The Sovereign Debt Train Wreck
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No Exit …
The US is in serious, perhaps irretrievable, financial trouble. Peter Schiff president of Euro Pacific Capital, identified the state of the Union with characteristic bluntness: “Our government doesn’t have enough spare cash to bail out a lemonade stand. Our standard of living must decline to reflect years of reckless consumption and the disintegration of our industrial base. Only by swallowing this tough medicine now will our sick economy ever recover.”
There is a lack of political or popular will to take the action necessary to even stabilise the position. The role of US dollars and US government bonds in the financial system mean that the problems are likely to spread rapidly to engulf other nations. As John Connally, US Treasury Secretary under President Nixon, beligerently observed: “Our dollar, but your problem.”
Minor symptoms, often increasing in frequency and severity, can provide warning of a life threatening problem in a key organ, such as the heart. Since 2007, the global financial markets have been providing warnings of an impending serious crisis. Private sector credit problems have spread to sovereign nations. Debt problems of smaller nations have flowed on to larger nations. The problems are gradually working their way to the issue of US debt. Without rapid and decisive action, which seems to be unlikely, a major organ failure within the global economy is now inevitable.
Th magnitude of the problem and its effects are so large, market participants would do well to heed Douglas Adams famous advice in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Find dark glasses that go black in the case of a crisis and a towel to suck on. |
