Here is an article from Bloomberg.
“Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who forecast the U.S. recession more than a year before it began, said sovereign debt from the U.S. to Japan and Greece will lead to higher inflation or government defaults.
Almost $1 trillion of worldwide equity value was erased April 27 on concern that debt will spur defaults, derailing the global economy, data compiled by Bloomberg show. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the International Monetary Fund pledged to step up efforts to overcome the Greek fiscal crisis, after bonds and stocks fell across Europe in the past week.
“The bond vigilantes are walking out on Greece, Spain, Portugal, the U.K. and Iceland,” Roubini, 52, said yesterday during a panel discussion on financial markets at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. “Unfortunately in the U.S., the bond-market vigilantes are not walking out.”
Credit-rating cuts on Greece, Portugal and Spain this week are spurring investors’ concern that the European deficit crisis is spreading and intensifying pressure on policy makers to widen a bailout package. Roubini’s remarks underscore statements by officials such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, that the global economy still faces risks.
Sovereign Debt
“The thing I worry about is the buildup of sovereign debt,” said Roubini, a former adviser to the U.S. Treasury and IMF consultant, who in August 2006 predicted a “painful” U.S. recession that came to fruition in December 2007. If the problem isn’t addressed, he said, nations will either fail to meet obligations or see faster inflation as officials “monetize” their debts, or print money to tackle the shortfalls.
Roubini, who teaches at NYU’s Stern School of Business, told attendees at the Beverly Hilton hotel that “Greece is just the tip of the iceberg, or the canary in the coal mine for a much broader range of fiscal problems.”
European bonds have plunged on concern that Greece’s won’t be able to pay its debt, with Harvard University Professor Martin Feldstein and Templeton Asset Management Ltd.’s Mark Mobius saying a default may be needed. The yield on the Greek two-year bond rose as high as 26 percent after being downgraded to below-investment grade by Standard & Poor’s on April 27, before falling to 17.35 percent today. The euro, which dropped to the lowest in a year yesterday, rose 0.1 percent to $1.3235 at 4:05 p.m. in New York.
Plugging the Leak
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou met today the heads of the largest private and public-sector unions as well as representatives from the biggest employer group as Greek, EU and IMF officials put the final touches on a package that will allow the country to tap emergency loans. Greece’s budget deficit was 13.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, more than four times the limit allowed under European Union rules.
“A default will help to plug the leak,” said Mobius, who oversees about $34 billion in emerging-market assets as executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management, in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Singapore today. “A bailout at this stage does not make sense to me.”
Feldstein wrote in an article published on the Project Syndicate website that the euro region and Greek bondholders will eventually have to accept that “the country is insolvent and cannot service its existing debt.””
Read the full article here.
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