Monday, September 19, 2011

Global growth and sovereign debt concerns drive markets

In a "Special Feature" in the last Bank of International Settlements' Quarterly Review, Sep. 2011, [1]  two of BIS staff publish "Global growth and sovereign debt concerns drive markets," where they confirm the already known BIS view of several trends and facts:
1  Without credible plans to restore long-term fiscal sustainability, sovereign debt in several euro area and other advanced countries may no longer be regarded as having zero credit risk.

2  [I]n many advanced economies, government debt levels are expected to continue to rise over coming years, due to high fiscal deficits and rising pension and health care costs.

3  Moreover, the level of economic output, which underpins debt servicing capacity, is unlikely to return to its pre-crisis trend any time soon.

4  Sovereign risk premia could thus be persistently higher and more volatile in the future.

There is much dispute regarding the first point, of course. The US Executive is trying to get Congress to approve a further stimulus package, and IMF's Christine Lagarde said last week that "In many corners" of the world austerity was pushed "in too harsh a way," without letting economic growth take root, according to the WSJ. [2]



References

[1]  Michael Davies and Tim Ng: Global growth and sovereign debt concerns drive markets. BIS Quarterly Review, Sep. 2011. http://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1109.htm

[2]  Sudeep Reddy: Three Buttons the IMF Could Push. Wall Street Journal, Monday, Sep 19, 2011, page 12.