Eurozone crisis

The Jingle Jangle Morning Post(Sorry, Bob) Quite a range of economists and politicians have been expressing alarm at the prospect – now rapidly becoming fact – of “competitive austerity” (as John Mackintosh of the FT puts it) posing as dire a threat to global economic health as the competitive devaluations of the 1930s. John Eatwell, former economic adviser to Neil Kinnock, might be expected by some to join former chancellor, Alistair Darling, in condemning the rush to cut budget deficits, saying: “Large and immediate cuts in government spending create the risk that demand will fail, sliding the economy into recession. Advocates of immediate cuts have produced no coherent policy for maintaining demand. Deficit hysteria should be recognised as an affliction and the proposals of deficit hysterics treated accordingly”. A rather less likely candidate to be seen standing alongside them is Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the FT: “The best policy is to put together measures that sustain strong growth in demand in the short run, while constraining the huge deficits in the long-run. This is walking and chewing gum at the same time. Why should that be so hard?” Read my update on the RP54 analysis of the Eurozone crisis here: libcom.org

Comments would be much appreciated.

Berrot

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Berrot

Thanks for that contribution. What we might add is that the "markets" which are apparently forcing our politicians to go in for austerity panic are the very same financial institutions which were baled out by the state(s). Having thus survived courtesy of quantative easing which will have to be paid in future from taxes (falling mainly on the working class) they have turned their speculative appetites to the sovereign debt which has been incurred to save them. They are now speculating against debt defaults by weaker states and against the future currency situation of all states. We highlighted this in one of our contributions to the Midlands Discussion Forum Meeting on May 1st and subsequent developments seem only to have confirmed this.

I actually posted this last night but it sems it got lost...

The Eurozone crisis just isn't going away! Here is the link to my latest post on libcom. *Jingle Jangle Morning Post3 Parallels and a Funeral (very belated)*Having realised that the tripling of its back-up funds last year will be inadequate to cope with the next leg of the economic crisis, the International Monetary Fund is seeking in November’s G20 meeting at Seoul to raise its firepower from $750bn to $1 000bn. At the same time, the IMF wishes to fine tune its “global stabilisation mechanism” for the specific needs of individual countries. The most risky states would have the most rigorous (read: painful) demanded with any IMF support; for the least risky, intervention would be available with virtually no conditions attached, and could be provided even prior to a crisis. As the IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, phrased it: “Even when not in a time of crisis, a big fund, likely to intervene massively, is something that can help prevent crises”. The unspoken words shriek: worse, much worse, is on its way.By way of illustration. European banks’ liabilities are estimated at more than 30 trillion euros. $2.6 trillion of this is short-term, and must be repaid or rolled-over within 2 years; worldwide, there are another $2.4 trillion owed to bondholders and other creditors, according to the central banks’ bankers, the Bank for International Settlements, with a further $1.3 trillion to be refinanced by US banks. The Bank of England says UK banks’ bond issuance must come to £800 billion, or about £25bn each month – twice the rate for the current year. The UK Office for National Statistics has clarified that the current public sector net debt figure is an “open-ended concept”, once off-balance sheet liabilities (such as unfunded state and public sector pension schemes, and private finance initiatives) are taken into account. These bring a potential debt of £4.84 trillions. This dwarfs the national debt and is 400% of gross domestic product. Read more here: libcom.org Berrot