What happens when Greece defaults, por Andrew Lilico (Telegraph, via Business Insider):
[P]resumably we will now see either another Greek bailout or default within days.
What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:
- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.
- The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.
- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.
- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.
- Greece will redenominate all its debts into “New Drachmas” or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)
- The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting 0n 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.
- The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.
- The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.
- A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements.
- The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.
- The French and German governments will meet to decide whether (a) to recapitalise the ECB, or (b) to allow the ECB to print money to restore its solvency. (Because the ECB has relatively little foreign currency-denominated exposure, it could in principle print its way out, but this is forbidden by its founding charter. On the other hand, the EU Treaty explicitly, and in terms, forbids the form of bailouts used for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but a little thing like their being blatantly illegal hasn’t prevented that from happening, so it’s not intrinsically obvious that its being illegal for the ECB to print its way out will prove much of a hurdle.)
- They will recapitalise, and recapitalise their own banks, but declare an end to all bailouts.
- There will be carnage in the market for Spanish banking sector bonds, as bondholders anticipate imposed debt-equity swaps.
- This assumption will prove justified, as the Spaniards choose to over-ride the structure of current bond contracts in the Spanish banking sector, recapitalising a number of banks via debt-equity swaps.
- Bondholders will take the Spanish Banking Sector to the European Court of Human Rights (and probably other courts, also), claiming violations of property rights. These cases won’t be heard for years. By the time they are finally heard, no-one will care.
4 comments:
acho que o tribunal teria de ser ECJ, — Tribunal de Justiça. no Luxemburgo — e não o ECHR — Tribunal Europeu de Direitos do Homem, no Estrasburgo.
não há hipótese de fazer "novos dracmas" ou default, já que a dívida está em euros, o que a aumentaria para o dobro nesse dia.
Imagino que, a partir de 2001, Portugal não tenha continuado a pagar em escudos a divida inicialmente contraída em escudos (já agora, as indemnizações da I Guerra Mundial, que a Alemanha acabou de pagar há uns meses, também devem ter sido convertidas em euros há uns anos atrás, em vez de ter permanecido nas moedas em circulação em 1918).
Da mesma maneira, se a Grécia substituir o euro pelo dracma, pode simplesmente anunciar que as suas obirgações em euros (salários, pensões, prestações sociais, dívidas...) seriam convertidas em "novos dracmas" a um determinado câmbio e depois, simplesmente, deixar o ND desvalorizar face a esse cambio inicial; nem é muito claro que isso fosse considerado um default (li algures que, numa situação dessas, as empresas que vendem seguros contra default - os tais CDS - já se estariam a preparar para não pagar nada aos segurados, com o argumento de que a divida continuava a ser paga, apenas com uma unidade contabilística diferente)
De qualquer forma, esta sequência de eventos é suposto ser uma previsão do que aconteceria depois de um default grego - num cenário desses talvez não fosse muito relevante a dívida duplicar ou deixar de duplicar...
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