Sense on Cents

The Washington Post is running a lead article today about the concern that the European Union in general, and the United Kingdom specifically, may derail the global recovery. Let’s cross “the pond.”

European Slump May Stall Global Rebound

Some countries, such as Ireland, are so cash-strapped that they’ve raised taxes in the middle of a deep recession, making things worse. In addition, European leaders have only recently signaled their willingness to conduct broad, systematic stress tests on their financial institutions, similar to the ones on major U.S. banks already concluded by the Treasury Department. 

This is not news. Nothing of substance has dramatically changed in Western or Eastern Europe from my writing, The Weakest Link and The Weakest Link Is Weakening in late February and early March.  

The media, government officials, and market pundits have been been attempting to talk the economy up more than the actual reality would dictate. The equity markets rebounded from an oversold condition in early March. For short term traders and those focused on technical analysis, I hope you caught the move. For those focused on the long term fundamentals of the economy, the risks remain very high.

While, WaPo and other media outlets may voice concerns now or report developments as new, the “strains in the European chain” remain very real. Along these lines, I had written on April 30th in my April 2009 Market Review: Brave New World:  

I believe it is a question of when – not if – in terms of a major European country defaulting on its debt and requiring a rescue from the EU and/or IMF.

The Washington Post should be a little more rigorous in terms of checking their facts. They report:

While U.S. banks have already written down about half the estimated $1.1 trillion in troubled loans and toxic assets on their books, Europe’s financial institutions have thus far written down less than 25 percent of their $1.4 trillion in bad debts related to the crisis, according to a report from the International Monetary Fund. 

In actuality, the IMF has forecasted that U.S. banks have upwards of $2.8 trillion in troubled loans and toxic assets and have written down approximately 40-45% of it. That’s bad reporting. At least the reporter is diligent enough to highlight that Western Europe’s major concerns relate to the financial exposure to Eastern Europe. Although, this is not new news, they report: 

Many major Western European banks are also heavily invested in hard-hit Eastern Europe, where the risk of a fresh wave of corporate and consumer defaults is considerable.

With all due respect, tell us something we don’t know.

LD

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 2:27 PM and is filed under Eastern Europe, Economy, General, International Monetary Fund. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.