STRATFOR's Vice President of
Analysis Peter Zeihan examines the obstacles to Greek prosperity and the
challenges in ejecting Greece from the eurozone. Find out why Greece isn't
salvageable, and why Europeans need at least 2 trillion euro to kick it out of the
eurozone without triggering financial catastrophe.
The financial news of the week
again is about the eurozone and we are seeing lots of entities come up with
lots of possible solutions about how to solve the eurozone problem. They all of
course rest on what to do about Greece. The problem is, they are coming from
the wrong angle. From STRATFOR’s point of view, Greece does not have a
particularly bright future as a state before the eurozone crisis is taken into
account.
Modern Greece has
traditionally been supported by three pillars. First is shipping. As a culture
that is mostly coastal it makes sense they would be very good at sailing;
however, in the age of modern transport and super container ships, Greece
simply can’t compete, and most of its ship building industry has long ago left
for greener pastures in places such as Norway, China or Korea. The second
pillar is tourism and this continues to be an option, but tourism by itself
cannot support a modern state. The final option and the one that the Greeks
have gotten the most mileage out of is leveraging Greece’s position. Typically
to allow some external power a means of battling somebody in Greece’s
neighborhood. When Greece achieved independence in the early 1800’s that
external power was the United Kingdom who used Greece as a foil against the
Turks. Later, the Americans played a similar role supporting Greece against the
Soviets. In both cases massive volumes of capital came in to support Greece.
However, in the post-Cold War era Turkey is a member of NATO, and while the
Greeks might not get along with the Turks, nobody is looking to use Greece as a
military foil against them. Greece no longer has a regional foe that it shares
with anyone else. The closest might be the Turks again, but only if the Turks
miscalculate their ongoing relationship with Israel or Cyprus and miscalculate
very very badly.
Bottom-line, the various
supports that have allow the Greek state to exist since the 1820’s simply
aren’t there anymore and so the path forward goes like this: Greece is not
salvageable. Greece simply can’t compete unless it is being given a constant,
steady supply of capital from abroad that it doesn’t necessarily have to pay
back. And even if that could be restarted, Greece can not emerge from its own
debt load. It is simply too large. Greece has to be kicked out of the eurozone
if the euro is to survive, but between here and there, first, a firebreak fund.
The EFSF expansion has to happen because if you cannot sequester the 280
billion euro of Greek government debt that exists outside of Greece, then
you’re going to trigger a massive financial catastrophe that the eurozone
simply can’t survive. And so to prepare for a Greek ejection, you have to
prepare a fund that can handle three things more or less simultaneously. First,
you need about 400 billion euro to firebreak Greece off from the rest of
eurozone. Second, you need about 800 billion euro in order to prevent a
wide-scale banking meltdown, because the day that Greece defaults on that debt,
the day that it’s ejected from eurozone, there will be catastrophic banking
collapses in Portugal, Italy, Spain and France, probably in that order
Third, the markets will go
wild and the state that is in the most danger of falling after Greece is Italy.
Using the bailouts that have happened to date as a template, any bailout of
Italy would have to provide enough financing to cover all Italian needs for
three years. That comes out to about another 800 billion euro. So until the
Europeans have 2 trillion euro in funding stashed away, they can’t kick Greece
out of the system.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário
Não publicamos comentários de anônimos/desconhecidos.
Por favor, se optar por "Anônimo", escreva o seu nome no final do comentário.
Não use CAIXA ALTA, (Não grite!), isto é, não escreva tudo em maiúsculas, escreva normalmente. Obrigado pela sua participação!
Volte sempre!
Abraços./-