Personally, I don’t trust the banks to even get their hair cut to the extent they’re promising. They remain the spivs and dissemblers they’ve always been – and bank accounting is the most surreal (as in open to every trick in the book) of any business with which I’ve ever worked. To count obviously bad debts as assets is, let’s face it, a truly Swiftian idea. So probably, S&P is right to be saying Greece won’t make it. I mean that in the sense that it will be proved right with little or no risk to its reputation. For a commonsense "southerner" like me, it’s glaringly obvious Greece will default: it won’t make the asset sales targets it needs, and it won’t make the growth targets either.The ratings agencies agree with The Slog – not a position I’m that happy with, because on the whole they’re just as mad as the lenders and borrowers they monitor. However, there is no point in shooting the messenger, and one or two players in this mess are in touch with reality: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble admitted yesterday, in a circular to his Christian Democratic Party colleagues, that ‘the euro-zone debt crisis isn’t over, and that more discipline is needed’. Er ist eine gute Eier, Herr Schäuble. The Treasury had to pay sharply higher rates to sell off €8bn in bonds including 4.80pc on bonds due in 2014 that had last sold for 3.68pc, and 5.77 percent on bonds due in 2021 compared with 4.94pc before. Italy's benchmark FTSE MIB index fell as much as 2pc, while the difference between the rate of return on Italian and German 10-year sovereign bonds - a key measure of the financial risks as perceived by investors - rose to near-record highs of around 330 basis points. The euro also fell by a cent against the dollar to $1.4269 and by 0.7cents against sterling to £0.8745. Investors are concerned that the Italian economy, suffering from high public debt, low growth and growing infighting in the government could follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal into a debt spiral that has thrown the eurozone into crisis. Tensions on the Italian bond market went down after a second bailout for Greece was agreed at a summit in Brussels last week but have returned on concerns over the details of the Greek rescue plan and US debt fears...I say..through away the phony currency - euro!!
Access Investments-Building Awareness - European Union-ROMANIA
Friday, July 29, 2011
Personally, I don’t trust the banks to even get their hair cut to the extent they’re promising. They remain the spivs and dissemblers they’ve always been – and bank accounting is the most surreal (as in open to every trick in the book) of any business with which I’ve ever worked. To count obviously bad debts as assets is, let’s face it, a truly Swiftian idea. So probably, S&P is right to be saying Greece won’t make it. I mean that in the sense that it will be proved right with little or no risk to its reputation. For a commonsense "southerner" like me, it’s glaringly obvious Greece will default: it won’t make the asset sales targets it needs, and it won’t make the growth targets either.The ratings agencies agree with The Slog – not a position I’m that happy with, because on the whole they’re just as mad as the lenders and borrowers they monitor. However, there is no point in shooting the messenger, and one or two players in this mess are in touch with reality: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble admitted yesterday, in a circular to his Christian Democratic Party colleagues, that ‘the euro-zone debt crisis isn’t over, and that more discipline is needed’. Er ist eine gute Eier, Herr Schäuble. The Treasury had to pay sharply higher rates to sell off €8bn in bonds including 4.80pc on bonds due in 2014 that had last sold for 3.68pc, and 5.77 percent on bonds due in 2021 compared with 4.94pc before. Italy's benchmark FTSE MIB index fell as much as 2pc, while the difference between the rate of return on Italian and German 10-year sovereign bonds - a key measure of the financial risks as perceived by investors - rose to near-record highs of around 330 basis points. The euro also fell by a cent against the dollar to $1.4269 and by 0.7cents against sterling to £0.8745. Investors are concerned that the Italian economy, suffering from high public debt, low growth and growing infighting in the government could follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal into a debt spiral that has thrown the eurozone into crisis. Tensions on the Italian bond market went down after a second bailout for Greece was agreed at a summit in Brussels last week but have returned on concerns over the details of the Greek rescue plan and US debt fears...I say..through away the phony currency - euro!!
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I believe this public debt crisis was predictable and indeed long expected by the ECB. It will be used as an opportunity to increase the power of Brussels over individual states. We will not see Greece leaving the Euro, but we will, in due course, see Brussels underwrite and take over the running of the Greek public finances. Another ratchet clicks into place on the way to a single state
Financial markets face more turmoil after Moody's put Spain's Aa2 credit rating on review for possible downgrade while US debt talks are still deadlocked. The news sent the euro falling and stock markets in London and the eurozone down.
Europe’s second-largest economy and contributor to the region’s bailout funds is among the euro zone’s laggards in cutting its own deficits. Though a traditionally strong exporter, it’s headed for a record trade deficit this year. France still has a AAA credit rating, and its national debt of €1.6 trillion ($2.3 trillion) is roughly on par with Germany’s. Yet at 7 percent of gross domestic product, France’s 2010 budget deficit was higher than Italy’s and double Germany’s in relative terms. Excluding those now receiving bailout funds, in the euro zone only Spain and Slovakia did worse.
French companies, which are big players in aerospace, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, farm products, and autos, are struggling to compete. The nation’s share of European exports has dropped to 12.5 percent in the first five months of this year, down from 15.6 percent in 2000, according to Coe-Rexecode, an economics consultancy that advises the French government.
France’s trade deficit was more than €7 billion in both April and May—bigger than in any previous month—and is on track to set a record for this year, according to Michel Martinez, an economist at Société Générale in Paris. Exports are below their pre-recession level and “the contrast with Germany, which has taken full advantage of the world recovery, could hardly be more striking,” says Martinez. Last year Germany posted a surplus equal to 5.3 percent of output.
The language we use is part of the problem. Every would-be budget balancer in Washington should read “On the General Relativity of Fiscal Language,” a brilliant 2006 paper by economists Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University and Jerry Green of Harvard University (available online from the National Bureau of Economic Research). The authors write that accountants and economists have something to learn from Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, about how measured quantities depend on one’s frame of reference. Terms such as “deficit” and “tax,” they write, “represent numbers in search of concepts that provide the illusion of meaning where none exists.”
The national debt itself is one such Einsteinian (that is, squishy) concept. The Treasury Dept.’s punctilious daily accounting of it—$14,342,841,083,049.67 as of July 25, of which just under $14.3 trillion is subject to the ceiling and about $10 trillion is held by the public—gives the impression that it’s as real and tangible as the Washington Monument. But what to include in that sum is ultimately a political choice. For instance, the national debt held by the public doesn’t include America’s obligation to make Social Security payments to future generations of the elderly. Why not?
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