ISLAND: Nekter å underskrive gjeldsavtale (e24)
Aftenposten og e24 mener dette er "risikofylt", "uansvarlig" og at "regjeringen kan trekke seg".
Jeg er så uenig som det vel er mulig å bli -- det vil være økonomisk selvmord for Island å forsøke å betale, som igjen langt på vei kunne gjort ende på Island som selvstendig stat (EU-medlemskap eller ei), og jeg kan ikke se at verken det islandske folket eller staten er moralsk ansvarlig. De islandske bankene fulgte tvilsom forretningspraksis og tok enorm risiko, men det gjorde faen meg britiske banker også. Britene har til nå klart å holde bankene sine sånn ca. på fote, men det har kostet dem dyrt:
Pimco move to sell gilts raises spectre of a UK sovereign debt crisis (Telegraph)
Fears that Britain may be heading for its first sovereign debt crisis since the 1970s hit a new intensity after Pimco, the world's biggest bond house, declared that it is starting to sell off its holdings of gilts.
The American investment group said it will be a net seller of UK Government bonds this year, at the very point when the Bank of England brings its £200bn programme of purchases to and end and the Treasury attempts to raise unprecedented sums through the capital markets.
[...]
Paul McCulley, a managing director at Pimco, said: "We are currently cutting back in the US and UK because... supply and demand dynamics are likely to be negatively affected as borrowing rises and central bank buying declines."
"Supply and demand dynamics are likely to be negatively affected"! Han får sagt det!
Denninger kommer med adskillig klarere tale:
Folks, PIMCO has a record of being not only right but privvy to "analysis" that you and I simply never, ever have or will get access to. How that happens is the matter of some conjecture - there are many, myself included, who believe that they're privvy to information sources that "ordinary peons" never will be given access to and in the debt markets insider trading is (for the most part) legal.(A Warning To Western Governments And Investors)
As a result when an announcement like this is made you're a rank idiot to ignore it or believe "it doesn't matter." It most certainly does matter and the odds are that they're right - and if you go against them you will be proved in the fullness of time to not only be wrong but poor on top of it.
So much for Britain.
Hva med høirepressens spådommer om at Sagaøya vil synke i havet om de ikke betaler? Jeg lar Bill Mitchell svare på det:
The recent history of Argentina is worth reflecting on in this regard. Argentina successfully defaulted on significant international debt obligations in 2002. Initially, FDI dried up completely when the default was announced. However, the Argentine government could not service the debt as its foreign currency reserves were gone and realised, to their credit, that borrowing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would have required an austerity package that would have precipipated revolution. As it was riots broke out as citizens struggled to feed their children.(fra Why pander to the financial markets?)
Despite stringent criticism from the World’s financial power brokers (including the International Monetary Fund), the Argentine government refused to back down and in 2005 completed a deal whereby around 75 per cent of the defaulted bonds were swapped for others of much lower value with longer maturities.
[...]
The data is instructive. The resumption of growth has been strong and persistent (8.8 per cent in 2003, 9.0 per cent in 2004, 9.2 per cent in 2005, 8.5 per cent in 2006 and 8.7 per cent in 2007). Real wages have also risen modestly over the same period.
Official data shows that poverty rates (measured either as extreme poverty defined as not being able to eat properly and a more general poverty line defined by the minimum income needed for basic needs) have fallen dramatically since the abandonment of the neo-liberal fixed exchange rate system. Argentina demonstrated something that the World’s financial masters didn’t want anyone to know about. That a country with huge foreign debt obligations can default successfully and enjoy renewed fortune based on domestic employment growth strategies and more inclusive welfare policies without an IMF austerity program being needed. And then as growth resumes, renewed FDI floods in.
One commentator wrote a few years ago that that the Argentinian Government appears to have perpetuated the perfect crime. The Government offered the world financial markets a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ settlment which was favourable to the local economy. At the time, the rhetoric claimed that countries that treat foreign creditors so badly would surely stagnate and suffer a FDI boycott. This is the standard neo-liberal line that is used to coerce debtor nations into compliance with the needs of ‘first-world’ capital largely defined through the aegis of the IMF. But the Argentinian case shows this paradigm to be toothless because the Government defied the major players including the IMF and the Argentine economy went on to boom despite it.
Denninger er selvsagt helt med:
A Cautionary Tale og Hint To Other Nations: Here's The Bill (forsiktig, jeg tror ikke noen har godt av å lese mer enn ett Denninger-stykke for dagen)
Uansett: Stå på Island! Ikke gi etter for trusler!
Innlegg
