Niall Ferguson in the Sovereign Debt crisis..superb

[RDMcG]

Skip the first eight minutes of boring intros. This is very sobering stuff..........

http://www.piie.com/events/event_detail.cfm?EventI...

[sadoksevoli]

I think there were a lot of strands of thought that could be taken forwards from his talk that could lead to slightly more optimism - Ferguson's outlook was incredibly bleak but only from the perspective of the continuation of the system entirely as it has done - but he hints that geo-political uncertainty will ensue and possibly thus massive blips in the various trends. I think also he makes a point that in isolation government creditors will have made reduced if not negative gains in their holdings - but buying government debt could be seen as a means of propping up the economies in questions to provide the opportunities to make big gains in other areas such as stocks and shares, lending to other debtors and direct investment in commercial activity - therefore as long as there's sufficient confidence that Western economies can maintain their momentum then things won't be as bad as he is trying to make out.