Voorspeller kredietcrisis: 'Euro zal uiteenspatten'

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Voorspeller kredietcrisis: ‘Euro zal uiteenspatten’

Van onze verslaggever Evert Nieuwenhuis
gepubliceerd op 27 februari 2009 17:57, bijgewerkt op 27 februari 2009 18:10

AMSTERDAM - Als het meest onwaarschijnlijke waarheid wordt, kan een investeerder met een vooruitziende blik gouden bergen verdienen. Hayman Advisors, een Amerikaanse investeringsfirma, voorspelt het einde van de euro.

Zo voorspelde Hayman Advisors, een Amerikaanse investeringsfirma, in 2006 dat de Amerikaanse hypotheekmarkt het ravijn in zou donderden. Hoongelach alom. Dergelijke doemscenario’s waren ondenkbaar.

Hayman was echter overtuigd van het eigen gelijk en speculeerde op de waardeval van de subprime hypotheken, de bron van de kredietcrisis. Het leverde de investeerders uit Texas maar liefst 500 miljoen dollar winst op.

Ook nu voorspelt Hayman het ondenkbare: de eurozone zal uiteenspatten.

Volgens Richard Howard, topman van Hayman, is de tienjarige Europese munt geen lang leven meer beschoren. ‘Er is geen stoppen meer aan. De euro verkeert in een neerwaartse spiraal’, zei Howard tegen persbureau Bloomberg. Om er fijntjes aan toe te voegen: ‘Iedereen zei dat de subprime-markt nooit zou instorten – en dat gebeurde toch. Nu zegt iedereen exact hetzelfde over de euro.’ Howard wilde overigens niet vertellen wat zijn voorspelling betekent voor zijn beleggingsportefeuille.

Niemand zal ontkennen dat de euro onder zware druk staat. Eurolanden als Spanje, Italië, Griekenland, Ierland en Oostenrijk hebben om verschillende redenen de grootste moeite het hoofd boven water te houden. Begrotingstekorten komen boven de afgesproken 3 procent en de rente die betaald moet worden op staatsobligaties dreigt voor enkele landen onbetaalbaar te worden omdat investeerders de risico’s op wanbetaling steeds groter achten. Bovendien staan vele Europese overheden garant voor water makende banken terwijl de storm van de kredietcrisis nog lang niet gaat liggen. Wanneer een land kopje onder gaat, kunnen de Europese broeders voor hun eigen hachje kiezen en de euro opgeven.

Dit is het scenario dat Howard voorspelt. Hij denkt dat Duitsland, Europa’s grootste economie met verkiezingen voor de deur, liever de eigen economie redt dan die van landen als Oostenrijk, Italië en Griekenland. De euro verliest aanzien en vooral aan waarde, en voor je het weet rolt de D-mark weer over de toonbanken.

De Duitse minister van Financiën, Peer Steinbrück, zegt herhaaldelijk dat het zover niet zal komen. De president van de Europese Centrale Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, verzekert dat ‘de euro geen zwakke schakel kent’.

Howard van Hayman houdt voet bij stuk. ‘Hoe slechter het met de eurolanden en de euro gaat, hoe kleiner de consequenties om de munt op te geven.’

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Ex-Bundesbank Chief Says Euro Nation Default Possible (Update2)

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Former Bundesbank President Karl Otto Poehl said smaller members of the euro region are more likely to default on their debt obligations and would probably be rescued by Germany or the International Monetary Fund.

“The first will certainly be a small country, so that can be managed by the bigger countries or the IMF,” he said in an interview with Sky News. “I think there are countries in Europe which are considering the possibility to leave the eurozone. But this is practically not possible. It would be very expensive.”

Poehl’s comments are the latest to suggest Germany’s economic establishment has become more willing to help rescue fellow members of the euro region facing bankruptcy. That marks a reversal from years in which German policy makers argued the Maastricht Treaty forbid bailouts and reflects growing concern that a default in one country would spark a region-wide crisis.

A deepening recession and bank bailouts are straining the budgets of some countries, sending bond spreads to records and prompting speculation among some investors that individual nations could leave.

The spread between Italian and German bond yields today widened to the largest since 1997. The spreads on Irish, Portuguese and Greek bonds are close to the widest since before they adopted the euro, which was created a decade ago.

Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck heralded the shift in German thinking when he said last week that some euro nations are “getting into difficulties” and that Europe’s biggest economy would show its “ability to act.”

Surging Rates

Poehl, 79, said the high cost of leaving the euro region may help ensure its survival. He also said that one country’s departure doesn’t necessarily mean the bloc as a whole would crumble.

“In the case that a country would leave the eurozone, the foreign exchange rate would go down significantly -- 50 or 60 percent,” said Poehl, Bundesbank president between 1980 and 1991. “Interest rates would go sky high as the markets would lose confidence in the system” and “in the countries that can’t maintain their membership.”

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet last week tried to ease concerns about the euro region’s fiscal health, saying Feb. 20 there is no “weak link” in the bloc.

“I consider that speaking of any particular country as a weak link in the euro area is an error of judgment,” he said. Trichet said today in Dublin Ireland’s economy faces “severe challenges.”

‘Catastrophe’

Not all German experts would back a bailout. Former ECB Chief Economist Otmar Issing told Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung last week that saving a profligate member would be “catastrophic” and undermine the monetary union framework. Current ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark calls the no- bailout rule an “important pillar on which the European Union was founded.”

Former International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Kenneth Rogoff today predicted the default risk may rise once central banks start to raise borrowing costs from record lows.

“Interest rates will rise in two to three years and countries like Italy may face rates of 11 percent again -- will they be able to pay?” he said in a speech near Reykjavik today. “I can well imagine that if we don’t have a large sovereign default, we will see some large sovereigns on the brink of it.”

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Op zaterdag 28 februari 2009 09:21 schreef omapietje het volgende:
En daar waren we met zijn allen al bang voor :
"Dit is het scenario dat Howard voorspelt. Hij denkt dat Duitsland, Europa’s grootste economie met verkiezingen voor de deur, liever de eigen economie redt dan die van landen als Oostenrijk, Italië en Griekenland.".
Een verenigd europe : my ass !

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Op zaterdag 28 februari 2009 10:26 schreef DikkeSmikkel het volgende:

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Yeah right.

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Monetary union has left half of Europe trapped in depression

Events are moving fast in Europe. The worst riots since the fall of Communism have swept the Baltics and the south Balkans. An incipient crisis is taking shape in the Club Med bond markets. S&P has cut Greek debt to near junk. Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish bonds are on negative watch.

Dublin has nationalised Anglo Irish Bank with its half-built folly on North Wall Quay and ¤73bn (£65bn) of liabilities, moving a step nearer the line where markets probe the solvency of the Irish state.

A great ring of EU states stretching from Eastern Europe down across Mare Nostrum to the Celtic fringe are either in a 1930s depression already or soon will be. Greece's social fabric is unravelling before the pain begins, which bodes ill.

Each is a victim of ill-judged economic policies foisted upon them by elites in thrall to Europe's monetary project – either in EMU or preparing to join – and each is trapped.

As UKIP leader Nigel Farage put it in a rare voice of dissent at the euro's 10th birthday triumph in Strasbourg, EMU-land has become a Völker-Kerker – a "prison of nations", to borrow from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This week, Riga's cobbled streets became a war zone. Protesters armed with blocks of ice smashed up Latvia's finance ministry. Hundreds tried to force their way into the legislature, enraged by austerity cuts.

"Trust in the state's authority and officials has fallen catastrophically," said President Valdis Zatlers,
who called for the dissolution of parliament.

In Lithuania, riot police fired rubber-bullets on a trade union march. Dogs chased stragglers into the Vilnia river. A demonstration outside Bulgaria's parliament in Sofia turned violent on Wednesday.

These three states are all members of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM2), the euro's pre-detention cell. They must join. It is written into their EU contracts.

The result of subjecting ex-Soviet catch-up economies to the monetary regime of the leaden West has been massive overheating. Latvia's current account deficit hit 26pc of GDP. Riga property prices surpassed Berlin.

The inevitable bust is proving epic. Latvia's property group Balsts says Riga flat prices have fallen 56pc since mid-2007. The economy contracted 18pc annualised over the last six months.

Leaked documents reveal – despite a blizzard of lies by EU and Latvian officials – that the International Monetary Fund called for devaluation as part of a ¤7.5bn joint rescue for Latvia. Such adjustments are crucial in IMF deals. They allow countries to claw their way back to health without suffering perma-slump.[/b]

This was blocked by Brussels – purportedly because mortgage debt in euros and Swiss francs precluded that option. IMF documents dispute this. A society is being sacrificed on the altar of the EMU project.

Latvians have company. Dublin expects Ireland's economy to contract 4pc this year. The deficit will reach 12pc of GDP by 2010 on current policies. "This is not sustainable," said the treasury. Hence the draconian wage deflation now threatened by the Taoiseach.

The Celtic Tiger has faced the test bravely. No government in Europe has been so honest. It is a tragedy that sterling's crash should have compounded their woes at this moment. To cap it all, Dell is decamping to Poland with 4pc of GDP. Irish wages crept too high during
the heady years when Euroland interest rates of 2pc so beguiled the nation.

Spain lost a million jobs in 2008. Madrid is bracing for 16pc unemployment by year's end.

Private economists fear 25pc before it is over. Spain's wage inflation has priced the workforce out of Europe's markets. EMU logic is wage deflation for year after year. With Spain's high debt levels, this is impossible.

Either Mr Zapatero stops the madness, or Spanish democracy will stop him. The left wing of his PSOE party is already peeling off, just as the French left is peeling off to fight "l'euro dictature capitaliste".

Italy's treasury awaits each bond auction with dread, wondering if can offload ¤200bn of debt this year. Spreads reached a fresh post-EMU high of 149 last week. The debt compound noose is tightening around Rome's throat. Italian journalists have begun to talk of Europe's "Tequila Crisis" – a new twist.

They mean that capital flight from Club Med could set off an unstoppable process.

Mexico's Tequila drama in 1994 was triggered by a combination of the Chiapas uprising, a current account haemorrhage, and bond jitters. The dollar-peso peg snapped when elites began moving money to US banks. The game was up within days.

Fixed exchange systems – and EMU is just a glorified version – rupture suddenly. Things can seem eerily calm for a long time. Politicians swear by the parity. Remember John Major's "soft-option" defiance days before the ERM blew apart in 1992? Or Philip Snowden's defence of sterling before a Royal Navy mutiny forced Britain off the Gold Standard in 1931.

Don't expect tremors before an earthquake – and there is no fault line of greater historic violence than the crunching plates where Latin Europe meets Teutonia.

Greece no longer dares sell long bonds to fund its debt. It sold ¤2.5bn last week at short rates, mostly 3-months and 6-months. This is a dangerous game. It stores up "roll-over risk" for later in the year. Hedge funds are circling.

Traders suspect that investors are dumping their Club Med and Irish debt immediately on the European Central Bank in "repo" actions.

In other words, the ECB is already providing a stealth bail-out for Europe's governments – though secrecy veils all.

An EU debt union is being created, in breach of EU law. Liabilities are being shifted quietly on to German taxpayers. What happens when Germany's hard-working citizens find out?

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Op zaterdag 28 februari 2009 10:54 schreef Martijn_77 het volgende:
Tuurlijk een Amerikaan die gaat vertellen hoe slecht het wel in Europa zal gaan.

Volgens mij moet hij eerst eens goed naar de USA dollar kijken.

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Breaking point for the eurozone?
Ireland's 'miracle' economy has turned terrifyingly sour - and as it strains against the inflexibility of the euro, its next crisis may shake the entire EU.


Thousands of public sector workers protest on the streets of Dublin

They can barely let the words pass their lips, but some of the EU's most important policymakers were forced this week to discuss what was once unthinkable: that at least one of the 16 eurozone countries might be on the brink of ditching the single currency.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, admitted that the 10-year-old eurozone was under "extreme strain", with weaker countries struggling to keep their economies afloat in the face of the devaluation of other currencies, such as sterling and the dollar.

Joschka Fischer, Germany's former foreign minister, darkly suggested that we would soon find out whether the eurozone would turn out to be "a disaster", while the German finance ministry is vacillating on whether it would be prepared to bail out insolvent states.

The current thinking is that Germany and France, as the strongest economies in the zone and "lenders of last resort", would have to bail out failing states: the prospect of the eurozone breaking up would bring the future of the EU into question.

But the most startling fact to emerge this week is that the country which is seen as the most vulnerable, and therefore the most likely to ditch the euro, is not Slovenia, or Cyprus, or Greece, but Ireland.

Until a year ago, the Republic's Celtic Tiger economy, which attracted such blue-chip companies as Dell, Microsoft and Intel, seemed unstoppable. In a decade, the Irish economy grew by almost 90 per cent, catapulting it from one of the poorest countries in Europe to the fourth-richest per capita. Government advisers from as far afield as Chile and Israel made pilgrimages to marvel at a model that they were desperate to emulate.

Not any more. All of a sudden, Ireland's debt-fuelled economy, built largely on a construction boom, has collapsed in a more spectacular manner than almost any other in Europe. Irish government bonds are rated as the riskiest in the EU (see graphic), and there has been panicky talk of Ireland as "the next Iceland".

On the streets, there is a whiff of revolution, with 120,000 people staging Dublin's biggest mass rally in 30 years last weekend to protest at the government's handling of the economy and its decision to impose what amounted to a pay cut on public sector workers. The unions have now threatened a "Doomsday" strike next month if the prime minister, Brian Cowen, does not think again. As the celebrated Irish economist David McWilliams put it: "The entire Irish episode will be studied internationally in years to come as an example of how not to do things."

So how did it all go so wrong?

Visiting Dublin this week, I took a stroll down the south bank of the River Liffey, to the site where Ireland's tallest building, the U2 Tower, should by now have been rising out of the ground as the ultimate symbol of the Celtic Tiger's "economic miracle". Designed by Lord Foster, the
60-storey glass skyscraper was to have housed dozens of one-million euro apartments (£1 million), topped by a penthouse recording studio for Ireland's most successful band.

Instead, there was nothing to see but dead grass, crushed beer cans and a rusting skip inhabited by 3ft weeds. Two months ago, the developers postponed the project indefinitely. This scruffy patch of former dockland represents the end of the dream for Ireland, whose "economic miracle" was largely based on a crazy construction bubble, fuelled by tax incentives, which, when it finally (and inevitably) burst, created a black hole that threatens to suck in the rest of the failing economy.

In 2006, Ireland (population 4.2 million) built 88,000 houses, compared with 150,000 in the UK (population 60 million). At one point, a fifth of the workforce, swelled by tens of thousands of immigrants, worked in construction.

Irish families on middle and even low incomes cashed in their pensions or borrowed heavily to buy second, third or even fourth properties, believing they could rent them out to the migrant workers who had caused net immigration for the first time in Ireland's history. They could borrow from banks that enjoyed one of the loosest regulatory regimes in Europe, and which shipped in money from abroad to further stoke up the boom.

Ireland now has up to 350,000 empty homes – more than its entire private rental market – many of them simply abandoned as builders went bust. House prices are expected to fall by 80 per cent.

Ireland might have been able to withstand Europe's most savage property collapse had not its export trade been shredded at the same by currency devaluation in its two key markets – Britain and America.

The relative rise in the value of the euro against sterling and the dollar has made Irish goods – and wages – prohibitively expensive. Businesses in the north of the Republic are on their knees because competitors in Northern Ireland are undercutting them by as much as half.

In an ominous sign of things to come, the computer firm Dell has announced 250 redundancies at its plant in Limerick, simultaneously confirming that it intends to create thousands of new jobs in Poland.

The slump in the Irish job market means that the country's youth, who for years now have been able to find jobs at home, are once again having to look abroad for employment, so that the Republic may soon return to its traditional pattern of net outward migration. Already, large numbers of Irish workers are moving to Britain seeking work.

Crucially, the Irish government is powerless to act because, as a member of the eurozone, it has no control over interest rates or currency devaluation.

While the Bank of England could cut interest rates to one per cent and plans to devalue sterling with "quantitative easing", the Irish have had to resort to desperate measures to reduce their budget deficit, such as the public sector wage cuts which led to the mass demonstrations.

Evidence of the effect on Ireland's real economy, as unemployment heads towards 10 per cent, is everywhere.

In Dublin's docklands, once expected to become a sort of European Dubai, row upon row of kitchen suppliers, interior design and furniture shops have closed since my last visit nine months ago, their windows covered in a thick layer of grime.

Catherine Claffey, whose family have sold flowers at the same pitch in Grafton Street, a few yards from Chanel and Louis Vuitton, for 85 years, told me business was down 60 per cent on last year.

"I've only been able to keep going because I've never taken out any big loans," she said. "But I have friends earning very modest salaries in the public sector who have been told their wages are going to be cut by 500 euros a month. How are they going to survive?"

A hundred yards down the road, a group of taxi drivers was staging a noisy protest over the government's failure to manage taxi numbers. Thousands of workers who have lost their jobs in other sectors have been allowed to set up as cabbies, meaning that Dublin now has 16,000 licensed taxis. New York, with a population 17 times as large, has 13,000.

Andy Doyle, a cabbie for 20 years, said: "There are so many taxis now that you can be waiting two-and-a-half hours on a rank before you pick up a fare. Yesterday I waited an hour and three quarters for a 6.20 euro fare. You just can't live on that. But the government is happy to let it go on because it keeps the unemployment figures down. It's madness."

The resounding "No" vote in last year's referendum on the European Constitution suggested that Ireland has finally fallen out of love with Europe. But will it now take the ultimate step and ditch the euro?

Sean Murphy, director of policy at the business organisation Chambers Ireland, believes not.

"Everything positive in the Irish economy for the past 30 years has been driven by our membership of the EU," he said. "In the long term it will continue to benefit us. We have a small, flexible economy, which means we will be able to turn it round much quicker than a bigger economy like the UK's.

"It's become clear that we need a more balanced, diverse economy, with more jobs in things like alternative energy and information technology. I believe our EU membership can only help with that."

But if the Irish economy, and that of other struggling EU states, continues to nosedive, the cohesion of the eurozone is likely to be tested to breaking point.

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Op zaterdag 28 februari 2009 11:07 schreef Lemmeb het volgende:

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De Europese economie is behoorlijk wat groter dan de Amerikaanse.