Roubini : Darker days ahead for The Eurozone as Recession sinks in

"Nouriel Roubini : “The trouble is that the eurozone has an austerity strategy but no growth strategy. And, without that, all it has is a recession strategy that makes austerity and reform self-defeating, because, if output continues to contract, deficit and debt ratios will continue to rise to unsustainable levels. Moreover, the social and political backlash eventually will become overwhelming.
That is why interest-rate spreads in the eurozone periphery are widening again now. The peripheral countries suffer from severe stock and flow imbalances. The stock imbalances include large and rising public and private debt as a share of GDP. The flow imbalances include a deepening recession, massive loss of external competitiveness, and the large external deficits that markets are now unwilling to finance.
Without a much easier monetary policy and a less front-loaded mode of fiscal austerity, the euro will not weaken, external competitiveness will not be restored, and the recession will deepen. And, without resumption of growth – not years down the line, but in 2012 – the stock and flow imbalances will become even more unsustainable. More eurozone countries will be forced to restructure their debts, and eventually some will decide to exit the monetary union.”
Read the entire piece at Project Syndicate >>>>>>>

at http://nourielroubini.blogspot.com/2012/04/roubini-darker-days-ahead-for-eurozone.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NourielRoubiniBlog+%28Nouriel+Roubini+Blog%29

Roubini : Without growth, the socio-political backlash will become overwhelming for some governments

"Nouriel Roubini : “There’s this vicious circle with the deficit that doing austerity makes the recession worse,” he said. “Without growth, the socio-political backlash will become overwhelming for some governments.” - in CNBC"

at http://nourielroubini.blogspot.com/2012/04/roubini-without-growth-socio-political.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NourielRoubiniBlog+%28Nouriel+Roubini+Blog%29

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BRICS cite obstacles to growth set by debt struck West

"The world’s five largest emerging economies claim the West’s quantitative easing policy is destabilizing their own growth.Should the western cheap cash injection last too long, the developed countries themselves will suffer, experts are warning.
Brazil's President Dilma Roussefftold the fifth annual BRICS summit that while the developed world's monetary policy "brings enormous trade advantages to developed countries, it results in unfair obstacles for others".
The BRICS summit joint statement, signed by the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa states that the enormous cash slush created by the west to deal with its debt crisis has "been spilling over into emerging economies, fostering excessive volatility in capital flows and commodity prices".
The US Fed, Bank of England and the ECB have injected trillions into their banking systems and cut their key interest rates to boost domestic economies. Lately the ECB alone provided for $1.3 trln in form of the 3-year loans at a very low interest rate, seeking to cool worries around the European money market. The benchmark US Fed rate has been varying within the bottom coring of0-0.25% for more than three years. The ECB rate stands at 1%, while the Bank of England's charges 0.5%.
“Since western countries gets cheap money, they seeks to invest it into the most precious things, which is today commodities,” Tamerlan Khasimikov, a general director at BST Capital Management, told Business RT, “BRICS have real cause for concern, as high demand in commodity driven economies makes them the major destination for foreign investors”

at http://rt.com/business/news/central-banks-monetary-policy-738/

9 Reasons Why Spain Is A Dead Economy Walking

"The following are 9 reasons why Spain is a dead economy walking....
#1) Even before this most recent crisis, unemploment in Spain was approaching Great Depression levels. Spain now has the highest unemployment rate in the entire European Union. More than 20 percent of working age Spaniards were unemployed during the first quarter of 2010. If people aren't working they can't pay taxes and they can't provide for their families.
#2) In an effort to stimulate the economy, Spain's socialist government has been spending unprecedented amounts of money and that skyrocketed the government budget deficit to a stunning 11.4 percent of GDP in 2009. That is completely unsustainable by any definition.
#3) The total of all public and private debt in Spain has now reached 270 percent of GDP.
#4) The Spanish government has accumulated way more debt than it can possibly handle, and this has forced two international ratings agencies, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, to lower Spain’s long-term sovereign credit rating. These downgrades are making it much more expensive for Spain to finance its debt at a time when they simply can't afford to pay more interest on their debt.
#5) There are 1.6 million unsold properties in Spain. That is six times the level per capita in the United States. Considering how bad the U.S. real estate market is, that statistic is incredibly alarming.
#6) The new "green economy" in Spain has been a total flop. Socialist leaders promised that implementing hardcore restrictions on carbon emissions and forcing the nation over to a "green economy" would result in a flood of "green jobs". But that simply did not happen. In fact, a leaked internal assessment produced by the government of Spain reveals that the "green economy" has been an absolute economic nightmare for that nation. Energy prices have skyrocketed in Spain and the new "green economy" in that nation has actually lost more than two jobs for every job that it has created. But Spain so far seems unwilling to undo all of the crazy regulations that they have implemented.
#7) Spain's national debt is so onerous that they are now caught in a debt spiral where anything they do will harm the economy. If they cut government expenditures in an effort to get debt under control it will devastate economic growth and crush badly needed tax revenues. But if the Spanish government keeps borrowing money their credit rating will continue to decline and they will almost certainly default. The truth is that the Spanish government is caught in a "no win" situation.
#8) But even now the IMF is projecting that the Spanish economy is going nowhere fast. The International Monetary Fund says there will be no positive GDP growth in Spain until 2011, at which point it will still be below one percent. As bleak as that forecast is, many analysts believe that it is way too optimistic considering the fact that Spain's economy declined by about 3.6 percent in 2009 and things are rapidly getting worse.
#9) The Spanish population has gotten used to socialist handouts and they are not going to accept public sector pay cuts, budget cuts to social programs and hefty tax increases easily. In fact, there is likely to be some very serious social unrest before all of this is said and done. On May 21st, thousands of public sector workers took to the streets of Spain to protest the government’s austerity plan. But that was only an appetizer. Spain's two main unions are calling for a major one day general strike to protest the government's planned reforms of the country's labor market. The truth is that financial shock therapy does not go down very well in highly socialized nations such as Greece and Spain. In fact, the austerity measures that Spain has been pressured to implement by the IMF have proven so unpopular that many are now projecting that Spain's socialist government will be forced to call early elections."

at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/9-reasons-why-spain-is-a-dead-economy-walking

Investors Face Long-term Structural Changes of Lower Growth, Higher Volatility and Unemployment

"...What do we get when we put the three structural breaks together? Higher volatility and lower trend growth produce more frequent recessions. More frequent recessions and stubbornly high unemployment rates mean that recoveries will not be long-lasting enough to put everyone back to work who would like to work. This in large part explains why high unemployment is currently so problematic.
What are the investment implications for the Muddle Through Economy? Investors will have to adjust to this new reality. Reducing leverage is one way. Another is to reduce the average holding period of investments. Investors will have to become more nimble. This in itself may add to market volatility.
For longer-term investors, this change of paradigm will mean achieving consistent returns is even more difficult. However, investors with a shorter-term, more tactical outlook may find these new, more volatile conditions a source of great opportunities.
The End Game
John Mauldin and I are writing a book called The End Game, about how government policies around the world will likely play out.
The End Game will be about the structural changes affecting the US and many other developed economies and how this impacts you, the reader. Currently the world is caught in a tug of war between deflation and inflation. The global economy faces powerful deflationary forces, which have induced equally powerful responses from governments around the world. Governments have ratcheted up the creation of monetary reserves and increased public spending across the board. Much of the spending is unsustainable, and the monetary reserves may eventually become a problem, resulting in inflation. The outcomes are binary, and they are not good.
Policymakers have not even begun to deal with the problems. As Chairman Bernanke has pointed out, "A variety of projections that extrapolate current policies and make plausible assumptions about the future evolution of the economy, show a structural budget gap that is both large relative to the size of the economy and increasing over time." He stated that "the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path." Those are strong words for a Fed chairman. I hope Congress is listening.
In the current economic environment, there are bad choices and worse ones. We hope governments around the world will know how to choose wisely..."

at http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article20249.html