{"id":1424,"date":"2011-11-09T10:28:07","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T09:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esmartproducts.co.uk\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2011-11-09T10:28:07","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T09:28:07","slug":"staving-off-a-sovereign-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/?p=1424","title":{"rendered":"Staving off a sovereign default"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>The need to get to grips          with the current crisis        of indebtedness<\/h3>\n<p>The turbulence that has gripped financial markets is a response  to the perception that politicians in the Eurozone and the US have been  slow to face up to issues of indebtedness. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>If Interest rates in the UK and the Eurozone remain low for years  to come, the pound and euro currencies would then be an unattractive  place for investors to deposit their cash.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Contingency plans<\/strong><br \/>\nThe direct exposure of UK banks to Greece is fairly limited, but  Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, revealed in his response to MPs\u2019  questions in June that the Bank was working with the Treasury to draw  up contingency plans for a Greek default.<\/p>\n<p>The European Central Bank together with the \u2018eurosystem\u2019 of 17  national central banks can create money that is used to buy government  debts to stave off a sovereign default. There is therefore no  theoretical limit to how much can be bought up.<\/p>\n<p>The sooner Europe\u2019s political and financial leaders get to  grips with the current crisis, the sooner the markets can try and return  to some sort of normality.<\/p>\n<p><strong>US sovereign debt<\/strong><br \/>\nAcross the pond, the recent downgrading of US sovereign debt by  Standard and Poor\u2019s (S&amp;P) is an important symbolic moment in the  shift of economic power from mature industrialised nations to emerging  economies.<\/p>\n<p>The US will only regain its AAA status once politicians have  demonstrated that they can implement the necessary tax increases and\/or  spending cuts that will eventually get the ratio of outstanding debt to  GDP onto a downward trajectory.<\/p>\n<p>Private investors are likely to keep their investments as  simple as possible via direct investment and collective vehicles such as  funds and investment companies, while those with direct exposure to  higher risk assets, which may fall in value in the short to medium term,  at least have the capacity to grow again in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The need to get to grips with the current crisis of indebtedness The turbulence that has gripped financial markets is a response to the perception that politicians in the Eurozone and the US have been slow to face up to issues of indebtedness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.suretyfp.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}