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Greece. Ireland. Portugal. Now: Spain.
You’ve been hearing about the debt crisis going on in Europe for the past year or more, to the extent that it may have faded to a background din. But the current crisis has reached the point that reputable news sources are using phrases like “the end of Europe” and “the shaming of a continent.”
The newest development is that Spain has become the fourth country to take a bailout from the European Central Bank—though Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has refused to call the €100 billion injected into his country’s banking system a bailout, since the EU has bolstered the banking sector without actually reducing the burden of Spain’s government debt.
And now, after everything, some strategists speculate that that action actually made the European bloc’s crisis worse because it undermined investors’ confidence in the Spanish government’s ability to finance itself. After all, when it comes to investing, stock markets move as much on confidence and investors’ perceptions as on hard data. Following Spain’s decision to seek a bailout, its borrowing costs soared instead of getting better.
Of course, the issue at hand isn’t really about Spain (or Italy, or Greece, which has arguably had the worst problems of any other European country since this crisis began, or any other individual country). When looking at the events in Europe, we’re dealing with something much bigger.
The Ripple Effect, in a Picture
More than almost anything else, politicians and economists are grappling with what it means for an “economic union” when one or more countries crash. In other words, one (or four) bad apples spoil the bunch. Eight out of the euro zone’s 17 members are in “serious financial trouble,” according to The Guardian.
Contagion is the word of the day. The EU keeps granting bailouts to its various constituents because it’s worried about letting its countries default (read: fail to pay back its loans).
But since all of these countries are intertwined, you get a situation like our current one, in which Spain is one of the member countries backstopping and even paying for its own aid package. As Seeking Alpha puts it, “It’s no wonder that not all are convinced.”
Here’s how the ripple effect could theoretically look:
A country or giant banking system defaults on its loans
Let’s say Spain’s banking sector crashed
Investors don’t get their money back
So they have to accept losses; many of these investors are other countries and individual banks
Those losses hurt those investor countries and banks
Weakening their financial situations
Now some of those countries and banks go bust
And yet more countries and banks have to accept losses on those investments
Let’s say there are more bailouts
And countries instituting austerity measures to justify those bailouts
Salaries for government workers decrease, there are layoffs, consumers are in trouble
Unemployment goes up, consumer spending goes down, and the economy sinks further
This ripples to other industries
For example, in Spain and Greece, many pharmaceutical companies have stopped accepting credit because hospitals have big unpaid bills. Greece is experiencing serious medicine shortages as public insurers aren’t paying for prescriptions. As a result, cancer patients are wandering from hospital to hospital trying to find one that can afford to stock their meds.
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All of this drama severely impacts the stock market
The negativity has an obvious impact on European markets, but even American and Asian stock indexes often decline on news from overseas.
What’s Happening Next
A few things:
Should You Be Scared? Here’s What Warren Buffett Has to Say
The way we see it, things are pretty bad, and there’s a decent chance they’ll keep getting worse for a while. But we’re not particularly scared and, in a sense, could consider it a good thing for investors: It’s always better to buy when the markets are low rather than when the markets are high, because there’s further for them to rise. They might not rise in the super short term, but we always say that investing should be a long-term proposition.
Most people get frightened when the stock market drops, but as Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, puts it, “If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef?” Of course, you’d want a lower-priced burger.
But then he asks, “If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong… They are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the ‘hamburgers’ they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense… Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.”
So, if, on the whole, you plan to invest rather than withdraw your investments, a low stock market means you can buy more stocks for your buck.
Finally, “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful,” he’s said. You should invest in the way you think is best—but right now everyone is quite fearful, and the fear is only rising.
(Here are more pearls of wisdom we’ve learned from Warren Buffett.)
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