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Systemic Risk in European Banking: I Told You So 20 Months Ago!

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 6/1/2010

Reuters, June 1, 2010: "The ECB said on Monday the debt problems facing the euro zone could lead to a wave of bad loans hitting banks in the region."

In an article titled "It is Europe's and Asia's Turn Now" and dated October 13, 2008 (http://www.globalpolitician.com/25236-economics-europe-asia) I wrote:

"Europe's real economy as well as its financial sector are a mess. France's GDP declined by 0.3% last quarter. In sliding officially into a recession, it has joined Spain, Ireland, and, now, the United Kingdom and Germany. Battered by a strong euro, expensive energy, and mighty competition from China, the US, and India, European exports have stagnated. As opposed to the USA (where exports constitute 18% of GDP), Europe is dependent on foreign carbon fuels and foreign markets for its goods and services. Exports constitute more than 40% of Eurozone GDP.

Moreover, Europe's commercial banks are in horrible shape - far worse than America's. This year alone, European banks must pay 1.41 trillion US dollars in principal and interest, mainly to bondholders. They don't have the money and they cannot borrow it from other banks because interbank lending has all but dried up. Many of them are already technically insolvent.

Europe's recession will be profound and protracted. Asia is likely to follow suit: Singapore is already technically in recession and china's growth rate is abating. It seems that yet again, the USA will be faced with the daunting task of dragging the rest of the world back to growth and profitability."

As early as 1997 (and again in 2005), I warned against a euro crisis (http://www.globalpolitician.com/2740-europe-money):

"To prevail, a monetary union must be founded by one or two economically dominant countries ("economic locomotives"). Such driving forces must be geopolitically important, maintain political solidarity with other members, be willing to exercise their clout, and be economically involved in (or even dependent on) the economies of the other members.

Central institutions must be set up to monitor and enforce monetary, fiscal, and other economic policies, to coordinate activities of the member states, to implement political and technical decisions, to control the money aggregates and seigniorage (i.e., rents accruing due to money printing), to determine the legal tender and the rules governing the issuance of money.

It is better if a monetary union is preceded by a political one (consider the examples of the USA, the USSR, the UK, and Germany).

Wage and price flexibility are sine qua non. Their absence is a threat to the continued existence of any union. Unilateral transfers from rich areas to poor are a partial and short-lived remedy. Transfers also call for a clear and consistent fiscal policy regarding taxation and expenditures. Problems like unemployment and collapses in demand often plague rigid monetary unions. The works of Mundell and McKinnon (optimal currency areas) prove it decisively (and separately).

Clear convergence criteria and monetary convergence targets.

The current European Monetary Union is far from heeding the lessons of its ill fated predecessors. Europe's labour and capital markets, though recently marginally liberalized, are still more rigid than 150 years ago. The euro was not preceded by an "ever closer (political or constitutional) union". It relies too heavily on fiscal redistribution without the benefit of either a coherent monetary or a consistent fiscal area-wide policy. The euro is not built to cope either with asymmetrical economic shocks (affecting only some members, but not others), or with the vicissitudes of the business cycle.

This does not bode well. This union might well become yet another footnote in the annals of economic history."

In an article titled "The Next Crisis: Imploding Bond Markets" and dated November 16, 2008 (http://www.globalpolitician.com/25282-bonds-stocks-credit-crunch-china-usa ) I expounded:

"To finance enormous bailout packages for the financial sector (and potentially the auto and mining industries) as well as fiscal stimulus plans, governments will have to issue trillions of US dollars in new bonds. Consequently, the prices of bonds are bound to come under pressure from the supply side.

But the demand side is likely to drive the next global financial crisis: the crash of the bond markets.

As the Fed takes US dollar interest rates below 1% (and with similar moves by the ECB, the Bank of England, and other central banks), buyers are likely to lose interest in government bonds and move to other high-quality, safe haven assets. Risk-aversion, mitigated by the evident thawing of the credit markets will cause investors to switch their portfolios from cash and cash-equivalents to more hazardous assets.

Moreover, as countries that hold trillions in government bonds (mainly US treasuries) begin to feel the pinch of the global crisis, they will be forced to liquidate their bondholdings in order to finance their needs.

In other words, bond prices are poised to crash precipitously. In the last 50 years, bond prices have collapsed by more than 35% at least on three occasions. This time around, though, such a turn of events will be nothing short of cataclysmic: more than ever, governments are relying on functional primary and secondary bond markets for their financing needs. There is no other way to raise the massive amounts of capital needed to salvage the global economy."

Sam Vaknin in an article titled "The Next 18 Months: Recession, False Recovery, Depression" and dated February 22, 2009 (http://www.globalpolitician.com/25449-depression-recession-stimulus-europe-recovery ):

""The Obama stimulus package, worth some 800 billion USD, the 1.9 trillion USD in TARP funds and the endless Fed injections and auctions are bound to revive the moribund American economy by the third and fourth quarter of 2009. The Dow-Jones is likely to touch 10900, consumption will recover, as will housing starts and, in some markets, housing prices. But this 'recovery' will prove to be a false dawn. It will last 2 quarters at most and will be followed by a recession so deep and dangerous that it would truly qualify as a Depression. The current recession is merely a prelude to the depression of 2010-5."

In November that year (2009), I wrote an article titled "Dow Jones: On the Way to 4800" (November 3, 2009 - http://www.globalpolitician.com/26017-stocks-recession-depression-stimulus-recovery).

From the February 2009 and November 2009 articles:

"The Dow-Jones may yet see-saw between 7800 and 11200, but as the dimensions of the crisis emerge more clearly, it will head to its next technical target: 4800.

(iii) Europe's real economy as well as its financial sector are a mess. France, in sliding officially into a recession, has joined Spain, Ireland, and, now, the United Kingdom and Germany. The "recovery" there is feeble as false as the one in the USA. Battered by a strong euro, expensive energy, and mighty competition from China, the US, and India, European exports have stagnated. As opposed to the USA (where exports constitute 18% of GDP), Europe is dependent on foreign carbon fuels and foreign markets for its goods and services. Exports constitute more than 40% of Eurozone GDP.

Moreover, Europe's commercial banks are in horrible shape - far worse than America's. This year alone, European banks must pay 1.41 trillion US dollars in principal and interest, mainly to bondholders. They don't have the money and they cannot borrow it from other banks because interbank lending has all but dried up. Many of them are already technically insolvent. They are also over-exposed to emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia as well as to profligate eurozone members such as Greece and Spain, Italy and Portugal, and, outside the eurozone, to the crumbling economy of the United Kingdom. Austrian, Greek, Swedish, and German banks are exposed to default risks throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Consumers and businesses in Serbia, Ukraine, Hungary, and other teetering economies owe Austrian financial institutions $290 billion - almost the entire GDP of this country!

As local currencies depreciate in the near future (when the US and China sink into Depression), debts, denominated in foreign exchange, will grow more expensive to service. As the real economy contracts, in the first phase of what appears to be a prolonged recession, bad loans mushroom and reserves are exhausted. This requires cash-strapped governments to recapitalize major banks. Faced with current account and budget deficits, some of these sovereigns are scrambling for outside infusions from the likes of the IMF.

Europe's recession will be profound and protracted. Asia is likely to follow suit: Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are already technically in recession and China's growth rate is a fiction, fueled by massive and indiscriminate lending by state-owned banks. A contraction of GDP in both India and China is no longer inconceivable. It seems that yet again, the USA will be faced with the daunting task of dragging the rest of the world back to growth and profitability.

(iv) To finance enormous bailout packages for the financial sector (and the auto and mining industries) as well as fiscal stimulus plans, governments will have to issue trillions of US dollars in new bonds. Consequently, the prices of bonds are bound to come under pressure from the supply side.

But the demand side is likely to drive the next global financial crisis: the crash of the bond markets.

As the Fed took US dollar interest rates below 1% (and with similar moves by the ECB, the Bank of England, and other central banks), buyers are likely to lose interest in government bonds and move to other high-quality, safe haven assets. Moreover, as countries that hold trillions in government bonds (mainly US treasuries) begin to feel the pinch of the global crisis, they will be forced to liquidate their bondholding in order to finance their needs.

In other words, bond prices are poised to crash precipitously. In the last 50 years, bond prices have collapsed by more than 35% at least on three occasions. This time around, though, such a turn of events will be nothing short of cataclysmic: more than ever, governments are relying on functional primary and secondary bond markets for their financing needs. There is no other way to raise the massive amounts of capital needed to salvage the global economy."