Una casa a peso d'oro e la tempesta finanziaria del 2013

Come sono a buon mercato le case....se comprate in oro! Da più parti si sentono inviti a comprare casa

(almeno negli USA) dove le valutazioni sono scese ormai a valori che non si vedevano da un ventennio o più...Se valutata in oro il prezzo mediano delle case monofamiliari negli Stati Uniti è calato dell'80% dal picco del 2001.

Intanto i mercati obbligazionari dei PIGS vedono i volumi diminuire a vista d'occhio, probabilmente un effetto secondario della manipolazione costante del debito di quei paesi, tra un bailout e una ristrutturazione "volontaria". Chi compra queste obbligazioni ora è bene che chieda un premio di liquidità in aggiunta a quello sul rischio...

Financial Times - Europe homepage

Eurozone periphery bond trading volumes at new lows

Volume traded in Greek, Irish and Portuguese sovereign debt fell to €1.1bn in May, a sixfold drop from November and the lowest level since 2001http://link.ft.com/r/LVA6WW/XHLO2U/VRA8D/UURUU9/18HYPY/4O/h?a1=2011&a2=6&a3=12

Da più parti si confronta la crisi del debito greco con quella di Lehman Brothers: secondo il New York Times


Bond traders and officials at theEuropean Central Bank have been unified in their warnings that a restructuring of Greece’s debt would set off an investor panic similar to the one that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Others, however, have argued that Greece’s debt of 330 billion euros, or $473 billion, while too large for the country to bear, is small enough to allow banks and other institutions to take a loss without bringing the world financial system to its knees. 
But the comparisons between Greece and Lehman grew more frequent last week as global markets reeled, spurred in part by the view that Germany’s insistence that private investors participate in a second rescue package for Athens would overcome the objections of the European Central Bank. (...) 
The thinking goes like this: though banks and other investors have done much to pare their Greek holdings in the last year, if they are forced to take a loss, and the ratings agencies declare Greece in default, investors would start selling in a panic. And they would not sell just the bonds of countries struggling with debt — Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy. In a hasty retreat into cash, traders would unload more liquid assets as well, everything from high-grade corporate bonds to American and emerging market equities — as occurred in 2008 after Lehman failed.


Nouriel Roubini prevede una tempesta finanziaria globale per il 2013. Secondo Roubini si stanno preparando quattro fattori scatenanti che combinati hanno una probabilità di circa il 33% di provocare una nuova crisi nel 2013:

• il debito pubblico U.S.A. che si aggiunge ad un'economia pure fortemente deficitaria
• un possibile rallentamento dell'economia cinese
• la ristrutturazione del debito dei PIGs dell'eurozona
• la stagnazione del Giappone

Per gli ottimisti che vedono il bicchiere mezzo pieno anzichè mezzo vuoto osserviamo come secondo Roubini ci sono due probabilità su tre che il 2013 veda solo una crescita "anemica" oppure addirittura in accelerazione. Dove l'opinione di Roubini è particolarmente severa è sulla gestione della crisi greca, per la quale non si sono trovate soluzioni credibili e che ormai vede solo una possibile via d'uscita: l'uscita dall'euro. 

"There are already elements of fragility," Bloomberg quotes Roubini as saying. "Everybody's kicking the can down the road of too much public and private debt. The can is becoming heavier and heavier, and bigger on debt, and all these problems may come to a head by 2013 at the latest."

Grecia, Irlanda e Portogallo sono insolventi!

L'Economist appena uscito usa parole forti sul debito del PIG...The euro zone's periphery: They’re bust. Admit it. | The Economist
Oltre a giudicare l'eurovertice un fallimento, il settimanale inglese punta il dito sulla BCE e sulla politica:
the European Central Bank in Frankfurt seems set on raising interest rates on April 7th, which will strengthen the euro and further undermine the peripherals’ efforts to become more competitive (see article). Some politicians are still pushing daft demands, such as forcing Ireland to raise its corporate tax rate, which would block its best route to growth. Most pernicious, though, is the perverse logic of the euro zone’s rescue mechanisms. Europe’s leaders won’t hear of debt reduction now, but insist that any country requiring help from 2013 may then need to have its debt restructured and that new official lending will take priority over bondholders. The risk that investors could face a haircut in two years’ time keeps yields high today, which in turn blights the rescue plans. Home truths from Washington This newspaper has argued that Greece, Ireland and Portugal need their debt burdens cut sooner rather than later. That case is stronger than ever, not only because today’s approach is failing but because the risks of restructuring are falling. The spectre of contagion is receding. Spain, whose bond yields have fallen and whose spreads with Germany have tightened, has distanced itself from Portugal. Behind the scenes, sovereign-debt specialists are devising ways to minimise the impact of an “orderly restructuring” on banks. Most banks in the core of the euro zone can withstand a hit from the three small peripherals. The big obstacle is not technical but political. Since many at Europe’s core, particularly the ECB, remain implacably opposed to debt restructuring, the pressure has to come from elsewhere—not least from the peripheral economies themselves. Ireland’s new government is talking about forcing the senior bondholders of its bust banks to take a hit. Greece should stop pretending that it can bear its current debt burden and push for restructuring. But the best hope lies with the IMF. Its economists have the most experience of debt crises. Some privately acknowledge that debt restructuring is ultimately inevitable. It is time the Fund’s top brass said so publicly and, by refusing to lend more without a deal on debt, pushed Europe’s pusillanimous politicians into doing the right thing.

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Grecia, Portogallo e Spagna sotto pressione.

Oggi vi segnalo:

un video del Financial Times sull'aggravarsi della crisi dopo i downgrades del debito greco e portoghese da parte di Standard and Poors.

Un articolo dell'Economist che cerca di spiegare perchè secondo molti analisti la prima vittima del contagio dovrebbe proprio essere il Portogallo. Scrive l'Economist:

One answer is that Portugal’s biggest problem is not primarily fiscal. It concerns growth—or the lack of it. Real GDP growth over the decade since Portugal joined the euro has been the slowest in the zone, despite a boom in Spain, its main trading partner. The country avoided a property bubble of the kind that burst so disastrously in Spain and Ireland. Though it doesn’t help much, Portugal’s already slow growth also made it less vulnerable to the global recession. “Spain was the wild tiger of Europe and had much further to fall when the recession came,” says João Talone, a private-equity manager. “Portuguese companies were already used to extracting value in a difficult climate.”  (...) 

A slow-moving bureaucracy, inefficient courts, poor schools and state-supported pockets of the economy protected from competition combine to hold Portugal back. Businessmen moan about rigid labour laws, which there is little political will to reform. Portugal has one of Europe’s toughest employee-protection regimes.

In short, Portugal is indeed different from Greece. But if the markets decided to put this to the test, chronic low growth, a drastic loss of competitiveness and high public and private indebtedness are all weaknesses which could swiftly undermine the protection that being different is meant to bring.

Infine un articolo del New York TImes ancora sulla Grecia e sulle conseguenze del downgrade. Scrive il NYTimes:

A major ratings agency cut Greece’s debt to junk level on Tuesday, warning that bondholders could face losses of up to 50 percent of their holdings in a restructuring. The agency also downgraded Portugal’s debt by two notches.

Leading stock indexes across Europe plunged by 2.5 to 6 percent, and the euro fell to a recent low, for a 13 percent decline against the dollar since December. The Dow Jones industrial average slumped 213.04 points, to 10,991.99, a fall of 1.9 percent.

The downgrades, by Standard & Poor’s, pushed up the interest rates that Portugal must pay on its 10-year bonds to a high, and Spain’s costs rose, too. Investors are already demanding nearly 10 percent in returns on Greek’s 10-year bonds. The cost of insuring all three countries’ debt against a default are also at record levels — a clear sign that investors are shunning them.

“The situation is deteriorating rapidly, and it’s not clear who’s in a position to stop the Greeks from going into a default situation,” said Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. “That creates a spillover effect.”

The problem is that it is not just Greece, which expects to receive international aid, but Portugal, Spain and other countries that must issue more debt soon.

“The issue is rollover risk," said Jonathan Tepper of Variant Perception, a research group based in London and known for its bearish views on Spain. "Spain has to issue new debt plus roll over existing debt to the tune of 225 billion euros this year. Fourty-five percent of their debt is held by foreigners so they are dependent on the kindness of strangers.”

(...) On Tuesday, a vice president of the European Central Bank said that the euro zone was facing its biggest challenge since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1997. Austerity measures in Greece and Portugal are already causing unrest there. Transportation workers in both countries protested on Tuesday, leaving train stations deserted because of strikes.

Officials from Standard & Poor’s said the main reason for downgrading the debt of Greece and Portugal was the prospect that forced austerity packages would be an even bigger drag on economic growth.

It is the most vicious of circles: stagnating economies are forced to cut back more, which reduces their ability to generate revenue and thus pay off their debts. As part of the euro zone, these countries do not have the ability to print their own money to stimulate growth and bolster exports, so increasing debt and an increasing prospect of default result.

Though they are under the most immediate pressure, Greece and Portugal are relatively small economies.

Given Spain’s size, its debt crisis is seen by many as the looming problem for world markets. On the surface, its debt load appears manageable. Its debt relative to gross domestic product, the broadest measure of its economy, is 54 percent — compared with 120 percent for Greece and 80 percent for Portugal.

But what Spain does have is the highest twin deficit, or combined budget and current account deficits, of any country in the world except Iceland, a reflection of how dependent it is on increasingly fickle foreign investors for financing. Spain has 225 billion euros in debt coming due this year — an amount that is about the size of Greece’s economy.

The base of investors willing to invest in the bonds of Spain and other distressed European countries is dwindling. Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of Pimco, one of the largest bond investors in the world, has said publicly that his firm is not a buyer of Greek debt and other Pimco executives have said they are underweight debt from peripheral Europe.

Given the losses that European investors have taken on Greek, Spanish and Portuguese bonds in recent months, it seems doubtful that such investors can be relied on to provide the capital these countries need.

Predicting where and when the next ripple will be felt is an inexact science. During the Asian crisis in 1997, Russia’s debt default took the world by surprise.

Some even worry that the next debt crisis may materialize closer to home — in the United Kingdom or even the United States, where budget deficits and debt burdens are growing. Both countries are now issuing debt at reasonable levels of 4 percent. The long run of cheap financing may be coming to an end, though, even for the most creditworthy countries.