Sunday, February 28, 2010

Lining Up Like Dominoes

The age of the systemic risk is upon us. After Greece who knows who. Many people think Great Britain.

From Bloomberg:

While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next.

Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells a record amount of debt. Concern that Greece won’t be able to cut its budget deficit helped send the euro 5 percent lower against the dollar this year.

“Alarm bells were ringing in Greece for a long time and when it happened, it happened very quickly,” Haig Bathgate, head of strategy at Turcan Connell, said at the company’s offices in the Scottish capital. “The U.K. is in a similar predicament. It could be hit very hard.”


That is the problem with these things. The market ignores ignores and than bam, your in crises. This point isn't lost on Brits.

“When there’s a fiscal crisis, the markets tend to punish that country very quickly,” said Bathgate, who is responsible for 560 million pounds. “I don’t think Britain is in nearly as bad a position as Greece. We’ve got a good taxation system, however the position of the economy is very dire.”

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