Addio al lavoro, alle borse, all'euro. Aggiornamento al 4 giugno 2010

Ahi ahi...ahi...che male....ci mancavano l'Ungheria e l'occupazione nell'USA che non cresce (se si escludono i lavoratori a tempo determinato assunti per fare il censimento). Così venerdì se ne sono andati tutti i guadagni che le borse avevano faticosamente messo insieme durante la settimana. Se poi il finesettimana leggete la newsletter  di John Mauldin allora vi viene voglia di investire tutti i vostri risparmi in oro, fucili e cibo in scatola...Infatti metà della lettera di questa settimana è dedicata alla possibilità che l'economia USA si contragga nel terzo trimestre del 2010...Scrive Mauldin:
If we go back into recession, the market on average drops 40%. This is NOT a buy-and-hold market. It is a buy-and-trade or, for those with the skills, sell-and-short. (If you are not experienced at short selling, this is not the time to jump in "whole hog." Short selling is a craft. An art form. A dangerous thing for rookies. Trade gently, gentle reader.)
There is a slow train coming. Between December of 2007 and through April of this year disposable personal income would have been DOWN just over $900 billion without the stimulus money (Gary Shilling). It would have been a far more serious recession. And now we are getting ready to find out whether we can make it without the intravenous infusion of government (borrowed taxpayer) money. I fear the train is going to slow down.
Restando su queste note di ottimismo sfrenato vi segnalo anche:

• un'analisi lucida e impietosa delle prospettive di medio termine per la Grecia e gli altri PIIGS; 
• chi si ricorda della pizza di fango del Camerun? Che sia il momento di rispolverarla...per l'euro?
• Gli economisti si dividono e dibattono: inflazione o deflazione nel nostro futuro? Ecco al riguardo l'opinione di Brad De Long:
  I AM going to turn my microphone over to one of my teachers who I think has the very best answer to this question. I never met, him, however: he died three years before I first set foot into an economics classroom, because he has what I think is the best answer to this question.
  Here is British economist R.G. Hawtrey*, writing about the coming of the Great Depression to Europe:
  

  The [United Kingdom's] National Government which came into office at the end of Auguest, 1931, made strenuous efforst to balance the budget, but it was too late to stem the flight from the pount. On the 21st September the convertibility of the currency into gold was suspended. On that day Bank Rate [i.e., the Bank of England's discount rate *and* the overnight interbank rate] was raised to 6 per cent [per year]. Once the gold standard was suspended, there could be no doubt of the purpose of that step. In the face of the exchange risk [created by abandoning the peg to gold] the high rate could not possibly attract foreign money. It could only be intended as a safeguard against inflation. Fantastic fears of inflation were expressed. That was to cry "Fire! Fire!" in Noah's Flood. It is *after* depression and unemployment have subsided that inflation becomes dangerous...

  It looks alarmingly as if those many of us who do not remember history are, as Jorge Agustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana y Borras warned, condemned to repeat it. And it looks, even more alarmingly, like those of us who do remember history are as well condemned to repeat it with them.
  * R. G. Hawtrey (1938), "A Century of Bank Rat
• Purtroppo le divisioni e la confusione che regnano la politica europea si fanno sempre più sentire: secondo il Wall Street Journal: Europe's national governments have become their own biggest systemic risk. The ECB's Financial Stability Review is a twice-yearly look at the condition of Europe's banking sector. According to the report, European banks need to roll over some €800 billion in long-term debt in the next two and a half years, and to do so they'll have to compete with European governments that last year borrowed some €811 billion among them. This competition for capital between the private and public domains could drive up interest rates, or even lead to a liquidity squeeze for the banks or the public fisc, or both.
  The situation is made more dangerous by the rules on how bank capital is calculated. Under regulatory capital requirements, highly rated government debt owned by banks is generally considered nearly risk free, giving financial institutions a strong incentive to hold sovereign debt. According to the Bank of International Settlements, its member banks have some $2.1 trillion in total exposure to European sovereign debt. So a pan-European sovereign debt crisis would not only affect the ability of European capitals to pay their bills. It would pose a threat to the solvency of the private banking system itself.
  In the fall of 2008, the worry around the world was that a crisis in bank solvency would drag down the global economy. Today, the risk has shifted. A looming crisis in national solvency could threaten the same banks that Europe and the U.S. so recently saved. Only this time, the lender of last resort could itself be bankrupt. The ECB calls this "adverse feedback between the financial sector and public finance." We call it a recipe for disaster unless governments get their finances under control.
   
• Cosa deciderà il G20 sugli stress test per le banche? 

Ecco l'aggiornamento al 4 giugno 2010