I have no idea if I caused this, but it is interesting to think about. First let’s look at the article and you will see what happened.
He said an earlier rumor that France’s credit rating could be in jeopardy accelerated the selloff in the euro, as it added to the markets’ contagion fears.
"That scared the heck out of everybody," Cashin said.
When I heard this I thought, “you have got to be f****g kidding me?”
On Friday early in the morning CET time I was talking with some people in the stockguy22 chat forum about the Euro. We were having a rational discussion about the Euro zone and sovereign debt in general.
I then said, “you know this fear over Greek, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese debt is completely overrated. I actually think that those country’s debt costs are overrated. Then I said, if you really wanted to find debt inconsistencies then look at France, the UK, and the USA. I said those three countries with their ratings were masking a true debt problem.” You only need to look at my debt picture from previous blog entries.
So I left the discussion as I thought it was just a discussion. Then later on in the day I start hearing about some other users who twittered that French debt is a potential next problem! I thought WTF? I said nothing in the forum since I was in disbelief. Then it dawned onto me, what was happening is a negative feedback loop.
I am thinking it was my comments because up to that point nobody said anything about France! Nothing, nada, zip, zilch zero! And on Friday morning I talked about France. Thus this probably was blogged, twittered and shared around.
Now comes the question what does this mean? It means once and for all that the Euro is in take down mode. SOMEBODY wants the Euro to fail! After all when the US did the exact same thing everything worked out for the best. Yet when the ECB and does these things it all fails? Why is that? As I have said before, when all answers have been depleted the only logical answer is what remains, and that is that the Euro is in taken down mode.
What surprises the heck out of me is that people are so easily fooled by rumours, and I feel sorry that Fitch had to come out and say that France was ok. So in the end do I think France is a problem? Absolutely, but I also think the UK, and the USA have problems. Do I think that these countries will go under? Absolutely NOT! These countries like Greece will emerge for the better.
Do I truly believe my statements? Absolutely! When I graduated from university in 1992 Ontario and Canada had one of the worst recessions in a very long time. Canada had lots of debt, no growth, no dynamics. It was very much a situation like Greece. Don’t believe me look at the stats and compare how bad Canada was compared to the rest of the world at the time. I remember in our graduating engineering class only 1/3 could get jobs. It was a very bad situation. But with the liberal government slashing budgets, Canada bounced back. Many might say, “oh Canada had commodities”. Sorry, but no commodities made a dent in the Canadian budget after 2000. Before that it was Canada doing the heavy work!
That’s why I truly believe Greece and all of the other countries can make it back. However, what I also see is that back then if people had pounded Canada into the ground like they are Greece or the Euro, Canada as a country would not have survived!
So that’s why I say people take a deep breath and think rationally!