Europe on the brink of collapse
- By Raul de Sagastizabal
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China.org.cn, August 2, 2011
The latter solution is not available to Greece, With negative real GDP growth, fiscal and trade balance deficits, among other negative indicators, the country is unable to pay a debt exceeding 150 percent of GDP, even in a far off future.
In the April 2009 London G-20 summit, whose dubious merit was the rescue of private banks with public money, the developing world bought the idea that the worst was over – and emerging countries bought the idea that this time they would emerge unscathed from the crisis just by adopting local measures to mitigate the domestic impacts. The customary Commitments to regulate financial activity and prohibit purely speculative operations were once again heard at the summit, in London, and such formulae are now at the center of the European blistering scenario.
Europe lost the opportunity to avoid the current crisis. The block was the only space where you could have regulated and blocked financial activity; controlled or prevented purchase of sovereign debt by private investors; prohibited sovereign debt rating by risk rating entities in conditions such as those of reportedly fraudulent qualifications of toxic bonds as AAA, which collapsed from 2007 on, simultaneously with recommendations to purchase default swaps against those very bonds; capital flight control, and even tax the sector itself to create a sovereign debt buyback fund and / or even for future bailouts and to propel viable adjustment and reform mid- and long term programs. Such elementary measures would have been, at least, survival plans.
However, individuality, competence, speculation and political expediency prevailed, and the stronger countries imposed an every man for himself scene by taking unilateral measures and forcing conditions on the rest of the block. A year ago Germany, for example, banned short sellings, and Italy followed suit just last week. If Germany can impose adjustment programs to the whole block, why not imposing financial regulation, thus preventing speculators from jumping from one market to another, nonregulated one? Germany is not Europe, some people say. Neither is France, others say.
Just last week the European Parliament approved measures to regulate derivatives markets and credit default swaps, compensate private investors victimized by fraudulent investment firms, short selling (the practice of trading speculative financial assets at large discounts), purchase of credit default swaps by investors or entities holding bonds related to such swaps or with related companies whose results depend on the evolution of government securities, and over-the-counter transactions (speculative purchases between two parties without mediation, which in 2009 moved at least 400,000 million euros), but such measures are not effective unless approved by the Council of the European Union. Again there is no consensus between the members, some of which, mainly the biggest ones, squarely reject any regulation. So, nobody knows when such approval will take place, if ever.
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