Monday 5 December 2011

Rating Downgrades: The Euro Domino...

"The US ratings agency is poised to announce later on Monday that it is putting Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, and Luxembourg on “credit-watch negative”, meaning there is a one-in-two chance of a downgrade within 90 days."


Well, looks like a chain reaction is about to start... Finland is part of it. Well, when you see the household debt, your hair start to rise...and start to fall knowing that most of the debt is on variable rates tied to the Euribor. Just wondering is rates were to suddenly shoot up, what will be left to the banking sector and on the side to internal consumption (albeit declining with confidence flirting with historically low levels...)

I will summarize this week, the debt level , wage growth in the past few quarters to highlight the unsustainable situation.

In the meantime, keep consuming - you might be the last hope :-)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep just saw this ... not good but expected ...
When there is a serious crisis (in our case a recession ... or a depression), people go back to the basics ...
For Europe, individualism at country level, which means that the first steps will be for the AAA countries to leave the others going down in order to save their economy/country...
It will be too late though ...

As a matter of fact, I was back to Finland for the week-end ... nice feeling as always, but I was amazed by the prices ... I mean, I left Finland a year ago, and I tried to compare the prices with last year (Ok, not very precise I have to admit it) but still the impression of an increase of 10% on most of the food was there. My wife shared the same feeling, and she is a Finn prone to defend Finland and criticise the high cost of living that we are enjoying here in Switzerland ...
Just a feeling, but when the official inflation rate is (what...) 3%? and that in reality, it is almost 10% ... be prepared for social unrest ...

When are the next election????

Anonymous said...

The official inflation rate (October 2010) is 3.5%, but the food component of that is 5,6%.

Only housing costs (including water, electricity, heating) is higher at 6,7%

(See Texsti-tv page 847)

Finland as a small country will have difficulty going alone - it needs to aline its economic policies with some other countries. Should this be to Germany (in the Euro) or to the other Nordic countries (outside of the Euro)?


"Island Crow"

JimeeIV said...

Why Europeans can be so stupid went to trap that Uncle Sam settled ?

How can German and French banks have so serious problems ?

Loaning the money should be one that banks have been doing quite long time, you don't need to be unique human being to be capable of loaning money for one in Western Europe.

We'll see heavy regulation for investing sector, and that is only hope for safer future. Those gamblers think that they know how money grows value in some company or oil field or whatever. I think it is just question who plays his poker cards right and leaves the table in right time.

Meanwhile I'm considering to buy iPad2 what is against my principal but I saw colleague's kid playing some games with that. Maybe fun anyway :D

regards

TeePee

Anonymous said...

While the music is playing ... we keep dancing ... would be how to summarise the poker game ...
Interesting to see the EU is trying to sell a fake agreement ... they are considering that the market are just fool ... or may be, they believe that the market is like their electors ...
Too bad ... the people who are working in the financial services industry are far from being ... how can I see ... "naive" ....
The market will make the Eurozone pay a heavy price ...