Global Economic Crisis

Over the weekend the highest ranking cadre of inept European Union politicians were gathered in solemn deliberations, as they once again promise the world that the growing sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone will be permanently “solved.” But the issue is no longer only the debt crisis in Greece, or the other PIIGS countries-Portugal, Italy , Ireland and Spain. The unsustainability of the public debts throughout the Eurozone  now have the banking system of Europe on the precipice of disaster. It is likely that many if not most major European banks would fail a real stress tests, not the phony stress tests recently administered.

One of the issues being debated by the European politicians is having the banks accept some degree of loss on their outstanding loans to Greece. The problem is that such a loss would mean transferring the insolvency of Greece to those very banks. The politicians in Europe know that, so they are already discussing how to recapitalize their banks. But with what? The European nations are themselves all heavily indebted. Germany is resisting the call by France to employ the ECB (European Central  Bank) as a printing machine to “lend” euros conjured out of thin air to the European Financial Stability Facility; the EFFS would in turn provide the money to the banks requiring recapitalizing.

While the frenzied talk rages on in Europe, the continent’s banking system is headed for a crisis that may rival the impact that the Lehman Brothers debacle had on the global economy in 2008.

WALL STREET POLICE: GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS

Officer Larry of the NYPD is on his way to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to arrest peaceful protesters involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Being a public spirited member of the New York Police Department, Officer Larry does remind us that there is a global economic crisis underway that rivals the Great Depression of the 1930s.

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As the United States national debt reaches parity with total annual GDP, President Barack Obama continues to preside over a record level of deficit spending by the federal government. He has just sent to Congress a proposed $3.73 trillion budget for FY 2012, while forecasting a record $1.65 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year. Earlier, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the current deficit would reach at least $1.5 trillion. These figures mean that America remains trapped with unsustainable structural mega-deficits,  and that more than 40 percent of everything the U.S. federal government spends is financed with borrowed money.

As I have commented on before, this level of government indebtedness just cannot be sustained, and will lead to catastrophic repercussions. While the politicians in Washington, particularly in the Obama administration, pay lip service to the need to “rein in” this profligate public spending, nobody believes that they are serious. The president’s claim that he “plans” to reduce the deficit cumulatively over ten years by just over a trillion dollars is an utter farce, since even by the most optimistic forecasts this would leave a combined deficit over the decade of more than ten trillion dollars.

The problem, however, is not uniquely one of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The Republicans, who left for Obama as an inaugural present in 2009 a first-ever annual deficit to exceed a trillion dollars, are as intellectually bankrupt as are their adversaries on the other side of the aisle. The GOP is equally bereft of ideas on how to control this raging fiscal train wreck, offering little more than worn-out cliches such as reducing taxes, as though that would not further exacerbate the federal government’s structural mega-deficit.

What we are witnessing is not only an economic and fiscal calamity in the making. It is as much a display of political dysfunctionality and moral cowardice as it is of inept fiscal policy. Which leads to the melancholy conclusion that it will not be the political echelon in Washington that ultimately  imposes budgetary discipline on public spending. Increasingly likely is a doomsday scenario, in which the bond vigilantes, well practiced already with their punishing assaults on the credit ratings of Greece, Ireland and now Portugal, unleash the full fury of the market place on Uncle Sam. When that fiscally apocalyptic moment arrives, not even the impressive weight of political inertia that resides in Washington DC will be able to impede a sovereign debt crisis in the United States that will not only cripple the nation’s economy with devastating effect; it will likely dispossess the next generation of Americans  of their future.

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From Ireland to Portugal and back to Greece, the catastrophic public finances in the weaker Eurozone economies continue to throw off further nasty surprises, despite the massive debt-based stabilization fund the stronger economies in the Eurozone cobbled together to bailout their weaker partners. An example is found in ground zero of the European sovereign debt crisis, Greece. Fraudulent bookkeeping in Athens hid a massive and unsustainable government deficit. Once exposed, the official word was that the true size of the Greek deficit was now revealed, until that “final” figure was revised upward, then revised at a still higher figure again. Now we are informed that the last “final” upward revision was itself too low, and the latest figure from Eurostat is that the actual Greek public deficit for 2009 was an eye-popping 15.4 percent of national GDP.

The latest news on the Greek deficit, combined with bond spreads widening on Irish and Portuguese debt, are the latest markers pointing to sovereign fiscal doom in the Eurozone.

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With Greek long term bonds generating a spread in excess of 400 basis points above German sovereign debt, it is no surprise that  ratings agency Fitch has again downgraded Athens, posting a miserable BBB minus. This comes after weeks of verbal gymnastics by the European Union, attempting to fool the markets into believing in its ambiguous, meaningless assurance of a bailout for Greece.

Despite the pontificating of reassurance being offered by a legion of European politicos, it is becoming increasingly evident that Greece is heading towards sovereign debt default at warp speed.  In my view, either sooner or later (and much more likely sooner) Greece is fiscally doomed…and that is only the beginning of an irreversible sovereign debt chain reaction that will strike virtually all advanced and major economies, and plunge our planet into a synchronized global depression.

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Within the Eurozone Greece has the highest ratio of public debt to GDP, currently at 125%, prompting Fitch to lower the nation’s credit rating. Other rating agencies are likely to follow. The Greek stock market is in a tailspin, while Athens is coping with both an acute financial crisis and social unrest, as a wave a riots has broken out to mark the anniversary of a previous violent outburst.

The level of public debt in Greece is clearly unsustainable. The question being asked is if the Eurozone will bailout the Greek government. Such a policy move is not likely to be  well received by the taxpayers in other Eurozone economies with lower debt to GDP ratios, namely Germany and France. More importantly, the dismal economic and financial crisis in Greece, compounded by ruinous public debt problems, follows on the heels of the debt conundrum facing Dubai World. In addition, other Eurozone economies face looming public debt crises in the not too distant future, including Ireland, Spain and Portugal.

Is the next bubble to burst in the global economic crisis a string of sovereign debt crises? Readers of my report, “Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015: Recession Into Depression,” are aware that I project a catastrophic sovereign debt crisis afflicting both the United States and the UK by 2012.

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