I rischi incompresi della crisi dell'eurozona

Qualcuno inizia a dire pubblicamente quello che privatamente in molti dicono da un po' di tempo: non è impossibile (benché ancora improbabile) uno sbocco violento per la crisi dell'eurozona

Euro crisis may lead to ‘explosion of violence’ - Darrell Delamaide's Political Capital -
MarketWatch

13 piccoli indiani? Ma gli USA sono AAAA

Dal sito di Standard and Poors i ratings del debito sovrano di qualità: ecco i tredici indiani con ancora la tripla A (ma se si considerano anche realtà più piccole occorre aggiungere anche Guernsey, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Lussemburgo e Singapore).
Qui potete leggere il report di S&P che annuncia il declassamento del debito USA:
è un chiaro voto di sfiducia nei confronti del Presidente, dei deputati e dei senatori:


More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness,
stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political
institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic
challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a
negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
· Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the
gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us
pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be
able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal
consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics any
time soon.
· The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the
long-term rating to 'AA' within the next two years if we see that less
reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new
fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government
debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.


Qui invece trovate un interessante articolo di Felix Salmon che analizza le differenze tra Standard and Poor's and Moody's. Peraltro il principale azionista di Moody's, Warren Buffett, ha dichiarato che gli USA non meritano tre A come rating bensì quattro!

Aggiornamento all'11 giugno 2010

Ecco l'aggiornamento all'11 giugno 2010.

L'ENI più sicura del Tesoro? Secondo Credit Suisse l'Italia è più sicura della Francia!

Sul Financial Times di venerdì scorso, James Mackintosh si domanda che senso abbia per il debito sovrano di un paese essere considerato più rischioso del debito di una società localizzata in quel paese. La domanda, ricorrente nel mondo accademico (ne ho spesso discusso con un amico a Siena) è ormai di attualità con i mercati che prezzano il rischio di molte imprese ben al di sotto di quello dei governi corrispondenti. Scrive Mackintosh: The market appears to be saying that companies such as Italy's Eni, Portugal Telecom, Spain's Telefonica, Greece's Hellenic Telecom and Belgium's Belgacom are less likely to default than their home countries. A naive justification is that large groups could survive a sovereign default; (...) But a more satisfactory explanation is that the flight to quality is having strange effects: investors who still want corporate bonds are flocking to the safest multinationals. Investors wanting a risk-free rate from which to calculate prices for European equities and bonds can still use German bunds. But the odd goings-on in the periphery should act as a warning. A theory built on something that does not exist (qui il riferimento è alla nozione di asset risk-free, centrale in tutta la moderna teoria del portafoglio) is bound to be hard to apply.

Vi segnalo inoltre uno studio di Credit Suisse sui rischi del debito sovrano dal quale l'Italia esce benino:
We present a framework for comparing the sustainability of government
liabilities across developed market countries. Our system goes beyond simple
debt and deficit ratios, adding a host of other less obvious but equally important
factors that ultimately affect whose debt is sustainable.
Such an approach is sorely needed, in our opinion. Past sovereign debt crises
had more to do with structural rigidities (fixed exchange rates, etc.), bad politics
(an inability to make tough decisions, etc.), and severe shocks (wars, etc.) than
with headline debt and deficits. Indeed, war is by far the most common cause
of past sovereign defaults in our developed world sample. Our attempt at
scoring yields the following conclusions about relative debt sustainability:
• The first tier of sovereign debt includes the liabilities of China, Germany,
Switzerland, Australia and Canada. More controversially it also includes the
US, Italy and Japan. In our view these countries have negligible credit risk.
These countries may (and probably do) have some unsustainable liabilities,
but for most this implies much longer-term risks of inflation (indirect default) if
action is not taken to cap or reduce long-term entitlement commitments.
• The second tier includes the UK and arguably France. Credit risk remains
very low for these two, but structural factors suggest slightly greater risks of
debt sustainability issues. For the UK these are most likely to show up in
higher inflation risks; for France the main concern is public sector rigidities
and entitlements.
• The third tier includes Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland. For these four the
risks of actual default are significantly greater, unless and until rules for a
more explicit fiscal and political union within the euro zone are worked out.
This process has now begun in a classic process of crisis-led reform.
• Note that the euro zone GDP-weighted average score is similar to the UK
score. Moreover, all countries in our sample – no matter what their debt level
– would be perfectly creditworthy if primary budget surpluses were the norm.
Naturally, our conclusions rely on many subjective judgements. The framework
is available in spreadsheet form on request, allowing readers to put in their own
country scores and category weightings.

Un buon esempio di rischio politico?

Secondo l'OCSE le prospettive di crescita dell'economia mondiale sono considerevolmente migliorate: infatti economies will grow by 2.7% this year, an increase of 0.8 percentage points from what it thought likely in November last year. (...) the Greek economy to contract by 3.7% this year, (...) The only other OECD economies that will shrink this year are Iceland and Ireland (not shown) and Spain. The euro area will grow much more slowly than America, Australia, Canada or Japan, each of which should see GDP rise by at least 3%.

L'Economist dedica l'apertura proprio alle prospettive di crescita e alla paura di un ritorno della recessione che le previsioni OCSE sembrano allontanare ma che vengono alimentate dall'azione dei governi: 

IT’S not quite a Lehman moment, but financial markets are more anxious today than at any time since the global recovery took hold almost a year ago. The MSCI index of global stocks has fallen by over 15% since mid-April. Treasury yields have tumbled as investors have fled to the relative safety of American government bonds. The three-month inter-bank borrowing rate is at a ten-month high. Gone is the exuberance that greeted the return to growth (see article). Investors are on edge.

What lies behind these jitters? New nervousness about geopolitical risk, with tensions rising in the Korean peninsula, has not helped. But that comes on top of two wider worries.

One is about the underlying health of the world economy. Fears are growing that the global recovery will falter as Europe’s debt crisis spreads, China’s property bubble bursts and America’s stimulus-fuelled rebound peters out. The other concerns government policy. From America’s overhaul of financial regulation to Germany’s restrictions on short-selling, politicians are changing the rules in unpredictable ways (see article). And the scale of sovereign debts has left governments with less room to counter any new downturn; indeed, many of them are being forced into austerity.

The danger is that these fears reinforce each other in a pernicious reversal of the dynamics of 2008-09. Then, co-ordinated government action on a grand scale stopped the global financial crisis from turning into a depression. Now, thanks to incompetence and impotence, governments may become the problem that will drag the world economy down.

Don’t panic

That is far from inevitable. Fears about the fragility of the global recovery are exaggerated. Led by big emerging economies, the world’s output is probably growing at an annual rate of more than 5%, far swifter than most seers expected.

This pace will, and should, slow, not least because the big emerging economies need to tackle rising inflation and possible asset bubbles. (...) America’s growth may also slow as firms stop rebuilding their stocks and the government’s stimulus tapers off. But the world’s biggest economy does not seem on the verge of a second recession. (...) Growth prospects look grimmest in Europe. Yet even there the likely immediate outcome of the euro zone’s crisis is the enfeeblement of an already weak recovery, rather than a sudden slump. The region’s profligate economies will struggle for longer as austerity kicks in. But waning confidence will be mitigated by the boost that exports receive from the euro’s plunge.

Look only at those probable short-term prospects and it is hard to see why financial markets are suddenly in such a lather. The reason is that the risks of a far worse outcome have risen, and those risks lie mainly with governments.

(...) The world is nervous for good reason. Although the fundamentals are reasonably good, the judgment of politicians is often unreasonably bad. Right now that is what poses the biggest risk to the world economy.

Sempre dall'Economist vi segnalo tre articoli sulla riforma finanziaria (sia negli Stati Uniti sia le negoziazioni preliminari alla definizione di Basilea 3): 

• la commissione bicamerale americana responsabile di pervenire ad un accordo sulla riforma finanziaria inizierà tra pochi giorni la sua attività con l'obiettivo di consentire la firma presidenziale entro il 4 luglio; 
• come costruire un sistema bancario internazionale che resista ai futuri shock di liquidità...
• ...senza mettere in ginocchio la redditività delle banche?