Är det inte dags att börja kalla det som händer i USA en finanskris, inte bolånekris. Och att det i grunden handlar om kombinerad kris som genom hela den amerikanska ekonomin. Där oljepriset kombinerat med budgetunderskott, en starkt minskad utlåning från bankerna och ett fortsatt krig i mellanöstern riskerar att slå ut hela sektorer av den amerikanska ekonomin.
Som Businessweek skriver nedan och s.k orakel som George Soros redan varnat för handlar det om vad som kan vara den värsta finanskrisen sedan depressionen något som även Wall Street börjar för förstå. Och precis som i Sverige kommer det att ta åratal innan effekterna är över. Det kan vara värt att läsa vad Soros skriver nedan. Han går ju på tvärt emot den friedmanska liberaliseringsvågen och marknadsfundamentalismen.
FT.com / Home UK / UK – The worst market crisis in 60 years
T
he current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US
housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have
occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging
from four to 10 years.However, there is a profound difference:
the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on
the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises
were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the
culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.
Boom-bust
processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or
misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive,
circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of
the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the
value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit
available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation
that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US
housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more
complicated case.Every time the credit expansion ran into
trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and
finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of
asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever
greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came
to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic
of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists
believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest
is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest.
It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the
authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not
the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as
the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to
become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.
Om IMF har rätt och de sammanlagda kreditförlusterna i det amerikanska finansiella systemet uppgår till 1000 miljarder dollar eller mer leder till en starkt minskad amerikansk utlåning i kombination med ett bensinspris på över 4 dollar och ett skenande budgetunderskott som måste tas ner är väl möjligheten till en inhemsk amerikansk depression överhängande. Slutar amerikanare handla slår det direkt mot Kina. Sverige i sin tur lever ju på att sälja råmaterial till kina och lokaliserad tillverkning där för export och den inhemska marknaden i kina.
Det är heller knappast otänkbart att företag som volvo, saab eller andra industriella exportföretag flyttar. Europa är inte den svenska hemmamarknaden för exportföretagen. Det är i mycket USA.
Återigen finns det krisberedskap hos de svenska partierna?
IMF sticks by $1 trillion U.S. subprime fallout | Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund is sticking to its estimate that losses on U.S. assets from the subprime crisis and its wider fallout would be about $1 trillion despite fresh U.S. banking problems recently, a senior IMF official said on Wednesday.”Basically, we think this is a reasonable figure and we are not revising the figure every day,” Jaime Caruana, director of the IMF’s monetary and capital markets department, told reporters in Brussels.
Earlier he told the European Parliament that the financial system, still suffering from a near year-long credit crisis, may have more difficulty in extending credit needed for the economy to grow.
How Bad Will It Get on Wall Street?
It has been a year since the global credit markets first seized up, and four months since the dismantling of Bear Stearns. Yet bad things keep happening, from the failure of IndyMac and the stock routs of Lehman Brothers (LEH) and others to the market’s collective yawn at the Treasury Dept.’s plan to bolster mortgage giants Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). Once again, the optimists who thought the crisis was over have been proven wrong. ”People underestimated how bad things were last summer,” says Frank Partnoy, a former Wall Street derivatives trader turned professor at the University of San Diego Law School.Did they ever. July’s rat-a-tat-tat of dismal news suggests that the scope of the credit crunch is much broader than most people thought. Traders, investors, bankers, and economists are waking up to the possibility that Wall Street’s recovery from the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression could grind on for years. And they’re realizing that while the debacle was of Wall Street’s making, its aftermath will weigh on banks, other companies, and consumers alike.
One thing is for sure: The new normal won’t be as fun as the recent past. Banks will be smaller and fewer. Capital will be harder to get for some consumers and companies. And more of that capital will be parceled out by lightly regulated hedge funds and private equity firms, for better or worse, as the balance of power on Wall Street shifts.
Why hasn’t the healing begun? The answer lies in the mechanics of leverage, or borrowed money, which banks not only provide to customers but also use themselves. Leverage is a powerful but dangerous tool, intoxicating on the way up and devastating on the way down. Banks live on the stuff: When they post profits, they borrow more money to make more loans and book still more profits. During the boom, bigger mortgage loans pumped up home prices until people couldn’t handle the debt and the bubble burst. Then the banks, poorer from the losses, had to cut back their own borrowing, too. Now the damage is spreading. How far? Simplified, for every dollar of bank wealth lost, government-regulated commercial banks must eliminate some $10 of lending; for investment banks, the figure can be $30.
The extent of the credit contraction to come will depend on the banks’ initial losses—an elusive figure, to be sure, and one that keeps growing. The latest loss tally is $400 billion across the credit markets, but the International Monetary Fund says the total could swell to $1 trillion. Slap on a leverage multiplier of 10 or 15, and the math turns grim. ”I believe we will live in a deleveraged state until the next generation of management gets in place and doesn’t remember what we went through here,” says Robert Greifeld, CEO of Nasdaq (NDAQ). ”The harder question is about the lack of leverage in the broader economy: How does it ripple through?”