re: Europe debt crisis
economist.com
Will the fearfulness of 2011 turn into another panic like 2008? In any sensible world, it should not. Policymakers will surely not repeat the mistake they made then, of letting a big bank go under. The asset class at the heart of this phase of the financial crisis—sovereign debt—is far easier to value than the securitised subprime mortgages that caused the trouble last time. There is much greater clarity about where exposures to dodgy government bonds lie, although American banks need to become more transparent about their ties to Europe.
What’s more, the components of a solution to the immediate euro-zone crisis, long proposed by this newspaper, are fairly well understood. First, create a firewall around other euro-zone members like Italy and Spain that are solvent but need help financing their debts; second, recapitalise the European banking system, which has done far less since 2008 to fortify its defences than America’s; and third, allow Greece, self-evidently insolvent, to default in an orderly fashion.
The problem with this solution for the rest of the world is that it depends on the Europeans to carry it out. The debt crisis has been running for 18 months now, and the only way that euro-zone leaders have dazzled is through sheer incompetence..... |
