When Athens aims to hide London and Washington

When Athens aims to hide London and Washington

– Excerpt GEAB N°55 (May 16, 2011) -

Greece is back in the Anglo-Saxon media’s headlines. So, like last year at the same time, we must not seek the "speck of dust" but "the plank in the eye” of Washington or London. Last year, the "Greek crisis" had been used to divert attention from the British major risk embodied in an explosive budget and dangerous political situation (with elections producing no overall majority). The operation succeeded in preventing the world realizing that the UK "IMFed" itself, demonstrated by the establishment of a drastic budget cutting plan for the following quarters that even the IMF version 2011 (less ideological than some years ago) would have hesitated to impose on Britain.

But it was a Pyrrhic victory in two key aspects. On the one hand, it pushed Euroland to carry through a coup at the centre of the European Union, finally marginalizing the United Kingdom and precipitating the emergence of a "new sovereign" which is expanding bit by bit every quarter in terms of the management process of the financial crisis and of governance (1). On the other hand, the "FMIsation" of British politics (2), dressed in a meaningless concept of the "Big Society" by David Cameron, proves to be a social, economic and budgetary failure a year later: the fact that Greece in the first quarter of 2011, afflicted with all the flaws by the Anglo-Saxon media, achieved higher growth than the UK, this is what the media should have as headlines!

So, according to our team, Greece’s comeback in the financial media, including concepts as absurd as Greece’s Eurozone exit, is a sign of a serious new crisis in the United Kingdom, and also in the US this time because the US media are well to the forefront on the subject. We have already identified in previous issues the US event to camouflage: it is impossible to end QE2 (see above for its impact on US Treasury Bonds and the US Dollar (3)).

As for the United Kingdom, it’s a sort of a return to the situation prior to May 2010, but in a much worse state because all the bullets have been fired. There is, once again, a political crisis following the collapse of the Lib-Dems, the Conservatives’ partners in the ruling coalition. The Lib-Dems have just realized that they have been "made fools of" (4) and from now on will refuse to endorse the Cameron government’s toughest budget measures. The British political mood, therefore, once again swings towards the chronic instability that was narrowly averted last May, now including a prospect of the country breaking up with the likelihood of a referendum on Scottish independence following the tidal wave election of Scottish independents (5).

And now social instability has developed, illustrated by the huge demonstration last April which had little media coverage, whilst we could see the extent to which a demonstration of minor importance in Athens made the headlines everywhere. At the same time, all the macroeconomic numbers are deteriorating (6) and government financing needs are not getting less, steering the country towards a new risk of a crisis in government debt.

The second half of 2011 will certainly bring new twists to the government debt crisis on Euroland’s periphery. But as we showed in the GEAB No. 50, the main consequence will be the decision by Euroland to make investors pay some of the costs, including banks. But we maintain that the main countries that contribute to this explosive fusion of the crisis in the second half of the year will not be Greece, Portugal or Spain, but the United States (7), the United Kingdom and Japan (which is also now in the front line of future shocks, caught between its post-tsunami recession and its staggering government debt without any credible political leadership (8)).

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