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Will the Greek exit be voluntary or involuntary?
Ever more voices are talking about the possibility of Greece leaving the euro zone despite the fact that there is no formal mechanism for a euro are member country to exit the single currency. This talk, however, makes sense because Greece’s situation is untenable economically and politically. The Grexit is a question of when and how not if
Spain: EU estimates for contraction now considerably deeper
This is not a good day for Spain. The day began with the EU Commission revising its estimates for the Spanish economy. The contraction is now expected to be considerably deeper. Spain unveiled its new efforts to address the banking problems. It is the fourth one since the crisis began and the second one since Rajoy became PM. Spain is forcing the banks to boost their loan loss provisions on real estate loans by 30 bln euros. They have already put aside about 54 bln euros. The Center for European Policy Studies warns that bank losses could be as high as 380 bln euros. Moody’s estimates Spanish bank losses could be around 305 bln euros
Super SGP coming – ECB: “A stronger and stricter fiscal framework is required”
The long-held view in German policy circles has been that the European sovereign debt crisis is a clear indication that the stability and growth pact (SGP) was not sufficiently robust in addressing fiscal discipline. The ECB is now addressing this with a policy paper
Chart of the Day: Euro zone GDP by country
This chart was attached to a very good front page article in today’s Wall Street Journal by Marcus Walker on How a Radical Greek Rescue Plan Fell Short. The article gives a blow-by-blow account on how the Greek crisis has unfolded and a detailed view on where each of the Greek and European leaders stood on various issues involved in Greece’s debt restructuring. The chart itself demonstrates the enormous gulf between the size of the German economy and other economies in Europe, giving some sense of why the Germans (and the French) have come to dominate European policy discussions
Chart of the day: US Real Personal Income Growth
The ECRI released the following chart on the year-over-year growth in US real personal income. The takeaway here is that personal income growth is seriously flagging going into the fiscal cliff which promises to turn income growth decidedly to income contraction
Achuthan: The US will be in recession by the end of next month
Lakshman Achuthan is sticking to his call that the US will enter recession in the second half of 2012. He spoke to CNBC’s Squawk Box crew about it this morning. Take a look
Spiegel: Kohl-era German documents reveal euro formation was about politics
“The German government has, for the first time, released hundreds of pages of documents from 1994 to 1998 on the introduction of the euro and the inclusion of Italy in the euro zone.”
Global Growth Is Slowing
So momentum is weakening across the entire global economy at the present point, not just in say Europe, or China. Global output is still growing but it is growing at an increasingly weaker pace. What could change that
Class Warfare
we are seeing an ever shrinking number of people paying an ever greater portion of the taxes. Though they also are the ever shrinking number of people acquiring an ever greater portion of the wealth. There is little that matches the artfulness in waving off criticism of the widening income gap as “class warfare”. And there is little that matches the gullibility of those who follow along
Europe edges closer to the endgame
Later this week, I plan to write a more comprehensive post on the European sovereign debt crisis to incorporate what we have learned since the French and Greek elections. Here’s a short preview of what I will have to say
Don’t Fight the Last War: Lessons from the Battlefields of Risk Management
Our brains are not calibrated to deal with the unexpected. Most of us believe we are good risk managers but in reality we are not. Most of us trust that risk can always be quantified and expressed through some fancy modelling whereas, often, it cannot. The world is not normal, yet universities continue to teach our young students the wisdom of Markowitz and Sharpe which brought us modern portfolio theory and, more specifically, the capital asset pricing model. Garbage In, Garbage Out, as they say. One of the fundamental assumptions behind modern portfolio theory is that asset returns are normally distributed random variables. The return profile of US equities fairly closely matches that of a normal distribution with the exception of large negative returns. They have come about more frequently than one would or should expect
Norway dumps Irish and Portuguese bonds, Switzerland increases Sterling reserves
The Swiss National Bank reported its reserve figures yesterday and the increase in its sterling holdings are notable and may help explain the its relative strength, despite data a soft real sector reports, culminating in the news last week that, defying expectations, the UK economy contracted in Q1, the second consecutive quarter that the British economy shrank. Separately, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund Global, indicated it has sold off its Irish and Portuguese bond holdings, pared its Spanish and Italian holdings and increased its exposure to Mexico, Brazil and Indian bonds