We live in interesting times. Bailouts appear to fix everything. Central bankers can do no wrong. All is wrong in the world of free markets, yet everything seems so good. Even for Europe, which is embattled in its own sovereign debt crisis, a massive ticking time bomb appears to be slowly resolving itself through central bank bond buying and bailouts. But not everyone is so pleased with the government response thus far. Guillermo de la Dehesa,
Chairman of CEPR says there 10 reasons why the bailouts should end with Ireland:
1. Eurozone leaders are supposed to have learned from their previous mistakes in the handling of the present Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.
2. Neither Portugal nor Belgium and even less Spain have net debt levels as high as those of Greece.
3. The actual bail-outs are not well designed and tend to make solvency problems worse for the bailed-out member country.
4. These confusing signals have led many investors to sell the debt of Eurozone countries and even a minority of investors to sell them short with a high leverage making huge profits.
5. As a consequence of reason number 4, an increasing number of investors will start to believe that this debt crisis will end breaking-up the Eurozone, threatening the survival of the euro.
6. Even Germany cannot exit the euro because, even though its exit would not lead it to default – on the contrary, its solvency would improve, it will stop growing or suffer another recession.
7. The Eurozone is almost in equilibrium versus the rest of the world, given that its current account shows a tiny surplus of 0.2% of GDP.
8. Spain is too big to be bailed out.
9. A euro crisis would produce very negative externalities for the rest of the world.
10. Finally, Eurozone leaders cannot dare to risk 52 years of European economic integration and 16 years of European monetary integration.
Source: VOX
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.
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