealBook: In Loeb Rejection, Sony Cites Poor I.P.O. Record for Unit

Bits Blog: Vintage Apple-1 Sells for Record $671,400

Apple’s stock price may be well down from its peaks last year, but the market for the company’s oldest computers continues to set records.

Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Sotheby’s sold an Apple-1 for $374,500 last year. A few months later in Germany, one sold for $640,000.

An Apple-1 computer, made in 1976, sold for a record $671,400 on Saturday at an auction in Germany, including all fees and taxes, said Uwe Breker, the German auctioneer.

That surpassed the $640,000 record for an Apple-1, set last November at a sale at the same auction house in Cologne, Germany, Auction Team Breker. The fall 2012 sale was a sharp rise from the previous record price for an Apple-1 of $374,500, set in June 2012 at Sotheby’s in New York.

The high prices paid for the machines seem to be explained by the combination of scarcity, a fascination with the early history of the computer age, and the mystique of Apple and its founders, Steven P. Jobs and Stephen G. Wozniak. And some irrational exuberance in the prices, for a machine that can do very little and originally sold for $666 (about $2,700 in current dollars).

“This really confirms the value of Apple-1’s,” Mr.Breker said in an interview on Saturday.

The buyer, Mr. Breker said, was a wealthy entrepreneur from the Far East, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Part of the allure of the earliest Apple machines, Mr. Breker said, is not what they are, but what they represent. “It is a superb symbol of the American dream,” he said. “You have two college dropouts from California who pursued an idea and a dream, and that dream becomes one of the most admired, successful and valuable companies in the world.”

The anonymous buyer, who can afford to spend more than $670,000 on an old computer, seems to have enjoyed some version of the entrepreneurial dream come true, as well.

In an e-mail last week, and a later telephone interview, Mr. Breker said the original owner of the Apple-1 on sale was Fred Hatfield, a former major league baseball player in the 1950s, who died in 1998. I included that account in an article published on Friday.

Early Saturday morning, I received an e-mail from another Fred Hatfield, a retired electrical engineer living in New Orleans, saying he was the original owner of the Apple-1 that was auctioned on Saturday. Mr. Hatfield attached an image of a letter, dated Jan, 18, 1978 and addressed to him, signed by Mr. Jobs.

Mr. Hatfield had complained about the lack of software for the Apple-1, also commonly known as Apple I, and Apple had a trade-in program for Apple-1’s. The letter offered to exchange an Apple II computer for the older machine, and to send a check for $400 as a further incentive.

When I called Mr. Breker on Saturday, I asked where he got his information that the original owner was Fred Hatfield, the ballplayer. Mr. Breker said he recalled that he was told that by Mike Willegal, who maintains an online registry of Apple-1’s. Mr. Willegal said on Saturday that he did not recall saying Fred Hatfield, the Apple-1 owner, was the former professional baseball player.

In any case, Mr. Hatfield in New Orleans said he held onto his Apple-1 until earlier this year. Then, a young man from Texas in the software business, whom Mr. Hatfield would not identify, inquired. They negotiated a price — $40,000.

The Apple-1, Mr. Hatfield said, was not then in working condition. The buyer apparently put in some new chips and wiring, since it was a working model when it sold on Saturday. After picking up the machine, Mr. Hatfield said, the young man flew off to California to get the machine signed by Mr. Wozniak, who designed the Apple-1. That also enhanced its value presumably.

Told the of sale price, Mr. Hatfield said, “My God.” Then, he added, “Best to him. He’s the one who fixed it up and figured the best way to sell it for all that money. Evidently, he’s very good at this.”

Mr. Hatfield, 84, gives historic tours of New Orleans, his hometown. Not surprisingly, he’s a jazz fan. He said he planned to use his proceeds to pay for some good dinners and nights of music on Frenchmen Street.

“I figure I might as well enjoy the money I got from that old machine,” he said.

Sharp Reshuffles Management After Record Loss

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp. named a new president Tuesday, reshuffling its top management to help restore profitability after reporting a record loss.

The Osaka, Japan-based maker of Aquos TVs said that Kozo Takahashi, currently an executive vice president, will become its president and CEO as of June 25. His appointment is part of a business reorganization aimed at returning to the black in the fiscal year ending March 2014 after years of losses.

The company also said it would reduce its capital to help improve its balance sheet and "make a fresh start" by shedding its legacy of cumulative losses.

Sharp's 545.4 billion yen net loss ($5.4 billion) in the fiscal year that ended in March exceeded its forecasts and compared with a 376 billion yen net loss in the previous fiscal year. The company forecasts a slim 5 billion yen net profit this fiscal year on net sales of 2.7 trillion yen ($26.6 billion), up 8.9 percent from the year before.

The company said its net loss in the past year was worsened by costs for restructuring despite improved demand for electronics components such as liquid crystal displays and solar cells. All product groups apart from Sharp's LCD panel business showed improved operating income in the second half of the year, it said.

Sharp has struggled to cut costs and reshape its business, partly because it has invested in expensive plants in Japan that make the panels for TVs and mobile devices and is getting hammered by plunging prices and intense competition. Its main banks have extended 150 billion yen ($1.48 billion) in fresh loans to help it meet a repayment deadline looming in September.

In a business plan issued Tuesday, the company said it planned to beef up its loss-making LCD panel business, which embodies its prized technology, as part of its alliance with South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.

However, Sharp plans to cut capital investment by 3 percent to 80 billion yen ($789 million) after trimming it by nearly 31 percent in the last fiscal year.

The company has trimmed thousands of jobs as it adjusts its product mix and works to trim its debt.

The new president, Takahashi, comes from the company's product development group and has also been in charge of Sharp's American's division. He replaces Takashi Okuda, who will become Sharp's chairman.

DealBook: Apple Raises $17 Billion in Record Debt Sale

Eric Risberg/Associated PressTimothy Cook, the chief of Apple.

With a $145 billion cash hoard, Apple could acquire Facebook, Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo — and still have more than $10 billion left over.

Despite its uncommonly flush balance sheet, Apple borrowed money on Tuesday for the first time in nearly two decades. In a record bond deal, the company raised $17 billion, according to a person briefed on the deal, paying interest rates that rival those of debt issued by the United States Treasury.

Apple’s corporate-finance maneuver raises a riddle: Why would a company with so much cash even bother to issue debt?

The answer has a lot to do with the frenzied state of the bond markets. Companies are issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to exploit historically low interest rates and strong investor demand for bonds as an alternative to money market funds and Treasury bills that paying virtually nothing.

“If you look at these big companies like Apple and Microsoft doing these big, low-cost bond offerings, it’s a way for them to raise money in an effort to create better returns for their shareholders,” said Steven Miller, a credit analyst at S&P Capital IQ. “The bond markets are practically begging these corporations to issue debt because of how cheap it is to raise money.”

But Apple’s move also reflects the challenges of a highly successful business with a flagging stock price. In an effort to assuage a growing chorus of concerned and disappointed Apple investors, the company is issuing bonds to help finance a $100 billion payout to its shareholders. It will distribute most of that amount over the next two and a half years in the form of paying increased dividends and buying back its stock.

While Apple’s shareholders and analysts welcome the company’s financial tactics, they say that the maker of iPhones, iPads and iMacs must continue to innovate and fend off increasing competition.

“This is a substantial return of cash, and it’s the right thing to do on many levels,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “But, ultimately, the company has to execute. This is no substitute for that.”

By raising cheap debt for the shareholder payouts, Apple will also avoid a potentially big tax hit. About two-thirds of Apple’s cash — about $102 billion — sits overseas in lower-tax jurisdictions. If it returned some of that cash to the United States to reward its investors, the company could have significant tax consequences.

“We are continuing to generate significant cash offshore and repatriating this cash would result in significant tax consequences under current U.S. tax law,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple chief financial officer, during an earnings call last week.

In some ways, the bond issue on Tuesday was made necessary by Apple’s tax strategies.

“They have been so successful with their tax planning that they’ve created a new problem,” said Martin A. Sullivan, chief economist at Tax Analysts, a publisher of tax information. “They’ve got so much money offshore.”

The $17 billion debt sale by Apple is the largest on record, surpassing a $16.5 billion deal from the drugmaker Roche Holding in 2009. Apple joins a parade of large companies issuing debt with astonishingly low yields. Last week, the shoe company Nike sold bonds that mature in 10 years that yielded only 2.27 percent. Last July, Bristol-Myers issued five-year debt yielding 1.06 percent. In November, Microsoft set the record for the lowest yield on a five-year bond, issuing the debt at 0.99 percent.

Despite Apple’s $145 billion cash pile, the credit-ratings agencies did not award the company their coveted triple-A rating, citing increased competition and a concern that its future product offerings could disappoint. Moody’s Investors Service gave the company its second-highest rating, AA1, as did Standard & Poor’s, rating the company AA+. (The four companies awarded the highest credit ratings by both Moody’s and S.&P. are Microsoft, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson and Automatic Data Processing.)

“There are inherent long-run risks for any company with high exposure to shifting consumer preferences in the rapidly evolving technology and wireless communications sectors,” wrote Gerald Granovsky, a Moody’s analyst.

Apple’s less-than-perfect rating did not drive away bond investors on Tuesday. The offering generated investor demand well in excess of the $17 billion raised, according to person briefed on the deal. Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank led the sale of the issuance.

Desperate for returns in a yield-starved world, all types of investors — including individual, pension funds and mutual funds — are snapping up corporate debt. The demand appears to be insatiable: this year, through last Wednesday, a record $55 billion has flowed into mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that invest in corporate debt with high-quality ratings, according to the fund data provider Lipper.

The last time Apple sold debt was in 1996, when the Internet was in its infancy and sales of Apple’s niche computers were struggling. Facing an uncertain future and struggling with a weak balance sheet, Apple had a junk credit rating and was paying 6.5 percent on its debt.

Euro Watch: Euro Zone Unemployment Rose to Another Record in January

That, along with new data showing a decline in inflation in the euro zone, could prompt the European Central Bank to take steps to stimulate the economy when its governing council meets on Thursday, analysts said.

Unemployment in the 17-nation euro zone climbed to 11.9 percent in January from 11.8 percent the previous month, according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

For the 27 nations of the European Union, the jobless rate was 10.8 percent, up from 10.7 percent in December. All of the figures were seasonally adjusted.

A separate Eurostat report showed price pressures easing in February. In the euro zone, the annual inflation rate was 1.8 percent, down from 2 percent in January and below the central bank’s 2 percent target.

The jobless data suggests “that wage growth is set to weaken from already low rates” and further depress consumer spending, which has already been hurt by government austerity measures, wrote Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics in London, in a research note.

Ms. McKeown said that the low inflation and high joblessness “should leave the E.C.B.’s policy options open,” and that the central bank “might discuss an interest-rate cut or other unconventional policies.”

There was some bright news on Friday. A survey of European purchasing managers by Markit, a data and research firm, showed that German manufacturing output grew for a second consecutive month in February as new business levels improved.

The composite German purchasing managers’ index rose to 50.3 — just above 50, the level that separates growth from contraction — from 49.8 in January. And the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden reported that German retail sales rose 3.1 percent in January from December, when sales fell 2.1 percent.

Another bit of data this week also supports the view that the German economy will recover from a fourth-quarter slump. The European Commission’s economic sentiment indicator for the euro zone rose to 91.1 in February from 89.5 in January, with German confidence leading the gain.

“German industry is clearly rebounding and taking advantage from better external traction,” wrote Gilles Moëc, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London.

Employment is sometimes seen as a lagging indicator of economic growth because companies try to avoid adding to their costs until they are convinced that a rebound is at hand.

But despite the glimmers of hope in German industry, there are few reasons to regard a recovery as imminent. Markit’s overall euro zone purchasing managers’ index was unchanged in February at 47.9, indicating continued contraction.

Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, forecast on Feb. 22 that the euro zone economy would shrink 0.3 percent this year, about the same as last year. The bloc’s debt problems, and the tax increases and government spending cuts that have been prescribed as the remedy, have sapped spending power, reducing business demand for labor.

In absolute terms, Eurostat estimated that 19 million people in the euro zone and more than 26 million in the European Union were unemployed in January.

Spain’s unemployment rate was 26.2 percent, and Portugal’s was 17.6 percent. Austria had the lowest rate, at 4.9 percent, followed by Germany and Luxembourg, at 5.3 percent each.

Greece’s unemployment rate in November, the latest month for which Eurostat has figures for the country, was 27 percent.

France, which has the second-largest euro zone economy, after Germany’s, had a 10.6 percent jobless rate in January. Britain, which is not a euro member, had a 7.7 percent rate in November.

That compares with unemployment rates of 7.9 percent in the United States in January and 4.2 percent in Japan in December.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article carried a headline that misstated the month of the data. The report was for January, not February. An earlier version of the article also misstated the name of a federal agency in Wiesbaden, Germany. It is the Federal Statistical Office, not the Federal Statistics Office.

Wheels: Toyota to Pay Record $17.35 Million Fine for Delaying Recall

Kimimasa Mayama/European Pressphoto Agency For the fourth time in two years, Toyota has agreed to pay fines related to allegations of delaying safety recalls.

For the fourth time, Toyota has agreed to pay a fine to settle allegations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the automaker delayed a safety recall.

In a news release Tuesday morning, the safety agency said Toyota would pay $17.35 million, the maximum allowed by law.

Toyota did not admit any wrongdoing and said it was paying the fine to avoid a continued dispute with the safety agency. The automaker said the same thing when agreeing to pay the three previous fines, which totaled $48.8 million.

The recall the safety agency said was delayed occurred last June and covered 154,036 sport utility vehicles — the 2010 Lexus RX 350 and RX 450h — to fix a problem that might allow the floor mat to become snagged on the gas pedal.

The safety agency contends that those vehicles should have been included in an October 2009 recall of 3.8 million vehicles for the same issue.

But the agency says it was not until early this year — after it contacted Toyota about consumer complaints of floor-mat problems on the two 2010 Lexus models — that the automaker agreed the recall should be expanded.

In a statement, Toyota said it was “dedicated to the safety of our customers and we continue to strengthen our data collection and evaluation process to ensure we are prepared to take swift action to meet customers’ needs.”

The safety agency described the $17.35 million fine as a record. That is the maximum currently allowed by law; the amount is periodically increased to reflect inflation.

Some consumer safety advocates, like Clarence M. Ditlow, the executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, have long argued that such amounts are no more than a “rounding error” for automakers and that to make companies take their responsibility more seriously, auto executives should face criminal penalties.

The previous fines occurred in April 2010 and twice in December 2010.

Toyota routinely describes its recalls as “voluntary,” but under federal regulations once a manufacturer is aware of a safety problem it has five business days to inform the agency of its plan for a recall.

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Off the Charts: Record Lows for Sub-Investment-Grade Bonds

Or so investors seem to think.

About $79 billion in sub-investment-grade corporate bonds were issued in the quarter that just ended, Dealogic reported this week. That was the largest amount issued in any quarter since the firm began collecting the numbers in the mid-1990s.

That came as the Federal Reserve embarked on its latest effort to keep rates — both short and long term — as low as possible in an effort to stimulate the economy.

“Investors are starved for yields,” said Martin Fridson, the chief executive of FridsonVision, a research firm. “Some people say the Fed is pushing people into more risky investments.”

Sub-investment-grade bonds are traditionally known as junk bonds to their detractors and as high-yield bonds to their buyers. Neither term may be that accurate these days. The bonds have been excellent investments over the last year, but as prices have risen, the yields have fallen to record lows.

One widely followed index of the bonds, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch High Yield Master Index II, ended September with an average effective yield of 6.6 percent. That is the lowest yield in its history, as can be seen in the accompanying charts.

Of course, 6.6 percent does not look that bad today when contrasted with rates on high-quality bonds. Ten-year Treasuries offer yields of 1.6 percent, a little less than the current inflation rate. If you buy an inflation-linked 10-year Treasury — one that will protect you if inflation gets out of hand — you will lock in a real return of negative 0.86 percent. Buy a corporate bond rated Single A — a good but not great credit rating — and you can lock in a yield of around 2.4 percent.

Such low rates have proved attractive to issuers. Sales of new investment-grade corporate bonds reached $177 billion in the quarter, Dealogic reported. That was just a little lower than the figure for the first three months of this year, although it is well below the record of $271 billion issued in the first quarter of 2009.

Such heavy issuance of corporate bonds might appear to be an indication that companies are borrowing money to invest in new plants and equipment. But many of the loans are being taken out to refinance bonds issued in earlier years at higher interest rates. Such an exchange benefits the company at the expense of investors, who may end up trading in one bond for another with a lower yield.

The public demand for junk bonds appears to be high as well. EPFR Global estimated that investors put $19.3 billion into high-yield mutual funds during the third quarter. That was the second-highest amount it had calculated, trailing only the first three months of this year.

High-yield bonds can be risky as well. Their prices plunged during the recession when there were fears that many of the companies issuing such bonds would go broke. That sent yields soaring above 20 percent for a brief period.

The current strength of high-yield bonds — investors in such bonds earned a total return of about 19 percent over the last 12 months — appears to reflect a general belief that such an economic downturn is highly unlikely anytime soon.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Samsung Expected to Reach End of Record Run

SEOUL — Samsung Electronics reported a record quarterly profit of 8.1 trillion South Korean won, nearly double the figure of last year, as strong sales of high-end televisions and Galaxy smartphones more than offset reduced orders for chips and screens from Apple, its main rival and leading customer.

Most analysts, however, expect a run of four record quarters — the most recent worth $7.3 billion — to end in December, as the South Korean group, one of the world’s leading makers of smartphones, televisions and memory chips, increases its marketing, countering the new Apple iPhone 5 and other products in a crowded smartphone market, valued at $200 billion globally.

Credit Suisse Group, an international financial services company, estimated that Samsung might have spent about $2.7 billion on marketing in July to September alone during the Olympic Games in London and on Galaxy promotions.

The expected record profit of 28 trillion won would mean higher payouts for performance to many of Samsung’s 206,000 staff members early next year. And Samsung may have to set money aside this quarter if it fails to overturn an appeal of a U.S. court verdict that awarded more than $1 billion in damages to Apple on Aug. 24 for patent infringements by Samsung.

“Fourth-quarter profit will be pressured by one-off expenses: performance payouts and some $1 billion in legal provisioning relating to the Apple litigation,” said Lee Sun-tae, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities.

“Excluding those, core earnings will remain solid, and a swing factor is how much Samsung spends on marketing.”

Analysts expect earnings to decline until the second quarter of next year as a slump in computer sales and a weak global economy sap demand for chips and electronics products.

“The biggest risk for Samsung is competitive product lineups from its rivals, such as the iPhone 5,” said Byun Han-joon, an analyst at KB Investment & Securities.

“Because handsets drive most of its profits, one misstep in handsets could result in losses for the whole Samsung group,” Mr. Byun said.

Profit at Samsung’s mobile division is likely to have more than doubled in the July-to-September period to about 5 trillion won as smartphone shipments topped 58 million, including as many as 20 million of the Galaxy S III.

Ahead of full quarterly results due Oct. 26, Samsung estimated that its July to September operating profit jumped to 8.1 trillion won from a year ago, beating an average forecast of 7.6 trillion won in a survey of analysts.

Strong handset sales made up for reduced profits from its chip business. Prices of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips — used in computers and mobile phones — dropped 14 percent in the September quarter. Such chips now trade below what it costs most contract manufacturers to make them and will squeeze near-term earnings, analysts say. Tablets and smartphones, the real growth areas, use far smaller memory storage.

Samsung is expected to invest less in chips next year because of the drop in demand, which could be bad news for equipment manufacturers. Kwon Oh-hyun, who became chief executive of Samsung in June, said late last month that the group had yet to complete its 2013 investment plans.

Samsung is strengthening its product lineup, with its latest phone-tablet, the Galaxy Note, expected to go on sale in the United States this month; its ATIV smartphones, which run on Microsoft’s new Windows system, will compete with Nokia’s Lumia series.

Euro Watch: Unemployment in Euro Zone at Record High

Unemployment in the 17-member euro area rose to 11.4 percent in August, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

The agency also revised the figure for June and July to 11.4 percent, up from the previously reported 11.3 percent, which was already a record level for the region since the introduction of the euro in 1999.

The jobless numbers, which compare with the August rate of 8.1 percent in the United States, suggest that Europe’s recession is deepening, despite the continued efforts of policy makers and finance ministers to cure the region’s malaise.

Unemployment in Greece and Spain, currently the euro zone’s most economically troubled members, reached new euro-era highs. And as both countries move ahead with plans for even tougher austerity budgets — Greece to appease its international creditors, Spain to potentially clear the path for European aid — their job outlooks could worsen further.

Visiting Madrid on Monday, Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for monetary affairs, said Europe stood “ready and willing” to act in response to a possible bailout request from Spain.

Greece had an unemployment rate of 24.4 percent in June, the latest month for which data were available.

Spain, meanwhile, still had the region’s highest jobless rate, at 25.1 percent over all, and an even bigger problem among young people. Nearly 53 percent of Spaniards under age 25 were classified as unemployed in August.

“Youth unemployment, especially if prolonged, threatens to harm the self-esteem and economic potential of young people now and in the future,” Jonathan Todd, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in a statement Monday after the release of joblessness figures.

“This could also pose a serious threat to social cohesion and increase the risk of political extremism,” he said. “E.U. institutions and governments, businesses and social partners at all levels need to do all they can to avoid a ‘lost generation,’ which would be an economic and social disaster.”

Reinforcing the dismal data, the Markit Economics purchasing managers’ index on Monday confirmed an initial report showing that euro zone industrial production declined in September for a seventh consecutive month.

Jennifer McKeown, an economist with Capital Economics in London, noted in a report that while the economic strain was being felt most heavily at the “periphery” of the euro zone, in places like Spain and Portugal, “the situation is bad in the core, too,” with the French jobless rate at 10.6 percent. Last week the government of France said the number of jobless people had passed three million for the first time since 1999.

The data Monday “suggest that the industrial sector is experiencing a sharp downturn,” Ms. McKeown wrote, “and with unemployment at a record high, the outlook for the consumer sector is gloomy, too.” She estimated that the gross domestic product of the euro zone would shrink 2.5 percent next year.

Mr. Rehn, of the European Commission, met Monday with the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, and the economy minister, Luis de Guindos, but refused to speculate afterward whether the Spanish government would be pushed into asking for more European help to meet its debt financing obligations.

Still, Mr. Rehn urged Madrid to make further efforts to overhaul its economy, saying that “Spain must continue the reform of its pensions system,” as well as align the retirement age more closely to today’s longer life spans.