Sunday, December 4, 2011

Euro land woes

We have all heard about Greece, Italy and the Euro bond/bank disaster. Essentially, private investors will no longer buy Euro land government bonds, not even German bonds. Investors as a group now doubt that any Euro land government is good for the money. The 50% haircut on Greek bonds is an object lesson.
The dead beat Euro governments are crying for the European Common Bank to print barrels of Euros, and buy their worthless bonds with the freshly printed Euros. The bank is resisting this pressure, so far.
Friday, Angela Merkel was quoted in the WSJ as saying that euro members would have to accept a certain loss of national sovereignty. In plain English, she means that deadbeat members would have to accept outside (IMF, ECB, or German) control of their taxes and spending. Wow! Somehow I don't think that is going to work. Any national government with a speck of pride would rather do without borrowing at all than allow outsiders to set their taxes and spending.
Perhaps the Europeans could take a lesson from the Yankees. American state governments somehow manage to maintain their bond ratings without Federal supervision. The penalty for states that overspend is simple, they have to pay more on their bonds, or in extreme cases, they cannot borrow at all. And, like Euro land governments, no American state can print it's own money.

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