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> 国家破産２７ > 412.html
★阿修羅♪
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５月２９日のファイナンシャル・タイムズ（英国）に、将来確実に支払いせねばならない出費を現時点に直して計算すると４４．２兆ドルになる事を前財務長官オニールの時に既に判明していたのをブッシュ大統領が握りつぶした、と書いてあります。実際、この報道の元になったAEI発行の報告書をpdfで読むことが出来ます。この報道は直ぐに日本の新聞に大々的に報道されると思っていたら、どこにも書いてありません。
今まで沈黙していたアメリカの経済評論家でやっとアメリカがもう破産している事を認める人が出てきました。
http://www.safehaven.com/Editorials/mauldin/060703.htm
以下はその抜粋です。原文は非常に長いので抜粋も長くなりましたが、最後の部分は非常に参考になるので良くお読み下さい。
America is bankrupt.
This from Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters.
No, these men are not a Saudi terrorist or Southern right wing extremist respectively. Instead the former is the Senior Economic Advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and the latter is a full professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Credentials notwithstanding, the men's conclusion would seem preposterous. America has never seemed more prosperous. Even this recession has been minor.
On the other hand, their source seems reliable: Gokhale and Smetters got their data from the U.S. Department of Treasury. And they performed their present value calculations on the order of then Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill. Smetters was, until recently, on staff there, as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy. The Treasury needed new numbers because the Office of Management and Budget's numbers have almost no connection to reality. (For example, OMB projects a constant 75-year average lifespan in its Social Security and Medicare cost estimates even though the average lifespan in America is already 78...and increasing at the rate of three months every year.)
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And the number?
" Taking present values as of fiscal-year-end 2002 and interpreting the policies in the federal budget for fiscal year 2004 as current policies, the federal government's total fiscal imbalance is equal to $44.2 trillion."
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In order to achieve current solvency, the government would have to raise payroll taxes by 68.5%, beginning today. Alternatively the government could cut Social Security and non-Medicare outlays by 54.8% immediately and forever. (How do you think either policy would go over at the polls?)
It's unlikely that either huge tax hikes or huge Social Security cuts will occur. Most likely nothing will happen. And so, the government's insolvency will grow much larger. By 2008 FI will reach $54 trillion. To reach solvency at that point, taxes would have to increase by 73.7%.
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Corporate America has been on a borrowing binge for most of the last 25 years. Even the very best companies are now loaded up with debt. GE, for example, has been a net borrower since 1992.
And IBM borrowed $20 billion during the 1990s, while at the same time buying back $9 billion worth of its stock on the open market. Why would you take on expensive debt while buying back even more expensive stock? It made the income statement look good, converting debt to earnings per share. And that made Lou Gerstner's bank account look good, because he got paid in options whose value was influenced by earnings growth. Meanwhile the balance sheet was covered in the concrete of debt.
Then there's Ford - one of America's greatest companies. Debt on the balance sheet is now 24 times equity.
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In the long term, debt restructuring does absolutely nothing to improve America's economic fundamentals. Lower interest rates aren't spurring new investment or new demand. More debt only postpones the day of reckoning. Thus, the current bond market mania is just the corporate version of the consumer's home equity loans: We're buying today what we couldn't afford yesterday...
Where are the Profits?
What we need are genuine profits. But there aren't many real profits in the leading companies of the baby boom generation, the generation that's approaching retirement with a bankrupt social net and no net savings.
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So...what will happen? What's the financial endgame? What are the consequences of America's bankruptcy...?
Inflation and the Fall of the Dollar
Like John, I'm sure we'll find a way to muddle through. In the end - even if there's more deflation in the short term - our government will end up monetizing its debts. Greenspan and others at the Fed have already mentioned they're prepared to buy large amounts of long-dated Treasury bonds. Retiring Treasury obligations with dollars the Fed prints will cause a weaker dollar. That means, sooner or later, inflation will be back -- and in a big way.
This is the real endgame, as I see it. Let me explain.
One of the smartest and best investors I've ever met, Chris Weber, says we're entering the third dollar bear market. And if there's anyone worth listening to when it comes to the currency, it's Chris Weber. Starting with the money he made on a Phoenix, Arizona paper route in the early 1970s, Chris built a $10 million fortune, primarily through currency investing. He has never had any other job. When I met him seven years ago he was living on Palm Beach. Now he resides in Monaco. I saw him two weeks ago in Amelia Island, Florida.
According to Chris, the first dollar bear market began in 1971. It ended when gold peaked out at $850 an ounce in 1980. This inflation helped ease the debts the U.S. incurred fighting the Vietnam War while wasting billions on the "war on poverty."
The second dollar bear market began after the Plaza Accord in 1985. This inflation helped pay for Reagan's tax cuts and the final build-up of the Cold War. (You should remember the impact the falling dollar had on stocks. They collapsed in 1987 on a Monday following comments over the weekend by Treasury Secretary Baker who said the dollar could continue to weaken.)
And Chris thinks this - the third dollar bear market - will be much worse than the last two. This time the falling dollar might lead to the end of the dollar as the world's only reserve currency. He's not the only one who thinks so. Doug Casey sees this happening too. And I believe it's not an unlikely outcome.
Why? Because the imbalances inside the U.S. economy have never been this large, nor has our current account deficit ever been this big and never before has the United States been more dependent on foreigners for oil.
This possible move away from the dollar as the primary reserve currency for the world is high-lighted by a recent comment from Dennis Gartman (The Gartman Letter):
"At what has been promoted as "The Executives' Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks" (The EMEAP), those attending took the preliminary steps toward creating an Asian bond market fund to be managed by the central bank's central banker, the Bank for International Settlements (The BIS). According to the Nihon Keizai and The Japan Daily Digest, the EMEAP is a co-operative of eleven regional central banks and it intends to create a fund with contributions from its member banks and to use the money to invest in dollar denominated government debt... initially. Then from our perspective, the fun begins. Given that the idea works in practice, the fund will proceed to increase its size and to start buying debt denominated in local currencies, moving away from the US dollar. The idea according to the Nikkei is to give the Asian central banks a place to invest the dollars their economies generate in something other than U.S. Treasuries. The intention is ultimately to keep the foreign currencies that these economies generate available in the region for investment. They are apparently weary of washing these earnings back into the US dollar, and that weariness has become all the more emphatic in light of Mr. Snow's ill-advised comments over several weeks ago. President Bush's comments over the weekend might have assuaged those concerns somewhat, but they are still looking above for other avenues of investment. Were we in their shoes, certainly we'd be doing the same. The EMEAP's member central banks include Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Other's may join, making the effect even more material. Snow's comments created a veritable blizzard effect."
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。