Sunday, May 15, 2011

Greece, the EU and the US

We recently reported that the EU put in a strong performance for Q1 GDP. Impressive, yet the Euro continues to nosedive vs the $. Why? Fear of periphery contagion.

One need only return to Karl Marx - "From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs." All of us, school kids on up know this to be a recipe for failure. Just as this applies to relationships between individuals within a government, so it equally applies to relationships between 17 sovereigns.

This then underpins the ultimate demise of the EU. This also explains the implosion of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. At a meeting tomorrow in Brussels, panicked EU leaders will try to hold it all together (thank you Strauss-Kahn for your contribution).

Germany is not about to go along with the "From each," bit no matter how much Greece believes in the "to each."

So what’s it mean for us, for our markets? As it will be death of a thousand cuts, almost nothing. A headline in Tokyo just now (Monday monring) reads, "U.S. stocks fell broadly as worries over Greece's finances ramped up ahead of the weekend." 

The truth is we have very little exposure in that region. And a stronger $ vs the Euro (as long as the Euro exists) is not a big deal as these folk don’t buy so much from us anyway.


Robert Craven

No comments:

Post a Comment