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Archive for the ‘Euro’ Category

Oh no, it’s just Greece, right?  Uh, wrong.

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary is seeking an international credit line of 15 to 20 billion ($20 to $26.3 billion) euros, the secretary of state heading the prime minister’s office, Mihaly Varga, was quoted on Saturday as saying.

Hungary is seeking backup from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to reassure investors it has financing even if it gets cut off from debt markets later this year.

Uh huh.  Remember that Hungary has been having some wee problems of late with regard to its government, the EU and IMF.

Hungarian bond yields are over 11%, which is not good at all in a world of ZIRP.  This effectively precludes most borrowing.

The problem with these pleas and “rescues” is that they continue to belie the real problem, which is that governments cannot continually borrow more than they tax.  It is simply not possible on a long-term basis for this to work, as compounding eventually gets you.  It might not immediately, but in the longer run it will with certainty.

Do I expect Hungary to eschew that which it must?  Not right away, and perhaps not at all until there’s a disaster, but in the end all governments must reconcile their budgets to this underlying fact — like it or not.

As a refresher course in French politics, presidential elections are a two-stage process. In the first round, voters select from candidates of all the political parties. The second round pits the top two vote getters against each other.

Never before in history has a sitting French president polled so low 100 days before the first round of votes.

 
The video is as of January 13. The first round of elections is April 22, 2012. Here is the pertinent snip.

“Sarkozy’s ratings compared to previous presidents make grim readings. Sarkozy is not shown leading the first round of voting. We’ve never seen a president is such a weak position in terms of public opinion. If polls are to believed come May 6, the country will have a new head of state”
 
“Let the Euro Die” Candidate Trails Sarkozy by Slight 2 Percentage Points

Bloomberg reports Sarkozy Just Ahead of Le Pen in French Presidency Election Poll.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is just two percentage points ahead of anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen less than four months before the presidential election, an Ifop poll for Paris Match showed.

In the first round, to be held April 22, Socialist candidate Francois Hollande would finish first with 27 percent, followed by Sarkozy with 23.5 percent and National Front candidate Le Pen on 21.5 percent, the poll published today showed today.

The top two vote getters then go to a decisive run-off on May 6, in which Hollande would beat Sarkozy 57 percent to 43 percent, according to the poll. Ifop polled 943 voters Jan. 9- 12. No margin of error was given.

Will Sarkozy Survive the First Round Vote?

Bloomberg reporter Gregory Viscusi depicts Le Pen as “anti-immigration“. Yes, that is true. However, Viscusi failed to mention Le Pen’s main claim to fame.
 
Le Pen is running on a platform to “Let the Euro Die” as I commented on September 8, 2011.
See link for Le Pen’s comments. This is what I said at the time.

German  Chancellor Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, Italian Prime  Minister Berlusconi, and Greek President George Papandreou will all be  gone after the next set of elections.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy may bite the dust as well, and if he does it may be to a vehemently anti-Euro candidate.

All it takes is one government to say “to hell with this” and the whole mess unravels.

The  current set of politicians all want to “save the Euro”. But what did  the Euro buy Greece, Ireland, Spain, or Portugal except misery?

Even German and Finnish voters wonder what it bought them.

Zapatero, Berlusconi, and Papandreou are now gone. You can kiss Merkel and Sarkozy goodbye as well.

Le Pen would not likely win a runoff with Hollande. Socialists dominate French politics. However, Sarkozy will not survive and Hollande has vowed to rework the Merkel-Sarkozy agreement.

Think that is going to fly? In what timeframe?
 
Eurozone About to Become Unglued

All of the agreements hammed out by two arrogant but tough-as-nails and widely respected leaders of Germany and France will fail. Whoever replaces Merkel and Sarkozy will not have the same respect and both will soon be gone.

Politics suggests that the Eurozone is about to become unglued.
 
Mike  “Mish”  Shedlock

The European debt crisis has just gone to an entirely new level.  Just when it seemed like things may be stabilizing somewhat, we get news of huge financial bombs being dropped all over Europe.  Very shortly after U.S. financial markets closed on Friday, S&P announced credit downgrades for nine European nations.  This included both France and Austria losing their cherished AAA credit ratings.  When the credit rating of a country gets slashed, that is a signal to investors that they should start demanding higher interest rates when they invest in the debt of that nation.  Over the past year it has become significantly more expensive for many European nations to borrow money, and these new credit downgrades certainly are certainly not going to help matters.  Quite a few financially troubled nations in Europe are very dependent on the ability to borrow huge piles of cheap money, and as debt becomes more expensive that is going to push many of them over the edge.    Yesterday I wrote about 22 signs that we are on the verge of a devastating global recession, and unfortunately that list just got a whole lot longer.

Over the past several months we have seen quite a few credit downgrades all over Europe, but we have never seen anything quite like what S&P just did.  Standard & Poor’s unleashed a barrage of credit downgrades on Friday….

-France was downgraded from AAA to AA+

-Austria was downgraded from AAA to AA+

-Italy was downgraded two more levels from A to BBB+

-Spain was downgraded two more levels

-Portugal was downgraded two more levels

-Cyprus was downgraded two more levels

-Malta was downgraded one level

-Slovakia was downgraded one level

-Slovenia was downgraded one level

This is really bad news for anyone that was hoping that things in Europe would start to get better.  Borrowing costs for many of these financially troubled nations are going to go even higher.

In addition, there was another really, really troubling piece of news that came out of Europe on Friday.

It was announced that negotiations between the Greek government and private holders of Greek debt have broken down.

The Institute of International Finance has been representing private bondholders in negotiations with the Greek government about the terms of a “voluntary haircut” that is supposed to be a key component of the “rescue plan” for Greece.

Greece desperately needs private bondholders to agree to accept a “voluntary haircut” of 50% or more.  Without some sort of an agreement, the finances of the Greek government will collapse very quickly.

For now, negotiations have failed.  There is hope that negotiations will resume soon, but Greece is rapidly running out of time.

The Institute of International Finance issued a statement on Friday which said the following….

“Unfortunately, despite the efforts of Greece’s leadership, the proposal put forward … which involves an unprecedented 50% nominal reduction of Greece’s sovereign bonds in private investors’ hands and up to €100 billion of debt forgiveness — has not produced a constructive consolidated response by all parties, consistent with a voluntary exchange of Greek sovereign debt”

The IIF says that negotiations are “paused for reflection” right now, but they are hoping that they will be able to resume before too long….

“Under the circumstances, discussions with Greece and the official sector are paused for reflection on the benefits of a voluntary approach”

Something needs to be done, because Greece is experiencing a complete and total financial meltdown.

Back at the end of July, the yield on one year Greek bonds was sitting at about 40 percent.  Today, the yield on one year Greek bonds is up to an astounding 396 percent.

That is how fast these things can move when confidence disappears.

Those living in the United States should keep that in mind.

Unfortunately, Greece is not the only European nation that is completely falling apart financially.

We aren’t hearing much about it in the U.S. media, but Hungary is a total basket case right now.  The credit rating of Hungary was reduced to junk status some time ago, and now the IMF and the EU are threatening to withhold financial aid from Hungary if the Hungarians do not run their country exactly as they are being told to do.

In particular, the IMF and the EU are absolutely furious that Hungary is trying to take more political control over the central bank in Hungary.  The following is from an article in the Daily Mail….

The European Union has stepped up pressure on Hungary over the country’s refusal to implement austerity policies and threatened legal action over its new constitution.

The warnings escalated the standoff between Budapest and the EU, as Hungary negotiates fresh financial aid from Europe and the International Monetary Fund.

Over the past months, the country’s credit rating has been cut to junk by all three major rating agencies, unemployment is 10.6 percent and the country may be facing a recession.

But bailout negotiations broke down after Budapest refused to cut public spending and implemented a new constitution reasserting political control over its central bank.

Slovenia is a total mess right now as well.  The following comes from a recent article posted on EUObserver.com….

Slovenia’s borrowing costs have reached ‘bail-out territory’ after lawmakers rejected the premier-designate, putting the euro-country on the line for further downgrades by ratings agencies.

Zoran Jankovic, the mayor of Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, fell four votes short of the 46 needed to be approved as prime minister by the parliament, with the country’s president set to re-cast his name or propose someone new within two weeks.

Some time ago, I warned that 2012 was going to be a more difficult year for the global economy than 2011 was.

Well, things are certainly starting to shape up that way.

Europe is heading for some really hard times.  What is about to happen in Europe is going to shake the entire global financial system.

Those that live in the United States should take notice, because the U.S. financial system is far more fragile than most people believe.

Our banking system is a gigantic mountain of debt, leverage and risk and it could fall again at any time.

In addition, the U.S. debt problem is bigger than it has ever been before.

For example, did you know that the federal government is on a pace to borrow 6.2 trillion dollars by the end of Obama’s first term in office?

That is more debt than the U.S. government accumulated from the time that George Washington became president to the time that George W. Bush became president.

For now the U.S. government is still able to borrow giant piles of super cheap money, but such a situation does not last forever.

Just ask Greece.

Already there are indications that foreigners are starting to dump large amounts of U.S. debt.  If this trickle becomes a flood things could become very bad for the United States very quickly.

We are on the verge of some very bad things.  The kinds of “financial bombs” that we saw dropped today are going to become much more frequent.  As governments, banks and investors scramble to survive, we are going to see extreme amounts of volatility in the financial marketplace.

Things are not going to be “normal” again for a really, really long time.

Hold on tight, because 2012 is going to be a very interesting year.

The Economic Collapse

Countries around the world, particularly in the West, are hopelessly in the red, with debt rising every day. Even worse, politicians seem paralyzed, unable — or unwilling — to do anything about it. It is a global disaster that threatens the immediate future. But there might be a way out.

When Carlo Ponzi, a dishwasher from Parma, Italy, immigrated to the United States in 1903, he had $2.50 in his pocket and a million-dollar dream in his head. He was able to fulfill that dream, at least temporarily.

The scheme continued. Ten investors turned into 100, and 100 investors turned into 1,000, until the scam was discovered. Ponzi spent many years in prison, and he died a pauper in 1949. But his name remains important to every criminologist today — and every economist.

Economists use the term “Ponzi scheme” to describe a disastrous mechanism in which someone pays off old debt by constantly taking on new debt. The repayment of the debt — the most recent loans, plus interest — is deferred into the distant future, fueling an eternal process of debt refinancing.

It’s the classic pyramid, or snowball scheme, practiced by thousands of con artists after Ponzi. The most spectacular case was that of New York financier Bernard Madoff, who was responsible for losses of about $20 billion by 2008. Snowballs are set into motion, becoming bigger and bigger as they roll along. In the worst case, they end in an avalanche that takes everything else with it.

Western economies have not acted much differently than the fraudster Madoff. In 2011, they were virtually inundated with bad news and old sins. Almost everyone — in Europe and in the United States — has been living beyond their means, from consumers to politicians to entire countries. Governments have become servants to the markets upon which they have become dependent.

Bigger Snowballs

On an almost weekly basis, the reports have become more worrisome and the sums of money involved more staggering. Many are now concerned that, as 2012 begins, the snowballs will only get bigger — and roll faster:

• There are the banks in Europe, which will have to repay about €725 billion in combined debt in 2012, including €280 billion in the first quarter alone. With the private market largely off-limits to them, the banks have had to rely on the European Central Bank (ECB) to bail them out. The ECB is now lending them fresh money — as much as they want — at minimal interest rates.
• There is a country like Italy, which has an exorbitant amount of debt to service at the beginning of the year. About €160 billion in debt will mature between January and April; the total for the entire year is about €300 billion. The government in Rome is already having trouble finding buyers for its bonds.
• There is the ECB, which is creating billions essentially out of nothing. On an almost weekly basis, it is acquiring bonds that no one else would buy from Portugal, Spain and Italy and, in the process, it is turning into a reluctant financier of nations. This financial aid already amounts to €211 billion.
• There is the European Commission, whose president, José Manuel Barroso, supports the use of so-called euro bonds. These bonds, which would be issued jointly by the countries in the monetary union, would amount to an accumulation of collective debt on top of national debts.
• There is the €440-billion euro bailout fund, of which €150 billion are already promised to Greece, Ireland and Portugal. But because this amount is still not enough, the finance ministers have decided to “leverage” the fund, a seemingly harmless term for bringing in additional lenders, thereby multiplying the volume of credit.
• And then there is the United States, which only remains solvent because the Congress in Washington keeps raising the debt ceiling. The American government already owes its creditors about $15 trillion. Stay tuned for the next installment.

In other words, there are plenty of snowballs that have started rolling and getting larger with each rotation. Some aspects of the economic system in the industrialized countries resemble a gigantic Ponzi scheme. The difference is that this version is completely legal.

Living on Credit

Old debts are paid with new ones, with borrowers giving not the slightest thought to repayment. This has been going on for a long time, far too long, in fact. It was only with the eruption of the financial crisis in 2007 and the outrageously expensive bailouts of banks and economies that many people realized that the entire world is living on credit.

“Debt is rising to points that are above anything we have seen, except during major wars,” economists at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) concluded in a recent study. “The debt problems facing advanced economies are even worse than we thought.”

This is even true of seemingly rock-solid Germany. In the third quarter of 2011, German public debt amounted to €2.028 trillion, an increase of €10.8 billion over the debt level just three months earlier. Germany’s public debt grew by about €120 million a day — or more than €80,000 a minute — between July and September.

To make matters worse, this increase occurred in a quarter marked by plentiful tax revenues and a significant decline in unemployment. But debts increase independently of whether times happen to be good or bad.

The End of the System

The same thing is happening almost everywhere. In the first decade of this century, which was by no means a weak period economically, countries more than doubled the level of debt — to an estimated grand total of $55 trillion by the end of 2011.

The United States leads the pack with its national debt of $15 trillion, followed by Japan with about $13 trillion. Germany’s €2 trillion looks almost paltry by comparison. Today, the three major rating agencies award their highest credit rating to only 14 countries in the world.

The fact that nations are continually spending more than they take in cannot turn out well in the long run. The word “credit” comes from the Latin “credere,” which means “to believe.” The system will only function as long as lenders believe in borrowers. Once the belief in the creditworthiness of borrowers is destroyed, hardly anyone will be willing to buy their securities.

When that happens, the system is finished.

This is precisely what happened with Carlo Ponzi’s scheme. And now entire countries are suffering suspiciously similar fates. They are no longer being taken seriously.

Meanwhile, it is also flaring up in the United States once again, with Democrats and Republicans blaming each other for the nation’s debts. Instead of taking responsibility and consolidating the budget, President Barack Obama prefers to rail against the Europeans’ approach to crisis management. They, in turn, refuse to tolerate any interference, especially from the United States, which they blame for being the source of the financial crisis in the first place.

In this fashion, the Old World and the New World are tossing the blame back and forth, while confidence in politics and its ability to avert collapse is dwindling on both sides of the Atlantic. Is there still a way to stop the avalanche, or at least to diminish is destructive force? Why do countries that collect taxes have to borrow money in the first place?

Part 2: Of Good Debt and Bad Debt

Alexander Jung – Spiegel

The euro is a dying currency.  On Thursday, the EUR/USD fell below 1.28 for the first time since September 2010.  In fact, as I write this the EUR/USD is sitting at 1.2791.  Back in July, the EUR/USD was over 1.45.  But this is just the beginning.  The euro is going to go a lot lower.  At this point, there are several major European nations that are on the verge of default, the European financial system is overflowing with debt and toxic assets, and most major European banks are leveraged about as badly as Lehman Brothers was when it collapsed.  Most Americans simply do not grasp the gravity of what is happening.  Just because the Dow is sitting above 12000 and a few U.S. economic numbers have improved slightly does not mean that everything is going to be okay.  As I wrote about recently, the EU has a bigger economy than we do and they have a bigger banking system than we do.  U.S. banks are massively exposed to European sovereign debt and European banking debt.  When the financial system of Europe collapses and the euro falls apart it is going to rock the entire planet.  So you better look out below – the euro is coming down and it is coming down hard.  After the euro implodes, nothing is every going to be the same again.

So how far are we going to see the euro decline?

Julian Jessop of Capital Economics expects the euro to fall much further….

The relative strength of the recent economic data from the US is supporting the dollar more generally, and we expect this divergence to persist as the euro-zone slides into a deep and prolonged recession. Above all, doubts about the very survival of the euro itself are likely to remain a drag on the currency. We therefore continue to expect the euro to fall to around $1.10 by the end of the year.

Others are even more pessimistic.

As I have written about previously, the head of global bond portfolio management at PIMCO believes that the euro is going to go even lower than that….

“Parity with the dollar next year is not out of the question”

Can you imagine that?

1 dollar = 1 euro?

Don’t think that it can’t happen.

But the decline of the euro is just part of the story.  The truth is that Europe is on the verge of a financial collapse that could end up dwarfing the financial crisis of 2008.

Sadly, most Americans have no idea what has been going on in Europe the past few days….

-The stock of the biggest bank in Italy, UniCredit, is absolutely collapsing.  Shares of UniCredit fell 14 percent on Wednesday and 17 percent on Thursday.

-Shares of another major Italian bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, fell 7.3 percent on Thursday.

-Shares of three major French banks all fell by at least 5 percent on Thursday.

-Even shares of German banks are falling like a rock.  Shares of Commerzbank fell 4.5 percent on Thursday and shares of Deutsche Bank fell 5.6 percent on Thursday.

-The yield on 5 years Italian bonds is back over 6 percent and the yield on 10 year Italian bonds is back over 7 percent.  Analysts all over Europe insist that that the Italian debt situation is not sustainable if rates stay this high.

-Italy’s youth unemployment rate has hit the highest level ever.

This is mind blowing news.

But what is the top headline on USA Today right now?

“Employers Impose Bans On Smokers”

These are some of the other top headlines on USA Today right now….

“Automakers Rush To Offer Apps In Your Car”

“Bargain Season At Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s”

“Does Your Dog Understand You? Study Says Maybe”

Is that what passes as news in this country?

A financial meltdown of historic proportions is happening in Europe and you cannot even find anything about it on the front page of USA Today.

Amazing.

All of us need to snap out of our television-induced comas and start waking up.

Things are about to get really bad for the global financial system.

At this point so much confidence has been lost in the euro that even the Council on Foreign Relations is admitting that the euro is a failure….

The euro should now be recognized as an experiment that failed. This failure, which has come after just over a dozen years since the euro was introduced, in 1999, was not an accident or the result of bureaucratic mismanagement but rather the inevitable consequence of imposing a single currency on a very heterogeneous group of countries. The adverse economic consequences of the euro include the sovereign debt crises in several European countries, the fragile condition of major European banks, high levels of unemployment across the eurozone, and the large trade deficits that now plague most eurozone countries.

If even the CFR is throwing in the towel, that should tell you something about what is about to happen to the euro.

There is a very real possibility that we could see the euro break up at some point during the next couple of years.

It now seems that a report produced a while back by Credit Suisse’s Fixed Income Research unit was right on target….

“We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it. That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks.”

The European debt crisis just continues to get worse and worse.  None of the solutions that European leaders have tried have worked.  We are rapidly approaching the meltdown phase of this crisis.

As I have written about previously, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is happening in Europe.  The equation is simple….

Brutal austerity + toxic levels of government debt + rising bond yields + a lack of confidence in the financial system + banks that are massively overleveraged + a massive credit crunch = A financial implosion of historic proportions

Unfortunately, what is happening right now in Europe is eventually going to happen in the United States as well.

As I wrote about yesterday, U.S. debt is a ticking time bomb that is going to devastate the entire global economy at some point.  Nobody knows when the implosion will happen, but everyone knows that it is inevitable.

When Europe falls apart financially, that is going to make our own financial system much less stable.  What is happening in Europe could turn our “limited recovery” into a “major recession” almost overnight.

So keep your eye on the euro.

If the euro keeps going down, that is going to be really bad news for the global economy.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the decline of the euro is just getting started.

Hold on to your hats.

The Economic Collapse

Do you believe that 2012 will be more difficult for the global economy than 2011 was?  Well, that is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes.  The woman that has become the most important politician in Europe recently declared that 2012 “will no doubt be more difficult than 2011″.  The funny thing is that she has generally been one of the most optimistic public figures in Europe throughout this debt crisis.  But now even Merkel is openly admitting that 2012 is going to be a really, really bad year.  Sadly, most Americans simply do not understand how important Europe is or how interconnected the global financial system has become.  The United States actually has a smaller population and a smaller economy than the EU does.  In fact, the EU has an economy that is nearly as large as the economies of the United States and China combined.  The EU also is home to more Fortune 500 companies that the U.S. is, and the European banking system is far larger than the U.S. banking system.  Anyone that does not believe that a financial collapse in Europe will have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy is living in a fantasy world.  Americans better start paying attention to what is going on over there, because we are about to be broadsided by a massive financial tsunami originating out of Europe.

It is not just Angela Merkel that is warning that 2012 is going to be a difficult year.  The following are several more very prominent individuals that are warning that bad times are on the way….

*Citigroup’s chief equity strategist, Tobias Levkovich, recently made the following statement….

“Europe is likely to have a meaningful recession in 2012″

*Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, recently said that we could soon see conditions “reminiscent of the 1930s depression” and that no country on earth “will be immune to the crisis”.

* Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup, recently said the following….

“Time is running out fast.  I think we have maybe a few months — it could be weeks, it could be days — before there is a material risk of a fundamentally unnecessary default by a country like Spain or Italy which would be a financial catastrophe dragging the European banking system and North America with it.”

* Even Paul Krugman of the New York Times is sounding quite apocalyptic….

“At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France.”

I have written quite a bit recently about all of the signs that parts of Europe have already entered a recession.

Well, in just the past few days even more numbers have been released that indicate that a recession has now begun in Europe…..

-Manufacturing activity in the euro zone has fallen for five months in a row.

-Bad loans in Spain recently hit a 17-year high and the unemployment rate is at a 15-year high.

-Government revenues in Spain have not been up to the level that was expected.  The Spanish government just announced that the budget deficit for 2011 is going to end up being much larger than anticipated.

-Unfortunately, it appears that virtually all sectors of the Spanish economy seem to be slowing down….

The central bank said early indicators show that Spanish tourism, exports, spending and investment have been hit, which is likely to have led to a contraction in GDP in the fourth quarter.

Of course one of the most alarming things happening in Europe is the rapid contraction of the money supply.  It is almost impossible to avoid a recession when the money supply shrinks substantially.  The following comes from an article a few days ago in the Telegraph….

Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors said the ECB’s “narrow” M1 money figures – tracked for clues on shorter-term spending patterns – show a drastic divergence between the North and South of the eurozone. “Parts of the core may avoid recession but there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the periphery. Real M1 deposits in Greece and Portugal have been falling at an annual rate of roughly 20pc over the last six months,” he said.

Right now, the rest of Europe is heading down the same road that Greece has been traveling on for several years.

Today, Greece is essentially bankrupt and is experiencing a full-blown depression.  At this point, nobody in Europe is even pretending that Greece is going to be okay.  The following comes from a recent Der Spiegel article….

“With debts amounting to 150 percent of GNP, Greece is de facto bankrupt. Over the course of 2011, even the leading representatives of the euro zone finally accepted this fact — after having claimed its opposite a year previously.”

Greece desperately needs relief from all of this debt, but the other nations in the eurozone do not want to provide that relief.  Instead, it looks like Germany is going to ask private creditors to take an even bigger “haircut” on Greek debt than previously proposed.  The following comes from a recent Bloomberg article….

“Germany’s government declined to comment on a report that it may push for creditors to accept bigger losses on Greek debt than previously agreed upon, saying only that talks on lowering Greece’s debt level may end soon.

Germany is studying a proposal to write down 75 percent of Greek government bonds held by private creditors as part of a planned debt swap to ensure greater debt sustainability”

If Germany ends up publicly proposing this, it will shatter what confidence is left in European sovereign bonds.

There is not that much of a difference between a 75 percent haircut and a full default.  If investors are forced to take a 75 percent haircut on Greek debt, then the financial world will have to start wondering if it is just a matter of time before giant haircuts are proposed for Italian debt, Spanish debt, Portuguese debt and Irish debt as well.

Hopefully Germany will not be this stupid.

But something has to be done about Greece.  Right now the IMF is projecting that Greek debt will reach 200% of GDP at some point in 2012 if changes are not made.

Of course Greece could cut government spending even more, but the cuts that have already been made have pushed that country into a total economic nightmare.

In a recent article, I discussed how the brutal austerity measures that we have seen have plunged the economy of Greece into a full-blown depression….

Just look at what happened to Greece.  Greece was forced to raise taxes and implement brutal austerity measures.  That caused the economy to slow down and tax revenues to decline and so government debt figures did not improve as much as anticipated.  So Greece was forced to implement even more brutal austerity measures.  Well, that caused the economy to slow down even more and tax revenues declined again.  In Greece this cycle has been repeated several times and now Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression.  100,000 businesses have closed and a third of the population is living in poverty.  But now Germany and France intend to impose the “Greek solution” on the rest of Europe.

The “solution” that the EU and the IMF have imposed on Greece is not working.

So why are all of the other troubled nations in Europe being pushed down the same path?

Just consider the following statistics out of Greece….

*The unemployment rate for those under the age of 24 is 39 percent.

*The number of suicides has increased by 40 percent in the past year.

*Thefts and burglaries nearly doubled between 2007 and 2009.

Is that what we want to see throughout the rest of Europe?

The financial path that Europe is now on was criticized very harshly recently in the New York Times….

“Every government in Europe with the exception of Germany is bending over backwards to prove to the market that they won’t hesitate to do what it takes,” said Charles Wyplosz, a professor of economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. “We’re going straight into a wall with this kind of policy. It’s sheer madness.”

Yes, it is sheer madness.

Right now, authorities in Europe are desperately trying to keep a lid on this crisis.  The European Central Bank has been trying really hard to keep the yield on 10 year Italian bonds from rising above the very important 7 percent level.  But unless the ECB is prepared to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of euros buying up Italian debt in 2012, the yield on Italian bonds is likely to go much higher eventually.

At this point, it is hard to find any economist that is optimistic about Europe or about the euro in 2012.

One of the leading economic think tanks in Europe, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, is extremely pessimistic about the future of the euro as we enter 2012….

“It now looks as though 2012 will be the year when the euro starts to break up”

In fact, they say that there is a 99 percent chance that the eurozone will break up within the next ten years.

Terry Smith, the chief executive of Tullett Prebon, recently used language that was even more apocalyptic….

“If the eurozone crisis could be solved by confident pronouncements, it would already be saved. I would be shocked if Greece does not leave the eurozone in 2012 and this does not lead the markets to test the resolve to defend the positions of Portugal, Spain, Italy and, ultimately, France.”

Yes, there are a whole lot of people out there saying that 2012 will be more difficult than 2011.

Fortunately, there are a few nations out there that are choosing to try some different things.

We aren’t hearing much about it in the United States, but right now Hungary is actually taking some measures to get their central bank under control.

The following comes from a recent article in the Telegraph….

Hungary passed laws for its central bank in a move that experts warned could jeopardise its chances of securing international bail-out funds if it needs them. Officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have warned about the rules which will undermine the independence of the central bank. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban the country would not bow to the “European fashion that the central bank must be in a sacred state of independence”.

Of course the IMF is absolutely furious about this.  The IMF is warning that there will be no bailouts for Hungary if they mess with the “independence” of the central bank.

But hopefully more countries out there will start going after their central banks.  The truth is that it is the central banks and the endless debt spirals that they create that got us into this mess in the first place.

If central banking truly worked, Europe would not be in such a massive amount of trouble.  The euro would not be dropping like a rock and the European financial system would not be paralyzed by panic and fear.

The reality is that central banking does not work and it a colossal failure.

For example, in the United States the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created, and the U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created.

It is amazing that there is anyone out there that is still willing to defend central banking.

2012 is going to be one of the most interesting years that we have seen in a long, long time.

Yes, 2012 will be more difficult than 2011 was, but it will also be a great opportunity to wake people up.

Our world is changing faster than ever before, and the Internet has made it possible for average people such as you and I to significantly participate in that change.

Resolve to do what you can to make a difference in this world in 2012, because time is rapidly running out.

The Economic Collapse