Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Too interconnected and too indebted to fail?

Looking at the picture below, inquiring minds should wonder if it makes sense and what and who are being bailed out.
I still contend that in the EU there is some creation of money out of thin air made by banks allowed to have 40-60 leverage ratios investing in assets (sovereign debt) considered "too safe to fail". We are not bailing out any of the PIGS countries, we are just and again bailing out those banks which lent to governments. The latter are just allowing them to manage their assets and liabilities with such high ratios and make bigger profits. In this way the Ponzi scheme goes on.

Since banks and governments owe each other many billions of euros I believe that it would really make more economic sense: a) the issuance of EU bonds. In fact, the so-called "no-bailout clause" of the Maastricht Treaty specifically stated that the community would not assume the debt of individual EU member states. However the debt interconnectedness and the recent bailout package alter that clause in practice as well as any other EU  balancing budget rule (it's to be noted that actually the Pact's rules have so far been weakly enforced) b) The taxation of financial transactions and banks, including the systemic risk created by the "Europe's Web of Debt". Can you imagine the amount of revenues from this kind of taxation during these days?

Under the above circumstances, it is regrettable the ECB's decision to put more money in circulation by buying government bonds. Actually what should be done is to write-off all those loans, which the banks count as assets because they were expecting to be paid back and the money in the Euro-zone would be counted simply as destroyed. That's deleveraging the economy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is something that has recently been troubling me, but I don't exactly know how to research it. It appears that the EU was created to forestall a "housing bubble" in Europe. German lifestyle was to be brought to the struggling nations, but instead it created a black hole of excessive spending through cheap debt. The indebtedness of the world as a whole seems entirely too fragile currently with unemployment, yields, and markets all moving in disturbing directions. If you can help me, leave a comment back and I'll check to give you my email address.

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