Tsunami sur le “Club Med”?

Tsunami sur le “Club Med”?

Un article du fameux commentateur financier Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, du Daily Telegraph, annonce un tsunami sur le “Club Med” – ce terme plutôt méprisant des pays anglo-saxons pour désigner les pays du Sud dans l’UE, que ces mêmes Anglo-Saxons considèrent comme si inefficaces pour appliquer les recettes de l’hyper-libéralisme qui a tant fait ses preuves, notamment au Royaume-Uni. Pourtant l’Espagne, qui fait partie du “Club Med”, avait mis beaucoup de zèle pour appliquer la formidable formule. Justement, l’Espagne est, avec le Portugal et la Grèce, selon Evans-Pritchard, parmi les pays menacés d’effondrement à cause de leur dette, qui mettent en péril l’équilibre européen et l’euro.

L’article de Evans-Pritchard est du 4 février (lien : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7159456/Fears-of-Lehman-style-tsunami-as-crisis-hits-Spain-and-Portugal.html). Un autre article sur le même thème mais avec ses prolongements mondiaux, du même jour, également du Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/ftse100/7159381/Markets-in-turmoil-as-euro-fears-spiral.html.

Extraits de Evans-Pritchard :

«Julian Callow from Barclays Capital said the EU may to need to invoke emergency treaty powers under Article 122 to halt the contagion, issuing an EU guarantee for Greek debt. “If not contained, this could result in a `Lehman-style’ tsunami spreading across much of the EU.”

»Credit default swaps (CDS) measuring bankruptcy risk on Portuguese debt surged 28 basis points on Thursday to a record 222 on reports that Jose Socrates was about to resign as prime minister after failing to secure enough votes in parliament to carry out austerity measures.

»Parliament minister Jorge Lacao said the political dispute has raised fears that the country is no longer governable. “What is at stake is the credibility of the Portuguese state,” he said.

»Portugal has been in political crisis since the Maoist-Trotskyist Bloco won 10pc of the vote last year. This is rapidly turning into a market crisis as well as investors digest a revised budget deficit of 9.3pc of GDP for 2009, much higher than thought. A €500m debt auction failed on Wednesday. The yield spread on 10-year Portuguese bonds has risen to 155 basis points over German bunds.

»Daniel Gross from the Centre for European Policy Studies said Portgual and Greece need to cut consumption by 10pc to clean house, but such draconian measures risk street protests. “This is what is making the markets so nervous,” he said.

»In Spain, default insurance surged 16 basis points after Nobel economist Paul Krugman said that “the biggest trouble spot isn’t Greece, it’s Spain”. He blamed EMU’s one-size-fits-all monetary system, which has left the country with no defence against an adverse shock. The Madrid’s IBEX index fell 6pc.

»Finance minister Elena Salgado said Professor Krugman did not “understand” the eurozone, but reserved her full wrath for the EU economics commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, who helped trigger the panic flight from Iberian debt by blurting out that Spain and Portugal were in much the same mess as Greece.

»Mrs Salgado called the comparison simplistic and imprudent. “In Spain we have time for measures to overcome the crisis,” she said. It is precisely this assumption that is now in doubt. The budget deficit exploded to 11.4pc last year, yet the economy is still contracting.»

“Vieux rebelle”