Sovereign debt issued by governments is immense. In 2009, worldwide sovereign debt exceeded $34 trillion and is now the largest risk to the global financial system.
Many of the potential problems and risks are surprising, even to those well-versed in their particular area of finance. What happens if Things Go Really Bad?
...out of the multitude of potential scenarios, I have settled upon one which is really bad, but doesn’t involve asteroids, mass extinctions, or apes taking over. It is consistent with prior bad episodes of sovereign debt default.
Here is the Really Bad scenario. It’s not a worst possible scenario. It is more like the Long Depression or the Great Depression reoccurring under 2010 conditions.
In the Really Bad scenario, 45% of the countries with large outstanding sovereign debts are in default within a 2-3 year period."
A five-part article series on the imminent dangers of sovereign default from a guest columnist at
Calculated Risk blog. Some of this strays into finance ubernerd territory but Part 5C in particular is the
likely the playbook for the next financial crisis.
[more inside]
posted by storybored
on Sep 6, 2010 -
61 comments
Want to learn about investing? Morningstar, an independent investment researcher, is offering 172 free online "classes" on stocks, bonds, funds, and portfolio building. And there's nifty quizzes at the end of each lesson where you can earn points that can be used for Morningstar products.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero
on Jan 9, 2007 -
20 comments
Sports Illustrated has an excerpt from the upcoming book
Game of Shadows. The book claims to have detailed evidence of heavy drug use by Barry Bonds. Tom Verducci of SI (who has a Hall of Fame vote) has suggested this will keep him out of the Hall and is damning as the
Dowd Report, which lead to a lifetime ban for Pete Rose. Would this provide any kind of closure to the steroid era? If Bonds does not sue, is that as good as an admission? And although his motives can be considered dubious, did Jose Canseco end up becoming a savior of baseball?
posted by dig_duggler
on Mar 7, 2006 -
78 comments
An unexpected side effect of iTunes. Remember
Bowie Bonds? Introduced in 1997, bonds tied to future profits of music artists (besides Bowie, James Brown and the Isley Brothers offered them) tanked with the advent of online filesharing. Thanks to iTunes, some on Wall Street are betting that the Bowie Bond is a concept with a future.
posted by me3dia
on Aug 23, 2005 -
16 comments
Yesterday President Bush said, "Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent." Is he advocating that the US default on its Treasury bonds?
posted by Sixtieslibber
on Feb 10, 2005 -
115 comments
'Vice or Price'? Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett in
Miami Vice drove a fancy car while fighting the drug world.
Now Don is suspected of trying laundering $8 billion in bonds, stocks and credit notes in Germany.
He said he was there to buy a car. Some car!
posted by hockeyman
on Mar 13, 2003 -
7 comments
Why do they (our goverment representives) do this? Do they think that no one pays attention or do they
know that there is nothing we can do about it? Don't buy the
war bonds.
posted by bas67
on Oct 24, 2001 -
15 comments
Scripophily is the misunderstood love of owning stocks and bonds that shouldn't be worth anything anymore. So why not make a
business out of it? I'm just glad to see that
e-toys is doing good once again.
posted by samsara
on Jun 26, 2001 -
5 comments
