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Aug. 30, 2011, 11:14 a.m. EDT
By Jon Markman, MarketWatch
SEATTLE (MarketWatch) "â? Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke tried his best to act like the perfect host in Wyoming last week, telling a symposium of central bankers and the news media that all was well in the world, everything was under control, and there was no need for new measures. Git along, little dogies, and don't look behind the curtain.
Yet something seemed wrong in the forced bonhomie Bernanke tried to project with his Continental counterpart, Jean-Claude Trichet "â? and I'm not even talking about the mismatched shirt and sweater the tall Frenchman sported.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it until reports emerged the next day that Christine Lagarde, the new chief of the International Monetary Fund, dispensed with the civilities by issuing a blunt assessment that her colleagues were full of, well, stuff that's in Wyoming barns.
She said the global financial system was still in precarious shape despite four years of pumping money into its cracks, and that monetary policy is inadequate to help. She cast a special style of Gallic gloom over an already uncomfortable conference when she said, "We risk seeing the fragile recovery derailed"? in part because the public thinks that policy makers' response has been inadequate. "We are in a dangerous new phase,"? she added.
If you thought Lagarde was worried about Europe, you should hear what someone who really has no sense of decorum has to say.
That would be our old friend Satyajit Das, the derivatives expert in Australia and author of the terrific new book "Extreme Money,"? who has been my best guide to the global financial crisis for the past four years. (To read my first interview with Das, in September 2007, click here . His forecast was way out of the mainstream then, but incredibly prescient.
In an op-ed piece published in Australia last week, Das argued that in global financial markets the signals have changed from green to red. But rather than a simple traffic jam, he argues that a full-scale credit crash may be ahead. In financial markets, facts never matter until they do but there are worrying indications.
Fact 1 for Das is that the European debt crisis has taken a turn for the worse as there is serious risk that even the half-baked bailout plan announced on July 21 cannot be implemented. He points out that Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and possibly Germany, now want Greece to put up collateral before it receives the next slug of emergency funds from its eurozone partners.
Noted Das: "Of course, Greece, which does not have two euros to rub together, doesn't have this collateral "â? and would need to borrow it."?
Ugh. He's right. Bad idea. And compounding the problem is that the fall in GDP in Greece has been worse than forecast even before austerity measures were introduced. The Greek economy has shrunk by 15% since the crisis began. Two-year borrowing costs for Greece are now over 40%, which he notes are "pawnbroker levels."?
The next installment of Greece's first bailout package is due to be released as at the end of September. Some members of the International Monetary Fund are already expressing deep misgivings about further assistance to Greece, in the light of the seeming inability of the country to meet its end of the bargain.
Now here's the problem with all this: A disorderly unwind of the Greek debt problem cannot be ruled out, and right behind it are Ireland and Portugal, and pressure is growing on France and Germany, not to mention the United States and Japan.
In this race to the bottom, who is left to bail everyone else out?
Jon Markman is a money manager and investment adviser in Seattle. For more ideas like these, try a two-week trial to Markman's daily investment newsletter... Expand
Jon Markman is a money manager and investment adviser in Seattle. For more ideas like these, try a two-week trial to Markman's daily investment newsletter, Strategic Advantage, published in partnership with MarketWatch, or his daily trading newsletter, Trader's Advantage. His Twitter feed is @jdmarkman. Collapse
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