The mindset will not change; a depressionary relapse may be coming – European version
by ilene - May 17th, 2010 4:16 pm
The mindset will not change; a depressionary relapse may be coming – European version
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
In March I wrote an American version of this post which pointed to the bailout culture in America as a major reason I fear a depressionary relapse. American policy makers have shifted private losses onto the government’s books while propping up bankrupt companies in the private sector in order to forestall yet greater economic pain.
The mindset is fixed on re-engineering some semblance of past economic growth. The result has been a return in the US to the status quo ante of low savings, excess consumption, indebted households, and leveraged financial institutions, but with policy options significantly diminished and greater levels of government debt to boot. Clearly, when stimulus is withdrawn, policy makers should expect more severe economic bloodletting.
In Europe, the same bailout mentality is at work. However, the results are likely to be even more disastrous because of the fundamental misunderstanding of economics and financial sector balances amongst the policy elite in Euroland. The public and private sector cannot simultaneously net save unless the Europeans engineer a competitive currency devaluation. Therefore, the Europeans’ newfound fiscal austerity is at odds with the need of the private sector to reduce debt and will likely lead to a collapse in consumer demand and depression or a trade war. What Europe needs is to allow over-indebted nations to default, reducing the political and economic pressure of austerity.
Intra-Eurozone Trade wars
Let me review how I come to that conclusion. This is a trade issue, first and foremost. The reason the Eurozone exists from an economic standpoint has to do with European interdependence from business trade. The eurozone functions as an internal market much the way the United States does, with the majority of trade occurring inside the region as opposed to externally with non-Eurozone countries.
When the Euro was formed, exchange rates were fixed and a common monetary policy came into being – much as we see for states in the US or provinces in Canada. Of course, monetary policy is not run for specific regions within the zone, but for the zone overall. And this invariably means that the European Central Bank’s monetary policy is geared more to the slow-growth core of Europe than the periphery.
During any business cycle then, current…
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The Looming European Debt Wars
by ilene - April 12th, 2010 11:59 pm
The Looming European Debt Wars
Courtesy of MICHAEL HUDSON, writing at CounterPunch
Government debt in Greece is just the first in a series of European debt bombs that are set to explode. The mortgage debts in post-Soviet economies and Iceland are more explosive. Although these countries are not in the Eurozone, most of their debts are denominated in euros. Some 87 per cent of Latvia’s debts are in euros or other foreign currencies, and are owed mainly to Swedish banks, while Hungary and Romania owe euro-debts mainly to Austrian banks. So their government borrowing by non-euro members has been to support exchange rates to pay these private-sector debts to foreign banks, not to finance a domestic budget deficit as in Greece.
All these debts are unpayably high because most of these countries are running deepening trade deficits and are sinking into depression. Now that real estate prices are plunging, trade deficits are no longer financed by an inflow of foreign-currency mortgage lending and property buyouts. There is no visible means of support to stabilize currencies (e.g., healthy economies).
For the past year these countries have supported their exchange rates by borrowing from the EU and IMF. The terms of this borrowing are politically unsustainable: sharp public sector budget cuts, higher tax rates on already over-taxed labor, and austerity plans that shrink economies and drive more labor to emigrate.
Bankers in Sweden and Austria, Germany and Britain are about to discover that extending credit to nations that can’t (or won’t) pay may be their problem, not that of their debtors. No one wants to accept the fact that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. Someone must bear the cost as debts go into default or are written down, to be paid in sharply depreciated currencies, but many legal experts find debt agreements calling for repayment in euros unenforceable. Every sovereign nation has the right to legislate its own debt terms, and the coming currency re-alignments and debt write-downs will be much more than mere “haircuts.”
There is no point in devaluing, unless “to excess” – that is, by enough to actually change trade and…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site