Intrade ha un contratto sulla probabilità che almeno un paese abbandoni l'euro come moneta nazionale entro il 31 dicembre 2010. In questo momento la probabilità stimata dal mercato è circa il 15%. Qui accanto trovate le probabilità stimate sulle scadenze più lunghe, fino al 31 dicembre 2014.
Secondo un commento apparso ieri sul Wall Street Journal
la situaizone di tensione che si è venuta a creare sui mercati
sarà sufficiente a forzare la mano della Banca Centrale Europea:
Austerity takes time, and the market is in no mood to wait. With euro-zone debt, credit and currency markets now tumbling, investors may force the ECB unwillingly down the road of unconventional measures.
If the banking system is threatened, what are the policy options? Among the least controversial steps, the ECB might reinstate swap lines with the U.S. Federal Reserve to give European banks access to dollars. Or it could decide once again to provide long-term fixed-rate liquidity, in a reversal of its exit policy (...) the ECB may yet be forced, totally against its will, to buy government bonds, in the name of protecting the financial system. This would be disastrous in the long term: (...) the ECB would be monetizing budget deficits that the market had declined to fund. That would be hugely destructive, risking backdoor socialization of losses and inflation, and cause a political firestorm. Debt restructurings in Greece and elsewhere may be the only real way out. But in the near term, this would create a fresh banking crisis. The hope is to delay defaults until they can be afforded, although this is a liquidity bandage for a solvency wound.
The problem for the ECB is that the crisis that it dealt with successfully in 2007 and 2008 was within its domain of expertise: financial stability and the banking system. The government response has moved the crisis into the fiscal sphere, where the ECB has no power beyond continually reminding governments that austerity is needed. The market's need for a swift response may yet force the ECB over the divide.
Il New York Times dedica oggi un articolo al timore di contagio dalla Grecia e dall'Eurozona al Regno Unito, gli USA e il Giappone:
(...) “It’s not just a European problem, it’s the U.S., Japan and the U.K. right now,” said Ian Kelson, a bond fund manager in London with T. Rowe Price. “It’s across the board.”
The crisis is so perilous for Europe that the leaders of the 16 countries that use the euro worked into the early morning Saturday on a proposal to create a so-called stabilization mechanism intended to reassure the markets.
(...) Beyond Europe, the crisis has sent waves of fear through global stock exchanges.
A decade ago, it took more than a year for the chain reaction that began with the devaluation of the Thai currency to spread beyond Asia to Russia, which defaulted on its debt, and eventually caused the near-collapse of a giant American hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management.
This crisis, by contrast, seemed to ricochet from country to country in seconds, as traders simultaneously abandoned everything from Portuguese bonds to American blue chips. On Wall Street on Thursday afternoon, televised images of rioting in Athens to protest austerity measures only amplified the anxiety as the stock market briefly plunged nearly 1,000 points.
“Up until last week there was this confidence that nothing could upset the apple cart as long as the economy and jobs growth was positive,” said William H. Gross, managing director of Pimco, the bond manager. “Now, fear is back in play.”
While the immediate causes for worry are Greece’s ballooning budget deficit and the risk that other fragile countries like Spain and Portugal might default, the turmoil also exposed deeper fears that government borrowing in bigger nations like Britain, Germany and even the United States is unsustainable.(...)
“Apparently systemic risk is still alive and well,” wrote Alex Roever, a J.P. Morgan credit analyst in a research note published Friday. With so much uncertainty about Europe and the euro, managers of these ultra-safe investment vehicles (money-market and short-term loans) are demanding that European borrowers pay higher rates. These funds provide the lifeblood of the international banking system. If worries about the safety of European banks intensify, they could push up their borrowing costs and push down the value of more than $500 billion in short-term debt held by American money-market funds.
Uncertainty about the stability of assets in money market funds signaled a tipping point that accelerated the downward spiral of the credit crisis in 2008, and ultimately prompted banks to briefly halt lending to one other.
Now, as Europe teeters, the dangers to the American economy — and the broader financial system — are becoming increasingly evident. “It seems like only yesterday that European policy makers were gleefully watching the U.S. get its economic comeuppance, not appreciating the massive tidal wave coming at them across the Atlantic,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor of international finance who also served as the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. “We should not make the same mistake.”
Morningstar dedica due videointerviste al rischio di contagio: secondo Mohamed El-Erian di PIMCO
What's happening today is unambiguously deflationary for Europe. First we're going to see a lot more fiscal tightening in countries around Europe who will want to avoid what has happened to Greece. Second, we should expect banks to go into more of a rehabilitation mode and be less willing to extend credit. And thirdly, the private sector is likely to become more cautious and save more.
So for Europe as a whole this is a deflationary shock, which means that credit, both from the supply side and the demand side, will likely go down in the months ahead.
Secondo Rudolph-Riad Younes, manager at Artio International :
The key starting point to understand is that there is not just one Greece. The whole planet is Greece. Every government you look at today, and you hide the name, they look like Greece, even worse.
From the U.S. to U.K .to Japan. I mean there are very, very few countries, maybe it could be counted on one hand, who you could say are reasonably solvent as governments. What happened is the market many times tends to ignore fundamental deviations.
Like, for example, valuation-wise you could see Nasdaq going to crazy valuation in the late '90s. Then, finally, people wake up and react to something they should have reacted to many years before.
Likewise, last year the markets rallied despite many fundamentals [that] were very ugly. And today the logic, this year, finally the market is trying to attack the weakest countries.
Today, the weakest countries are not the ones with the worst fundamentals, but are the ones who cannot print their own currencies. That's why you're seeing the pressure on Greece and spreading into the other southern European countries, named the PIGS for their first initial for the country names.
Then the next potential vulnerability is going to be in the U.K. Because today, although they can print their money, they're going to have a hung parliament. Therefore, the government might be very indecisive in the way they're going to tackle their deficit and budget problems. Therefore, we could see weakness there.
Ultimately, Japan could be after that and ultimately it's going to be the U.S. as well. Right now the focus is only on that region. It's not just Greece or southern Europe, it's global governments. That's why gold is the best solution so far.
Ecco perche in questo momento i migliori banchieri centrali sarebbero Totò e Peppino (grazie Antonio per il suggerimento!)
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