Gary North’s latest piece on the EU debt debacle succinctly highlights the two extremities of inevitability with regards to the final resolution of the EU’s fiscal and monetary problems– totalitarian government control, or default:
If the sovereign government debt situation in Europe is anywhere near a final economic solution, why do the heads of Germany and France keep meeting? These meetings are getting more frequent.
Why didn’t all the previous meetings solve the economic problem of PIIGS debt?
What public relations statement do they expect will bring financial stability to the PIIGS?
What new program will they suggest, only to be disavowed as impractical by the European Central Bank, and then adopted a week or two after the official denial?
What program will they ever submit to their respective parliaments, to be debated openly in front of voters? None, you say? I see. Just like before.
What opportunity will voters in France and especially Germany be given to express their view of the new program? None, you say? I see. Just like before.
What indication will investors see that there is any new program that is not merely another Band-Aid?
What program, other than more deficit spending by France and Germany to lend more money to the PIIGS, will ever come forth from one of these meetings?
What solution, other than more purchases of the IOUs of PIIGS bonds by the ECB, will ever be presented?
What will they ever suggest, other than more of the same?
What evidence will ever be presented that the latest round of more of the same will not be followed in a few weeks and months and years by even more of the same?
As always, investors dream of a final economic solution. They keep returning, like a dog to its vomit, to the capital markets, euros in hand, to get in on the boom that lies ahead – must lie ahead – because of the final infusion of capital, the final expansion of the monetary base, the final round of more of the same.
This is a good example of a macro-factor that a good value investor would want to always keep in the back of his mind while performing his bottoms-up analysis of a given company.
A House Rises 