The World Is Drowning in Debt, and Europe Laces On Concrete Boots

[joboo]

The World Is Drowning in Debt, and Europe Laces On Concrete Boots (November 14, 2011)

Three metaphors describe Europe: drowning in debt, circular firing squad and trying to fool the money gods with an inept game of 3-card monte.
The world's major economies are drowning in debt--Europe, the U.S.,
Japan, China.


We all know the U.S. has tried to save its drowning economy by bailing out the parasite which is dragging it to Davy Jones Locker--the banking/financial sector-- and by borrowing and squandering $6 trillion in new Federal debt and buying toxic debt with $2 trillion whisked into existence on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet.


It has failed, of course, and the economy is once again slipping beneath the waves while Ben Bernanke and the politico lackeys join in a Keynesian-monetary cargo-cult chant: Humba-humba, bunga-bunga. Their hubris doesn't allow them to confess their magic has failed, and rather than let their power be wrenched away, they will let the flailing U.S. economy drown.

Europe has managed to top this hubris-drenched cargo-cult policy--no mean feat. First, it has indebted itself to a breathtaking degree, on every level: sovereign, corporate and private:


http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2011/total-debt-9nations.jpg

Germany, the mighty engine which is supposed to pull the $16 trillion drowning European economy out of the water, is as indebted as the flailing U.S.

Second, the euro's handlers have already sunk staggering sums into hopelessly insolvent debtor nations, for example, Greece, which has 355 billion euros of outstanding sovereign debt and an economy with a GDP around 200 billion euros (though it's contracting so rapidly nobody can even guess the actual size). According to BusinessWeek, the E.U. (European Union), the ECB (European Central Bank) and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) own about $127 billion of this debt.

Since the ECB is not allowed to "print money," the amount of cash available to buy depreciating bonds is limited. The handlers now own over 35% of the official debt (recall that doesn't include corporate or private debt), which they grandly refuse to accept is now worth less than the purchase price. (The market price of Greek bonds has cratered by 42% just since July. Isn't hubris a wonderful foundation for policy?)

In other words, they have not just put on concrete boots, they've laced them up and tied a big knot.




http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2011/debt-1940-2011.png

cont'd...

http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov11/drowning-in-debt11-11.html

[Cebu_4_2]

This reveals the key dynamic of the past decade: the diminishing productivity of debt. What happens when an economy is so burdened by the friction of inefficiency and indebtedness that borrowing a trillion euros just keeps the economy barely above water? The next trillion won't even keep "growth" at zero, and the economy sinks beneath the waves.
http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2011/debt-saturation.jpg
The world has reached the point of debt saturation. Creating more debt no longer generates "free lunch" growth, even in China, though the central bank in China is still playing as if shifting debt off-balance sheet into a "shadow" system will fool the money gods. It won't.
Everybody in Europe is playing the same sort of games, hoping to fool the money gods and keep the "free lunch" economy "growing." While everybody focuses on the circular firing squad in Italy, untold billions of euros of impaired private mortgage debt in housing-bubble-popped Spain still sits on the books of Spanish banks at full value, lest a sneeze of reality send Spain's entire banking sector to Davy Jones Locker.
Though no official publicly admits it, nobody really knows how much debt there is in Greece, or who even holds it. Here's the fig leaf confession: "Scarce data makes estimates difficult." Yes, I'm sure it does. So the true size of Europe's debt is unknown because everyone with a stake in the charade is trying desperately to keep the true scope hidden. (Ditto in China.)
The debt will get renounced, and debt as the "engine of growth" will also be renounced.
Europe is an inept 3-card monte player attempting to swindle the money gods. The gods aren't fooled by such shallow shuffling games, in fact they are greatly annoyed that humans even dare to attempt such flimsy tricks. Their wrath is building, and human hubris will only make the reckoning worse.
My "On the Edge" interview with Max Keiser is now online. (http://maxkeiser.com/2011/11/12/ote131-on-the-edge-with-charles-hugh-smith/) Fortunately for me, Max keeps the ball rolling and succinctly summarizes my rambling. Good fun in Paris--thank you, Max and Stacy, for the opportunity to spend some time with you.