Bankenhilfe kostete Staat bisher 500 Mio. Euro

orf.on, 30/4

Der österreichische Staat hat seit Dezember 2008 für die Rettung bzw. Unterstützung heimischer Banken 1,4 Mrd. Euro ausgegeben, im Gegenzug aber nur knapp mehr als 900 Mio. Euro eingenommen, davon 598,7 Mio. Euro in Form von Haftungsentgelten für garantierte Anleihen. Das berichtet das Nachrichtenmagazin „profil“ in seiner aktuellen Ausgabe.

Für den Betrieb der staatlichen Bankenholding FIMBAG musste die Republik insgesamt 5,7 Mio. Euro aufwenden, schreibt das „profil“ und beruft sich dabei auf eine Aufstellung des Finanzministeriums zum 31. März 2011. Die FIMBAG war im November 2008 als Teil des Bankenhilfspakets gegründet worden, um etwa den Einsatz des staatlichen Partizipationskapitals (PS-Kapital) in Banken zu überwachen. Es seien nicht alle Gelder verbraucht worden.

The Endgame Headwinds

Der erste Teil des für mich schlüssigsten Szenarios: Endgame. Sehr verständlich und überzeugend geschrieben (hfk) 

John Mauldin, 30/4

The Endgame Headwinds
If Something Can’t Happen…
GDP = C + I + G + Net Exports
Increasing Productivity

I have written repeatedly about the Endgame in the weekly letter, as well as in a New York Times best-seller on the same topic. By Endgame I mean the period of time in which many of the developed economies of the world will either willingly deleverage or be forced to do so. This age of deleveraging will produce a fundamentally different economic environment, which the McKinsey study referenced below suggests will last anywhere from 4-6 years. Now, whether this deleveraging is orderly, as now appears to be the case in Britain, or more resembles what I have long predicted will be a violent default in Greece, it will create a profoundly different economic world from the one we have lived in for 60 years. This makes sense, in that the prior world was defined by ever-increasing amounts of leverage. Outright reductions in leverage or even a significant slowing of the rate of growth is a whole new ballgame, economically speaking.

The Destruction of Economic Facts

Date: 29-04-2011
 Source: BusinessWeek By Hernando de Soto
Renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis wasn’t just about finance—it was about a staggering lack of knowledge

During the second half of the 19th century, the world’s biggest economies endured a series of brutal recessions. At the time, most forms of reliable economic knowledge were organized within feudal, patrimonial, and tribal relationships. If you wanted to know who owned land or owed a debt, it was a fact recorded locally—and most likely shielded from outsiders. At the same time, the world was expanding. Travel between cities and countries became more common and global trade increased. The result was a huge rift between the old, fragmented social order and the needs of a rising, globalizing market economy.

To prevent the breakdown of industrial and commercial progress, hundreds of creative reformers concluded that the world needed a shared set of facts. Knowledge had to be gathered, organized, standardized, recorded, continually updated, and easily accessible—so that all players in the world’s widening markets could, in the words of France’s free-banking champion Charles Coquelin, „pick up the thousands of filaments that businesses are creating between themselves.“

As the Euro Surges, Another Risk for Greece

Date: 29-04-2011
 Source: The Wall Street Journal
Greece has plenty to worry about: hard-hitting austerity measures designed to get the nation’s finances back on track, a shrinking economy, and the real risk that it can’t pay its debts.

Whether it needs to add a strong euro to that list is less clear.

The currency, used by 17 countries including Greece, is flying high, reaching a 16-month high of $1.4882 on Thursday, as investors flee the greenback in the expectation that U.S. interest rates will remain super-low for a long time, while others, including those of the euro area, push higher. Most impressively, the euro has risen nearly 14% against the dollar this year, despite the financial problems of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, all of which have had to accept international bailouts.

The shift in the euro is bad news for the euro zone’s exporters because it makes their goods abruptly more expensive abroad. If the current rumble in the dollar becomes an unnervingly rapid rout—a possibility that troubles many analysts and investors—this could slam all of the euro’s members. It would be a particular threat to the bloc’s most financially stressed members because they would find it even harder to use exports to expand their economies and crawl out from under their mountains of debt.

Bundesrechnungsabschluss 2010

Gestern frisch veröffentlicht:

„Um die langfristige Nachhaltigkeit der öffentlichen Finanzen sicherzustellen, ist im Allgemeinen ein Primärüberschuss des öffentlichen Haushalts nötig. Im Jahr 2010 war der Primärsaldo des Bundes negativ (-3,067 Mrd. EUR). Das bedeutet, dass der Bund nicht nur den Zinsaufwand, sondern auch operative Ausgaben durch weitere Schulden finanzieren muss. „

So viel zur „grossartigen Bewältigung“ der Finanzkrise. (hfk)

BRA_2010_-_Ueberblick__Voranschlagsvergleichsrechnung

Botox and beancounting

   Date: 28-04-2011
 Source: The Economist
Subject: Economics focus: Botox and beancounting

Do official statistics cosmetically enhance America’s economic appearance?

COSMETIC surgery is more popular in America than in Europe. Statistics, too, may be making things there look less saggy. For several headline economic gauges, America uses a different (and more flattering) measure from that employed on the other side of the Atlantic. The number-crunchers are not deliberately massaging the figures but the effect of some of America’s official statistics is to Botox its performance relative to Europe’s.

Take public-sector debt.

Angst in the United States: What’s wrong with America’s economy?

„Angst“ wurde in den USA zum „Lehnwort des Jahres“, weil es im englischen „fear“ nicht die feinfühlige Unterscheidung wie bei uns zwischen „Angst“ (dumpf, unkonkret) und „Furcht“ (fokussiert, rationalisert) gibt (hfk).

Date: 28-04-2011
 Source: The Economist
Subject: Angst in the United States: What’s wrong with America’s economy?

Its politicians are failing to tackle the country’s real problems. Believe it or not, they could learn from Europe

PESSIMISM about the United States rarely pays off in the long run. Time and again, when Americans have felt particularly glum, their economy has been on the brink of a revival.

Think of Jimmy Carter’s cardigan-clad gloom in the inflation-ridden late 1970s, or the fear of competition from Japan that marked the “jobless recovery” of the early 1990s. Both times the United States bounced back, boosted on the first occasion by Paul Volcker’s conquest of inflation and on the second by a productivity spurt that sent growth rates soaring in the mid-1990s even as Japan stalled.

The Global Village Idiot

Walter Molano, RGE Monitor, Apr 27, 2011 11:15AM

In 1964, Herbert Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian academic, developed the concept of the Global Village, whereby the advances in electronic communications would create the equivalence of a central nervous system that would allow the planet to become interconnected and act as if it was a single unit. The concept of the global village became prominent with the development of the internet. Advances in transportation and communications allowed goods and services to be cheaply transported to the four corners of the planet, thus erasing regional differences in products and practices. The concept was fully embraced by multinationals during the 1980s and 1990s, as they used their market clout to impose a global system of branding and product domination. This led to greater integration of the global economy and the synchronization of the business cycle. This is not to say that all regional differences disappeared. On the contrary, just as in a village where there is a division of labor, between butcher, baker and candlestick maker, the globe was segmented into areas of specialization, such as high tech design, commodity production and mass manufacturing. By raising the division of labor to a higher level, society was able to extract more efficiency and productivity, which in turn allowed for an improvement in social welfare. Although poverty still abounds, globalization led to more prosperity (for some). However, there was always a problem with the leadership issue. Each village has a leader, but at times it seems like the global village is managed by the local fool.

Schuldenrekord:Investoren misstrauen USA

von Jörg Hackhausen, Handelsbltt.com, 28/4

Die Investoren haben lange stillgehalten. Sie haben den USA immer wieder Kredit eingeräumt. Doch angesichts der Neuverschuldung in Billionenhöhe verlieren sie langsam die Geduld..

Was, wenn die Amerikaner ihre Schulden nicht in den Griff bekommen? Eine Frage, die früher nicht einmal gedacht werden durfte, wird inzwischen an den Märkten unverhohlen diskutiert. Bill Gross hat den Anfang gemacht. Der führende Kopf bei Pimco, dem weltgrößten Anleiheinvestor, misstraut der Finanzpolitik in Washington und hat sämtliche US-Staatsanleihen verkauft. „Ich habe Wertpapiere, deren Rendite nicht einmal die Inflation ausgleicht. Da gibt es bessere Optionen. Als Firma geben wir uns mit so etwas nicht zufrieden“, begründete Gross den Schritt.

Advanced Economies: Minutes to Midnight?

   Date: 28-04-2011
 Source: YaleGlobal
Subject: Advanced Economies: Minutes to Midnight? Part I

Advanced economies face momentous decisions to sustain their prosperity and lifestyles. In a two-part series, YaleGlobal reviews the challenges faced by the US and the Eurozone. In 1917 the US Congress passed statutory limits, unusual by world standards, for issuing bonds, to avoid separate approval on every issue. The ceiling has been raised many times since to the current limit, $14.294 trillion. The US borrows about 40 cents of every dollar it spends. Any signal of default or refusing to put financial affairs in order would unnerve credit markets, hike interest rates and erode the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Long-term obligations on military spending, retirement pensions and health care are out of control, argues economist David Dapice in the first article of the series. To reduce massive deficits, US politicians must slash spending or raise taxes. The easiest place for cuts is following Canada’s lead in health care: Canada spends about half what the US spends per capita and achieves better results. But special interests in the US resist reforms. If the US continues to avoid tough budget decisions, global credit markets will impose higher borrowing costs. – YaleGlobal