Thursday, October 27, 2011

The Devil is in the details.

So our lovely leaders are all patting themselves on the back having "saved" the Euro and if you believe the hyperbole from the German Chancellor, saved Europe from hearing the ring of marching jackboots again.

What they have done of course is merely kick the can a bit further down the road. There's still no way even a trillion Euros can prop up the failing economies of Europe who bought into the idea you could buy prosperity with other people's money.

A couple of details behind the headlines that your average layman would most likely miss, if they could find them at all, point to what a fudge this is and which will, in all likelihood, make the problem worse. Firstly not only do the banks take a 50% hit on any Greek debt they own they are being asked to "Recapitalise" to the tune of 160 billion Euro in the next 8 months. Essentially this means the banks have to hold cash or other highly liquid asset classes on their books and they can't lend it. Get that bit, they can't lend this money. Now cast your mind back to last year and the credit crunch which was caused by, right, banks not being in a position to lend money.

The other little weasel word I spotted is the real person-of-colour in the woodpile, that word is "leverage"...


The firepower of the main euro bailout fund - known as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) - is to be boosted from the 440bn euros set up earlier this year to 1tn euros. There is about 250bn euros left available in the EFSF, which the summit statement said could be leveraged 4-5 times.
Put simply this means that this much trumpeted 1 trillion Euro is not actually there, what they are going to do is put up the 250 billion they do have (from your and my taxes) and basically borrow 4 or 5 times that amount, that's essentially what leverage means. And of course if you borrow money, you have to pay interest on it.

So they have commited us to, yet more and more borrowing. An endless cycle of debt backed up only by the promise it can be paid back through future tax revenues, that's money out of our pockets.

All Merkel and Sarkosy have done is put us and our children in hock to the Chinese for years and years.

How long will this madness go on because as sure as I have wings and a tail it's gone on too far and too deep for it all to end in sweetness and light and I fear all Merkel and friends have done is make those jackboots even more of a racing certainty.

1 comment:

Blackpowder said...

Well I am with you on this one - we are still well and truly in the Poo. This just buys short term stability.

Looks like we need a spell of good old fashion inflation to deal with the debt. This is exactly how Govt. in the past has got out of these debt positions - inflate and the debt becomes managable - how long until they remember this?

Mind you not a lot of fun for us - get those funds out of savings and spend spend spend............