Was die Propheten von 2008 heute sagen
Bekanntlich ist das so eine Sache mit den Krisengurus. Für gewöhnlich liegen sie einmal richtig und dann lange falsch. Die Krise von 2008 vorhergesehen zu haben, heißt noch gar nichts. Dennoch hier die Aussagen von vier ehemaligen Krisenmahnern zur heutigen Lage. Zusammengetragen von Zero Hedge:
- Der Ökonom Gary Shilling (…) “started writing about a housing bubble in the early 2000s which Greg Lippmann (of ‚The Big Short‘ fame), credits with giving him the idea to bet against subprime mortgages. (…) he warned his newsletter subscribers about a housing bust and wholesale deleveraging of household debt that would hobble the economy for years. (…) Shilling did some consulting for Paulson’s hedge fund and even invested what ‚was for the Shillings a major piece of money in this.‘ Paulson, of course, loaded up on CDS’s and made $4 billion in what has been called ‚the greatest trade ever.‘ ‚We made 15 times our money,‘ Shilling says.”
- Heute sieht Shillig die Lage so: “‚The ultimate thing that brings down financial markets is excess leverage … So, you look where’s the big leverage, and right now I think it’s in emerging markets.‘ (…) Shilling is particularly worried about the $8 trillion in dollar-denominated emerging-market corporate and sovereign debt, especially as the U.S. dollar rises along with interest rates. ‚The problem is as the dollar increases,‘ he said, ‚it gets tougher and tougher for them to service [that debt] because it takes more and more of their local currency to do so.‘ Of that, $249 billion must be repaid or refinanced through next year, Bloomberg reported.” – bto: ein Thema, das ich auch schon mehrfach besprach.
- “Jim Stack called housing a bubble a year before it peaked and warned of bigger problems ahead for the economy and the markets.” Heute sieht er die Lage so: “the biggest danger (…) is from low-quality corporate debt. Issuance of corporate bonds has ‚gone from around $700 billion in 2008 to about two and a half times that today.‘ And, he added, more and more of that debt is subprime.” – bto: Das Thema der hohen Unternehmensverschuldung hatte ich ebenfalls mehrfach an dieser Stelle.
- “Raghuram Rajan previously the IMF’s chief economist and former head of the Reserve Bank of India, famously presented a paper at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual retreat at Jackson Hole, in August 2005. To illustrate the general obsequiousness and self-congratulatory atmosphere of those times, Rajan recalled that some papers at the conference “focused on whether Alan Greenspan was the best central banker in history, or only among the best.”(…) Rajan turned out to be a party pooper, questioning whether ‚advances‘ in the financial sector actually increased, rather than reduced, systemic risk. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called him a Luddite. “ (…) ‚I felt like an early Christian who had wandered into a convention of half-starved lions,‘ he wrote. But though delivered in genteel academic lingo, his paper was powerful and prescient.” – bto: Ich denke, über das Meeting in Jackson Hole könnte man mal ein Theaterstück schreiben. Es wären alle menschlichen Höhen und Tiefen zu beobachten.
- Seine Sicht heute: “‚There has been a shift of risk from the formal banking system to the shadow financial system.‘ He also told me the post-crisis reforms did not address central banks’ role in creating asset bubbles through accommodative monetary policy, which he sees as the financial markets’ biggest long-term challenge. Rajan also sees potential problems in U.S. corporate debt, particularly as rates rise, and in emerging markets, though he thinks the current problems in Turkey and Argentina are ‚not full-blown contagion.‘ ‚But are there accidents waiting to happen? Yes, there are.‘” – bto: So ist es.
- John Mauldin, best known for his free weekly e-letter ‚Thoughts from the Frontline,‘ (…) said a housing bust would lead to a drop in consumer spending, a bear market, and a recession (though at first he thought it would be a mild one), and that credit default swaps (CDSs) posed a systemic risk.” – bto: womit er auch recht hatte. Interessant ist, wie es möglich war, trotz so vieler warnender Stimmen zu einer solchen Blase zu kommen.
- Heute ist seine Sicht sehr nahe an der von bto: “I think the choice of Europe is (…) going to have to put [all the debt] on the balance sheet of the European Central Bank. If they don’t, then the euro zone breaks apart and we’re going to get a 50% valuation collapse.” (…) “Greece (…) is a rounding error. Italy is not (…) And Brussels and Germany are going to have to allow Italy to overshoot their persistent debt, and the ECB is going to have to buy that debt.” (…) “If it doesn’t happen, the debt triggers a crisis in Europe, [and] that triggers the beginning of a global recession” but (… ) “there are so many little dominoes, if they all start falling, one leads to the next.” – bto: Natürlich wird die EZB alles kaufen.
