Saturday, August 15, 2015

The Greek Crisis Will Continue

Well, of course the fundamental problem, which was very much expressed by Mr. Varoufakis, is that Greece is broke.

He said it probably three months ago now. The fact is that they are broke and have around 25 percent unemployment.

They’ve been undergoing a recession for five years. So how do you expect somebody who’s broke to pay up? Normally, when someone is broke, they go through a chapter 11 bankruptcy or something in order to get out from under debt.

So I think it’s going to be an ongoing crisis. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the banking system. But of course it’s the banking system that the powers-that-be want to preserve. That’s because the banking system can create a domino effect where all of a sudden everyone is questioning everyone else’s credit. Also, writing down a debt would be bad because that debt is on people’s balance sheets, particularly the ECB’s.

They can pretend that there are no write-offs or put it up in some organizations where you never see the losses. But we all know that if Greece repudiates its debts, there are going to be lots of losses on those bonds. We will see how it plays out.

- Source, Eric Sprott via Proactive Investor