June 1, 2010
Learning the lessons about sovereign debt
Vahan Janjigian at his blog at Forbes on the lessons learned from the Greek debt crisis, especially for the United States:
Janjigian's sense of scale uses Greece as a template that makes the United States debt load a potential time bomb of almost unmeasurable proportions." The events in Greece have brought the risks of sovereign debt to the forefront. At the CFA Institute’s annual conference in mid-May, several speakers focused on the dire consequences of too much sovereign debt. Niall Ferguson’s remarks were the most sobering.
He suggested that the situation in Greece pales in comparison to what could happen in many larger economies - - including the U.S. He said that focusing on debt as a percentage of GDP can be misleading. A more relevant metric is the percentage of tax revenues that must service the debt. In the U.S., interest on the federal debt already eats up more than 9% of our revenues.
Yet at a time when rates are at historic lows, the government continues to rely on short-term financing, taking on tremendous rollover risk. Ferguson says that if rates were to rise just slightly, we could soon be spending 20% of our tax revenues on interest payments, a situation that would be untenable."
Related:
2011 – Creating the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) & the "PIIGS"
2017 – Another Greek Economic Crisis?
The Drachma almost returned to Greece 2013–2017
Greek economic Survival in the 1990s
Greece's Golden Visa program
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