alavancar o EFSF?! (5)

“(…) The most recent nonsense making the rounds is that the euro zone should allow the European Financial Stability Facility to borrow, increasing its available resources and using taxpayers’ pledged €440 billion ($597 billion) as a sort of capital base. The notion is that this would ensure bailout facilities have sufficient “firepower” to “shock and awe” the doomsayers into a more sanguine state of mind. I use the quotation marks because such phrases are just shorthand for pumping up moral hazard. Acting on this plan would lead to the mutualization of hundreds of billions of Italian and Spanish debt within weeks, without any further adjustment of policy by the governments in question to defend their own credit. No one appears to have given a moment’s thought to whose money would be put at risk (…) As Axel Weber, the prophet not recognized in his own house, spelled out with typical force and clarity in a lecture at the weekend, the most dismaying aspect of the levered EFSF proposal is that it shows Europe’s politicians have learned nothing from 2008. Leverage gives only the short-term illusion of firepower, at the cost of a huge increase in risk. Making taxpayers fund a “first loss” tranche of financing for Europe’s bailout vehicle massively increases the chance of their funds being wiped out.”, hoje no Wall Street Journal.