Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics [18]
The Fabled Greek Mega-Bailout
In a truly eyebrow-raising CNBC interview [19], Matthew Lynn alleges that Europe shall be saved! (As if by the grace of God!).
With Europe on the brink yet again Germany will act.
The Greeks can’t carry on with the austerity being imposed on them. No country can be expected to endure annualized falls in GDP of 7 percent or more,” he said, “and 50 percent youth unemployment for years on end.
On Tuesday we learned that the Greek economy shrank by another 6.2 percent in the latest quarter. It simply isn’t acceptable” Lynn said.
But Germany and the rest of the EU could come up with a Marshall Aid-style package for Greece. Very little of the bail-out money so far has gone to the Greeks. It has all gone to the bankers.
Forget talk of a ‘Grexit’. There will be a mega-bail-out—a ‘Grashall Plan’—instead.
And when it happens, the markets will rally on the news.
Who else would publish this? (That’s a redundant question — who else, besides J.P. Morgan and maybe a few government agencies, wouldn’t have fired Jim Cramer after what he said [20] about Bear Stearns?)
At various stages in the last two years everyone from China, to Germany, to the Fed to the IMF, to Martians [21], to the Imperial Death Star [22] has been fingered as the latest saviour of the status quo. And so far — in spite of a few multi-billion-dollar half-hearted efforts like the €440 billion EFSF — nobody has really shown up.
Perhaps that’s because nobody thus far fancies funnelling the money down a black hole. After Greece comes Portugal, and Spain and Ireland and Italy, all of whom together have on the face of things at least €780 billion outstanding (which of course has been securitised and hypothecated up throughout the European financial system into a far larger amount of shadow liabilities, for a critical figure of at least €3 trillion [23]) and no real viable route (other than perhaps fire sales of state property? Sell the Parthenon to Goldman Sachs?) to paying this back (austerity has just led to falling tax revenues, meaning even more money has had to be borrowed), not to mention the trillions [24] owed by the now-jobless citizens of these countries, which is now also imperilled. What’s the incentive in throwing more time, effort, energy and resources into a solution that will likely ultimately prove as futile as the EFSF [23]?
The trouble is that this is playing chicken with an eighteen-wheeler. While Draghi might be making noises [25] about “continuing to comply with the mandate of keeping price stability over the medium term in line with treaty provisions and preserving the integrity of our balance sheet” (in other words, not proceeding with the fabled “mega-bailout” even if it fractures the Euro), we may well see a full-blown financial meltdown (and of course, the ramifications of that on anyone who is exposed to the European banking system [26]) unless someone — whether it is the ECB, or the Fed, or the IMF — prints the money to keep the banks going.
There are really two layers to bailing out the insolvent nations: the real bailout is of the banks who bought the debt, and the insolvent nations are just an intermediary. Should the insolvent nations become highly uncooperative, it seems more likely [27] that the insolvent nations will just be cut out of the loop (throwing their citizens into experiencing a forced currency redenomination, bank runs, and even more chaos) while policymakers continue to channel money into “stabilising” the totally broken global financial system — because we know for sure that a big disorderly default will likely cause some kind of default cascade [28], and that is something I am sure that (based on past form) policymakers will seek to avoid.
Given that it is predominantly Germans who are in charge of Europe for the moment — with their unusual (at least in the West) post-Weimar distaste for Keynesianism — it seems to me like we will see quite a lot of chaos (read: Euro exits) before the money printing begins in earnest. And the money printing may be far more ad hoc and decentralised than 2008 (read: The Fed may be on the hook for American exposure). Just as we have seen so far, the money will come at the last minute, and will just keep things ticking over rather than actually solving anything.
And ultimately, I think it is the social conditions — particularly unemployment levels — that matter more than whether or not the financial system survives. If the attendant cost of ad hoc bailouts (in the name of pretending to stick to the ECB mandate) is a continued depression, and continued massive unemployment and youth unemployment then politicians are focusing on the wrong thing.
The problem is that as conditions continue to fester and as solutions seem distant and improbable that Europe’s problems may become increasingly political. As the established (dis)order in Europe continues to leave huge swathes of people jobless and angry, their rage and discomfort will be channelled toward dislodging the establishment. As we have seen in Greece and France, that has already produced big lifts for both the Far Left and Far Right.
We already know, I think, that in Greece’s upcoming election the outsider parties will crush the establishment, with SYRIZA most likely emerging on top. [29] A key metric for me in the next few weeks will be Golden Dawn [30]‘s proportion of the vote.
Let’s not forget history:
[31]