alcuin and flutterby 08-03-10

End-time political crisis deepens in Italy. July car sales plummet. Safety of Italian sovereign debt in doubt.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

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End-time political crisis deepens in Italy. July car sales plummet. Safety of Italian sovereign debt in doubt.
Sovereign risk is rising in Italy as the ruling party of premier Silvio Berlusconi falls apart over claims of corruption, Masonic conspiracies, wire-tap abuses and attempts to interfere with the courts and free speech. Berlusconi’s attempts to silence his chief critic Gianfranco Fini have back-fired badly, leading to a political revolt which has stripped the Italian government of its parliamentary majority.

Italy has a public debt which is 117 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product. This is the third largest in the world after Japan and the US. French banks alone have $476 billion of exposure to Italian debt. Société Générale, BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole are nervous about the safety of their holdings.

Italy is trapped with an overvalued exchange rate within the EuroZone's European Monetary Union. The country has lost thirty per cent in unit labour cost competitiveness against Germany since the exchange rates were fixed in the mid-1990s. This will be impossible to claw back without going through the national agony of wage deflation. There is a real risk of a Japan-style perma-slump in Italy.

And the EuroZone financial nightmare is not just about Italy and the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain). European banks, collectively, have amassed €30 trillion in liabilities. They face a serious funding threat over the next two years as central authorities withdraw emergency support. Banks are at risk of a vicious circle as sovereign debt fears and financial stress feed off each other. European banking sector woes are eroding sovereign credit-worthiness. This is reducing the real and perceived capacity of European governments to support weak banks.

The collective funding needs of Europe's banks are vast. The banking industry in Europe is much larger than that in the US and Asia. Most European mortgages and personal loans stay on the balance sheets and require funding. This situation contrasts with the US, where financial institutions illegally securitize these loans so that they do not require balance sheet funding. This is why, deep down, the US is in a far worse financial position even than Europe. More here (02.08.10), here (30.07.10), here (29.07.10), here (21.07.10) and here (18.07.10).