PARIS, March 22 (UPI) -- The euro financial drama is not over, even though the Greek situation has eased from panicked emergency down to mere crisis. In fact, the real debt problem is just beginning, with the vast majority still to come of the $405 billion in government bond debt that has to be redeemed this year.
That $405 billion refers only to the bonds held by the PIIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.
March was a tough month for the PIIGS, with $33.1 billion to be redeemed. April will be twice as tough, with these governments having to come up with $62 billion.
And so it goes on: $47 billion in May and $53 billion in June; another $50 billion in July and $41 billion in August and $46 billion in September.
There won't be much of a summer vacation for the bond markets this year. Still, they can always take October off, with a mere $12 billion coming due. It gets tough again in November, with $35 billion, and another $25 billion in December, which could put a bit of a dent into Christmas celebrations.
Think of it as the Year of the Debt. And get used to it; life will be like this for years to come, with the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom all facing that monthly test of their fiscal credibility. And then there is Japan, which has to refinance an extraordinary $2.3 trillion in government bonds this year.
Doubtless many patient Japanese savers will roll over their bonds, as they have traditionally done, since the deflation under way in that country increases the real rate of yield. But with government debt now more than 200 percent of gross domestic product, a reckoning must come eventually.
That day of reckoning will probably be accelerated by the monstrous burden of new debt coming onto the market courtesy of the U.S. government, which is now borrowing 27 cents out of each dollar it spends. The Treasury Department's own figures for the new debt it proposes to raise are $1.7 trillion this year, $1.2 trillion next year, $1 trillion in 2012 and $800 billion in each of the next two years. That adds up to $5.5 trillion. (It is also based on somewhat optimistic forecasts of economic growth.)
And then there are the U.S. Treasury bonds that come due and must be refinanced, possibly at rather higher interest rates than those prevalent in recent years. There are roughly $400 billion this year, $800 billion next year, $900 billion in 2012, and $600 billion in each of the next two years. That's another $3.3 trillion.
Put it another way. Uncle Sam will be borrowing $6 trillion, or 40 percent of U.S. GDP, before President Barack Obama faces the voters again.
Where will the money come from? Ironically, that may be less of a problem than it looks because of financial reform. Although the details have yet to be agreed, it seems almost certain that banks will be required in future to increase their capital reserves to as much as 8 percent or even 10 percent of their overall book. And sovereign bonds have traditionally been seen as the most reliable place to park those capital reserves. Governments thus have a vested interest in raising the levels required since it means a greater demand for the bonds they will have to issue.
And where else should nervous investors put their money, when real estate prices are low and company growth prospects subdued? Pension funds and insurers also have to invest their money somewhere.
The big question, of course, is whether sovereign bonds are quite as sound as they used to be, after this year's Greek crisis and the latest warnings from the ratings agencies that the British and U.S. governments' triple-A ratings are coming under pressure.
Usually, this would mean that interest rates should rise to compensate investors for the higher degree of risk. Higher interest rates would increase the interest burden on government borrowing but also depress the economic activity that produces tax revenues. This, in turn, would drive governments to make up for the lost revenues by borrowing even more, pushing interest rates yet higher, and so on. This would be the mother of all vicious circles.
Such is the price that we shall all be paying in the next few years for the heroic efforts of our governments and central banks to fend off financial collapse and a new Great Depression. The world's governments and central banks mobilized more than 10 percent of global GDP, in deficit spending and liquidity creation, in this endeavor.
But the recovery they produced has been modest and fitful and the high levels of debt mean that governments are already running out of fiscal ammunition, even though it remains uncertain whether the private sector is yet able to take up the strain. The underlying problems of global imbalances and financial governance remain, and the political fallout of high unemployment, notably in protectionist pressures, is already making itself felt.
Last week, 130 congressmen wrote to Obama urging him to declare China a "currency manipulator" and to take appropriate although unspecified retaliatory action. Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times, suggested that retaliation could be a threat to impose a 25 percent import surcharge on Chinese goods. That could trigger the kind of trade war that would be the mother-in-law of all vicious circles.
There are alarmingly interesting times.
