Entering Into Waters Unknown
The 2011 debt crisis is largely about whether or not the largest and most credit-worthy nations have the balance sheets, the willingness, or the credibility to bail out the smaller and less credit worthy nations. Given that the governments of even the world’s wealthiest countries such as the United States, Germany, and Japan are in dangerous territory in terms of debt sustainability, there is considerable doubt as to whether any such rescue is even possible. There are two important questions that every investor is forced to confront in this environment. The first is whether a sustainable solution can be found that will prevent various countries from defaulting on their debt in the near term and offer sufficient time for the process of repair and repayment to take place in the long term. As time passes without a comprehensive response to the problem, the more likely it appears that sovereign defaults will occur. The second question is the harder one: what happens if there are multiple sovereign defaults? Will it cause the massive global economic contraction that was so widely feared and which was so narrowly averted back in 2008? Or will it simply cause an extended head-wind to global economic activity that will be slowly repaired over many years?