The Straight Scoop
by ilene - August 18th, 2010 8:09 pm
The Straight Scoop
Courtesy of Michael Panzner at Financial Armageddon
You’ve heard what the clueless analysts, disingenuous policymakers, conflicted Wall Street paper-pushers, and corporate cheerleaders have had to say about the so-called recovery. Now listen to what one of the world’s largest private companies — which presumbaly means they don’t have to worry too much about "managing" expectations or convincing the masses to believe in financial fairytales — has to say about where things stand:
"Cargill Sounds Warning of a Slow Recovery" (Financial Times)
Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader, on Tuesday warned that the global economic recovery had yet to gain traction as it reported a second straight decline in annual profit.
As economists debate the merits of government intervention to avoid a double-dip recession, the company said the economic outlook was uncertain.
“More uncertainty lies ahead, for the world has yet to transition from a policy-stimulated upturn to a structurally sustained recovery,” Cargill said in its annual report. “Europe’s debt crisis and China’s monetary tightening are moving markets. Governments have made promises that their economies cannot fulfil. Regulations are changing in unpredictable ways.”
The Minnesota-based company has a unique vantage on global economic trends, trading commodities from corn to oil to salt with employees in 66 countries.
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Do sovereign debt ratios matter?
by ilene - July 24th, 2010 6:46 pm
Do sovereign debt ratios matter?
Courtesy of Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets
In the past few weeks I have been getting a lot of questions about serial sovereign defaults and how to predict which countries will or won’t suspend debt payments or otherwise get into trouble. The most common question is whether or not there is a threshold of debt (measured, say, against total GDP) above which we need to start worrying.
Perhaps because I started my career in 1987 trading defaulted and restructured bank loans during the LDC Crisis, I have spent the last 30 years as a finance history junky, obsessively reading everything I can about the history of financial markets, banking and sovereign debt crises, and international capital flows. My book, The Volatility Machine, published in 2002, examines the past 200 years of international financial crises in order to derive a theory of debt crisis using the work of Hyman Minsky and Charles Kindleberger.
No aspect of history seems to repeat itself quite as regularly as financial history. The written history of financial crises dates back at least as far back as the reign of Tiberius, when we have very good accounts of Rome’s 33 AD real estate crisis. No one reading about that particular crisis will find any of it strange or unfamiliar – least of all the 100-million-sesterces interest-free loan the emperor had to provide (without even having read Bagehot) in order to end the panic.
So although I am not smart enough to tell you who will or won’t default (I have my suspicions however), based on my historical reading and experiences, I think there are two statements that I can make with confidence. First, we have only begun the period of sovereign default.
The major global adjustments haven’t yet taken place and until they do, we won’t have seen the full consequences of the global crisis, although already Monday’s New York Times had an article in which some commentators all but declared the European crisis yesterday’s news.
Just two months ago, Europe’s sovereign debt problems seemed grave enough to imperil the global economic recovery. Now, at least some investors are treating it as the crisis that wasn’t.
The article goes on to quote Jean-Claude Trichet sniffing over the “tendency among some investors and market participants to underestimate Europe’s ability to take bold decisions.” Of course I’d be more impressed with…
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A Frightening Build-Up
by ilene - July 12th, 2010 4:02 am
A Frightening Build-Up
Courtesy of Michael Panzner at Financial Armageddon
Although there are many reasons why it was not a good idea to keep dead and dying businesses alive, to spend and borrow hundreds of billions of dollars for ill-conceived stimulus programs and other boondoggles, to keep interest rates at record lows for an extended period of time, and to encourage people to hang on in hope that a recovery was just around the corner, the biggest issue with not facing the music early on is how daunting the problems have now become. As the New York Times notes in "Crisis Awaits World’s Banks as Trillions Come Due," the scale of short-term obligations that have built-up as a result of the decision to extend and pretend — or delay and pray — is frightening, to say the least.
FRANKFURT— The sovereign debt crisis would seem to create worry enough for European banks, but there is another gathering threat that has not garnered as much notice: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years.
The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all recently warned of a looming crunch, especially in Europe, where banks have enough trouble raising money as it is.
Their concern is that banks hungry for refinancing will compete with governments — which also must roll over huge sums — for the bond market’s favor. As a result, credit for business and consumers could become more costly and scarce, with unpleasant consequences for economic growth.
“There is a cliff we are racing toward — it’s huge,” said Richard Barwell, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland and formerly a senior economist at the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank. “No one seems to be talking about it that much.” But, he added, “it’s of first-order importance for lending and output.”
Banks worldwide owe nearly $5 trillion to bondholders and other creditors that will come due through 2012, according to estimates by the Bank for International Settlements. About $2.6 trillion of the liabilities are in Europe.
U.S. banks must refinance about $1.3 trillion through 2012. While that sum is nothing to scoff at, analysts seem most concerned about Europe because the banking system there is already weighed down by the sovereign debt crisis.
How banks will come up
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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