Europe and US heading for depression?
Under the heading, “Refinancing avalanche threatens European banks,” Open Europe is reporting a 2trillion euro black hole in European banks.
“FT [Financial Times] Deutschland reports that there is a ’2,000 billion euro problem in European banks’. It notes that ‘the real stress test still has to come. Banks must refinance billions. A refinancing avalanche is coming their way’.”
As for America, Jeremy Warner writes on his blog: “… the IMF in its ‘selected issue paper’ on the US economy calculates that ‘closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.’ As Professor Kotlikoff notes, the entire Federal tax base amounts to 14.7 per cent of GDP, so to close the gap from a revenue perspective would require the authorities to double the rate of taxation in the US.”
There are also reports that the Fed has begun a second round of Quantitative Easing (QE, or printing money in the vernacular). Labelled QE2 or QE Lite, it’s thought to be preface a plumping up the Fed’s balance sheet from $1.2trillion to around $5tr in the near term.
A second Great Depression may not be as unlikely as many think.
