Thursday
Feb252010
Kenneth Rogoff Speech On Sovereign Debt Default (VIDEO)
Video: Former chief economist at the IMF and current Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, Kenneth Rogoff speaks at Project Syndicate's Global Editors' Forum.
I found the rest of the speech. Runs 12 minutes.
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Video is in 5 parts but is less than 12 minutes total.
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(Screenshot...videos are above)
Feb 25, 2010 at 5:47 PM
Reader Comments (6)
Harvard’s Rogoff Sees Sovereign Defaults, ‘Painful’ Austerity
Government debt is no longer just a problem for emerging countries. Portugal, Spain, France and Greece (as we have seen in recent weeks) are living in fear of credit default. Consequently, the value of their credit default swaps is skyrocketing.
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High levels of global debt are both financially debilitating and deflationary because they commit scarce cash to servicing interest payments. Up until now, most sovereign credit defaults occurred in emerging-market countries, such as Argentina and Russia. The deflationary tide, however, is starting to lap up against more developed Eurozone economies.
The value of credit default swaps -- an instrument similar to an insurance contract that pays holders (if they are lucky) in the event of default -- for Greece, Portugal, Spain and France. In recent weeks these contracts have soared, with credit-default swaps on Greece’s and Portugal’s debt already surpassing the January-March 2009 extremes established in the latter part of Primary degree 1 down.
Obviously, the market is growing more skeptical that Greece can pay its debts, so the cost of protecting against default is rising fast. Greece’s budget deficit is 12.7% of gross domestic product, and Portugal faces a budget shortfall that’s more than twice the European Union’s limit. Traders are now buying default protection on sovereign debt at a rate of more than five times that of specific company bonds. “Greece’s neighbors would ‘step in’ to prevent a debt default to avoid ‘a problem for the whole of Europe,’” a Tokyo-based bondsalesman says. Maybe so, but who will step in to bail out Portugal, Spain, the next sovereign default or the one thereafter?
(((((((((((((((The world is running out of money to service its mounting debts))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
and the front edge of the next great wave of credit contraction, which will sweep into more established countries throughout Europe and eventually to the United States.
And do you all know this: The demand for intellectuals and intellectual ideas is self-created, self-sustaining, and self-replicating. "The general public contributes to the income of intellectuals in a variety of ways involuntarily as taxpayers who support schools, colleges, and various other institutions and programs subsidizing intellectual and artistic endeavors." In other words, the people who are wrecking our civilization are paid by the rest of us to do their work. We have nurtured them, raised them up, and fostered their conceits with our own cash contributions.
In other words, we have paid for our own destruction up front.
Brain Food for ALL
O-stentatious
B-igheaded
A-rrogant
M-aladjusted
A-pathetic
Mad dogs can only bark loud
AMEN
Keep Barking:LOL