O que pergunta um aluno logo após a sua primeira aula de Monetary Policy?

I was wondering about our first lecture, in particular the much higher interest rates charged in Portugal and the explanation you advanced for such. Correct me if I am wrong, but I gathered the bulk of your argument relied on the contamination of the sovereign's risk into the assessment of the banks' risk, thus increasing their funding costs and in consequence transferring those increased costs into the interest of the credits they supply to the economy at large. I'm guessing this is a spill-over effect. 

Taxas de juro nos empréstimos (1-5 anos) a empresas não-financeiras

You suggested one way of testing this hypothesis by hinting at the ratings. If I were to look for evidence of this hypothesis, I would look at the correlation between differences in rating for each country's bonds and the spread for loans to non-financial corporations, taking Germany as the reference. I have the sensation reality would fail this test, as I imagine Ireland and Portugal have very similar ratings and yet very different spreads. Even if one were to look at the yield of government bonds for those two (not sure which maturity), it would still fail to explain Portugal's case in a large degree.

This, in my view, suggests there are internal factors at play. For instance, we noticed that even before the crisis bloomed, Portugal had consistently the highest interest rate in the sample. So, whatever factors were justifying that spread back then may have been exacerbated by the turn of events. 

I can imagine that if there's a very bleak perspective for the Portuguese economy and most enterprises have their business geared towards the internal market, that would make those enterprises riskier and therefore we would see higher interest rates being charged, thus explaining the large spread even if partially. But, in such a case, we would see lower interest rates for exporter enterprises and a similar situation in similar countries. I can't test that now. Also, this wouldn't be a case for fragmented markets,

I am bringing this up, for I would just like to know which factors are contributing to the large spread for Portugal, besides the contamination of the sovereign's risk.