Category: Global Debt Crisis
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Euro-zone Sovereign Government Debt, Too Many Emergency Meetings in Europe / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
If the sovereign government debt situation in Europe is anywhere near a final economic solution, why do the heads of Germany and France keep meeting? These meetings are getting more frequent.
Why didn't all the previous meetings solve the economic problem of PIIGS debt?
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Sunday, August 14, 2011
U.S. Long Winding Road to Debt Crisis Ends With a Bang / Economics / Global Debt Crisis
I came away from Maine, and meeting with some of the most astute economists in the world, with a series of impressions that will be the core of this week's letter. On Friday night, S&P downgraded US debt, and of course I need to comment on that. But as we talked the next two days and into the nights, I came increasingly to the opinion that this is indeed the Beginning of the Endgame. I must admit it has come about faster than I thought. But that is the nature of these things. And so, with no "but first," let's jump right in.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
The World's Money Is Draining Away ... Where's It Going? / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
Spiegel asks:
"Is The World Going Bankrupt?"
That is an odd question.
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Saturday, August 13, 2011
Debt Crisis Solutions Getting Dumb and Dumber / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
Europeans came up with a Band-Aid for the Greek crisis, and the markets applauded. Markets were buoyed by the fact the facilities set up for Greece were clearly designed to be used for some of the other Euro area basket cases if need be. Core country leadership reiterated their unwillingness to force default or push peripheral countries out of the Eurozone. This is admirable perhaps, but it does narrow the options for future arm twisting quite a bit.
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Thursday, August 11, 2011
A Free-Market Sovereign Debt Manifesto / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
Reporting from Greece -- There is an eerie disconnect involved with analyzing the frightening financial and economic consequences of the ongoing 2011 Sovereign Debt and Equity Market Crash while sailing around the Greek Islands. But taking a look at Greek history clearly shows some parallels and solutions to what the nations of the West are facing today. For the last couple of days we’ve been in Spetses, the first Greek island to have raised the flag of insurrection and secession from an already crumbling Ottoman Empire on April 3, 1821.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
The Ice is Cracking, Get off the Sovereign Debt Late Before the Great Default Hits / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
Ice skaters who go out onto lakes or large ponds are told from their early years not to skate on thin ice. The sound of cracking ice is a signal to skate toward the shore.
On Friday, August 5, 2011, the world heard the ice crack. Late in the day, Standard & Poor's downgraded American government debt by one point: from AAA to AA+.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Trichet's Secret "Dragon Transfer" to Italy and France Becomes the "New Italy" / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
Last week, ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet sent a secret letter to Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister demanding various labor reform actions from the Italian government. Leaks of that letter have appeared in Italian media, but there has been no comment on the letter in the US although there has been some discussion of announced Italian labor reforms.
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Sunday, August 07, 2011
Debt And The Economic Degrowth Frontier / Economics / Global Debt Crisis
WELL KNOWN LIMITS
There are basically two choices: degrowth by choice - or forced by uncontrolled debt growth finally becoming uncontrollable, and inevitably destroying economic growth.
The opposite "hopeful paradigm" is well known: the so-called "growth economy" is able to profit from rising amounts of debt relative to GDP for a long way up the curve. This is sure, but the single-minded pursuit of growth pushes this mindless quest over the threshold into forced degrowth, when debt soars beyond well known thresholds.
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Friday, August 05, 2011
Dark Window Debt Default / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
The US debt crisis, with its see-through debt ceiling and dark invisible floor, so far below, has very serious rivals in Europe. Relative to GDP, the USA's sovereign debt is either less extreme, comparable to, or not far ahead of sovereign debt load in not-so-small Italy, France, Germany, UK and Spain. Apart from Germany, the other four members of Europe's Big-5 are very close to recession, even using their own official and doctored economic data. But needless to say, these are not normal times and hope, or at least illusion is more important than ever, to keep the party going one more day.
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Friday, August 05, 2011
German Central Bank Goes to War with ECB Over Resumption of Bond Purchases / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
ECB Resumes Bond Buys; Open Feud Between German Central Bank and the ECB; Implications of "Trichet Out, Draghi In"
Yet Another Open Feud Between German Central Bank and the ECB on Bond Purchases;
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Italy Bond Market Failure to Trigger Bailout as ECB to Become Buyer of "Only" Resort / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
A critical Italian government bond auction is coming up Thursday, August 4. That bond auction is highly likely to fail. However, if it does fail, don't expect results to be reported that way.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
The New World Order of Global Sovereigns / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
The U.S. debt ceiling political soap has finally come to an end. With the debt deal done, the U.S. has dodged a major bullet of a debt default, but may not be out of the woods yet for a sovereign credit downgrade. Nevertheless, regardless whether one or more of the Big 3 agencies (S&P, Moody's and Fitch) would really deal a downgrade to the U.S., it is the markets that holds the key to a sovereign's credit worthiness based on its ability to manage a balanced budget, implementing proper monetary and fiscal policies. From that perspective, the markets probably have already spoken.
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Monday, August 01, 2011
How Deep is the Global Economic Rabbit Hole? / Economics / Global Debt Crisis
Quite simply, the world’s debt hole is deeper than any reasonable person can comprehend. It is difficult to define, and it is not terribly easy to write about - really it’s more of a concept than something that you can actually sink your teeth into. You won’t see an abundance of stories or editorials on this topic; in fact the financial media avoids the global debt situation like the plague for good reason. Sure, they talk about chunks of it, but almost never in total. However, with your indulgence, it is the purpose of this piece to bring us all a bit closer to not just understanding how dangerous things have become to all of us personally, but more importantly to frame the problem in terms of history and scale.
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Sunday, July 31, 2011
A U.S. Sovereign Debt Downgrade Is No Laughing Matter for China or Anybody Else / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
With a stalemate heading into the weekend, the debt drama of the United States is going down to the wire, and when the clock strikes twelve midnight on August 2 (countdown clock at our homepage), the world's largest economy could be looking at an unprecedented technical default. The current consensus suggests that although a total default is nothing but a remote possibility, the damage is already done to the dollar, and a sovereign debt downgrade could be inevitable even after the debt ceiling deadlock is resolved.
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Friday, July 29, 2011
U.S. Debt Default or Credit Ratings Downgrade Could Crush the Global Economy / Economics / Global Debt Crisis
Shah Gilani writes: If there's a "worst-case scenario" for this whole debt-ceiling debacle, this is it.
After studying everything that could happen due to a downgrade of the United States' top-tier AAA credit rating, and the potential default on its debt, we found a scenario that would result in forced asset sales that are so widespread that global stock-and-bond markets would plunge - and economies around the world would crash.
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Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Death of the "Risk-Free" Investment / Interest-Rates / Global Debt Crisis
Martin Hutchinson writes: There's an old investing axiom that says "there's no such thing as a free lunch" - which basically tells us we can't earn a profit without taking some risk.
And whether or not the United States defaults on its debt when the federal government hits its debt ceiling on Tuesday, the threat by Standard & Poor's to downgrade the United States' top-tier AAA credit rating means there will also be no such thing as a "risk-free" investment.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Bailouts, Austerity and Rage: Calm Like A Bomb, Part I - The Greek & The Irish / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
"Stroll through the shanties, and the cities remain. Same bodies buried hungry, but with different last names. These vultures rob everything, leave nothing but chains. Pick a point on the globe; yes the picture's the same. There's a bank, a church, a myth and a hearse; a mall and a loan, a child dead at birth. There's a widow pig parrot, a rebel to tame, a whitehooded judge and a syringe and a vein. And the riot be the rhyme of the unheard..." Rage Against the Machine: Calm Like a Bomb
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Monday, July 25, 2011
Black Hole Finance Debt Slavery - Black Swan Events / Politics / Global Debt Crisis
To the political and corporate elite, debt is the route to Federal Europe. That sounds grand and sombre, calculated and organized, but in fact federalizing European debts and deficits is nothing more than repeating the circus act of the present financial and monetary crisis. Europe has a black hole of public debt, swallowing all and any assets, and can only only deliver Black Swan events, that by definition are strange, unpredicted and unprecedented.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
Bankrupt Greece Blackmails Europe, Bailout or Euro Zone Dies / News_Letter / Global Debt Crisis
The Market Oracle NewsletterJune 29th, 2011 Issue #13 Vol. 5
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Saturday, July 23, 2011
European Leaders Kicking the Debt Crisis Can Down the Road / Economics / Global Debt Crisis
This week we start with the latest version of the solution to the European Crisis, the details of which are now coming out. Then we look at the global economy, and some signs that seem to point to a softening. And then there's some data on US employment from a friend who has some thoughts about what we really need to do to get unemployment to come down. There is a lot to cover.
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