Sovereign Debt is Everybody’s Problem

Source: USAWatchdog
Greg Hunter

The most pressing problem on the planet right now is the European sovereign debt crisis.  It is a gigantic highly leveraged mess caused by greedy reckless bankers.  It was nurtured with the help of regulators who turned a blind eye and allowed the problem to mushroom into an uncontrollable financial cancer.  The European Union is struggling to come up with a plan or bailout fund big enough to truly end the crisis, but there is none in sight.  Every time there is a plan, it is shot down or falls apart.  There was talk of Germany backing the EU bailout fund with its gold reserves, but that was rejected by the Germans.  (Germany is the world’s number two holder of gold with 3,412 tonnes.)  Can you blame them?  It is ironic this so-called bailout fund is looking for tangible backing and that world leaders would turn to the yellow metal.  Didn’t they all have a pact to sell gold not so many years back?  This tells me any country with toxic sovereign debt that wants a bailout better be considering putting up its gold reserves.

The first troubled country that comes to mind is Italy.  It has the fourth largest gold reserve in the world with 2,451 tonnes.  Spain is in just as much debt and trouble as Italy, but only has 281 tonnes of gold.  It ranks around 17th on the list.  These two countries have ten times the sour debt of Greece.  I predict Germany will not be the last country to be asked to put up its gold.  I suspect there is not a country on earth that will elect to give up control of its yellow reserves.  What else is there?  I don’t think Italy would put up the island of Sicily for collateral, no more than the U.S. would post the Hawaiian Islands as security for a loan.

They call this a sovereign debt crisis, but it is the banks that are really at the heart of the problem.  This leaves the EU with very limited options.  They can allow the banks holding this sovereign debt to default, or print money to bail them out.  Laws have been passed in Europe that allow the banks to count toxic sovereign debt as an asset.  It is a novel idea–overwhelming debt that doesn’t have a prayer of being fully repaid counted as a store of value.  (Oh wait, what was I thinking, this is the same thing the American government allows U.S. banks to do!)  That means you can also say the sovereign debt crisis is bank solvency crisis.  If you mark all sour debt for what banks can get for it today, many European financial institutions would be insolvent.  End of story.

Denial, Delusion and MSM Disinformation

Source: USAWatchdog
Greg Hunter

What is going on in the world today is both frightening and historic.  It is frightening because the amount of debt accumulated is orders of magnitude more than ever before.  It is historic because the way this finally shakes out will be considered a major turning point in modern history.  I see this, but most people in the world are either in denial, delusional or just a victim of disinformation by the mainstream media (MSM).  If you read this site often, you know I heavily source what I write about.   I do this because I want people to have solid information and analysis.  For example, just last week, a Morgan Stanley analyst named Joachim Fels sent a research note out to clients that talked about the EU sovereign debt crisis.  Here is part of what Mr. Fels said, “This past week, by raising the possibility that a country might (be forced to) leave the euro, core European governments may have set in motion a sequence of events which could potentially lead to runs on sovereigns and banks in peripheral countries that make everything we have seen so far in this crisis look benign.”  (Click here to read the entire story from Zerohedge.com.)   

This Morgan Stanley analyst is talking about bank runs and is painting a calamitous picture of the EU sovereign debt problem.   I believe that most people haven’t a clue about what is going on and how their lives are going to change for the worse.  If they do, then they just refuse to believe that the government will let anything bad happen.  I got a comment from a reader by the name “In4mayshun” on a post I wrote last week titled “Two Financial Nukes Explode.”  It was about MF Global and Greece.  Both situations are far from over and sorted out.  The comment is below: