Sunday, May 27, 2012

Spain Is Too Big to Fail - But It Will

There has been a lot of focus on Greece's financial state lately.  And rightly so, because its total debt (including unfunded liabilities) is about 11 times its GDP.

But, realistically, Greece's economy has never added much value to the European Union.  The EU had a GDP of about 12 trillion euro in 2010.  Greece only contributed 230 billion euro, or less than 2%.

Spain, however, is the weakest of the big contributors.  Its GDP was 1.6 trillion, or 13% of the EU.  And Spain has debt and unfunded liabilities totaling 6 times its GDP.

To put things in perspective, the US had debt equal to about 2 times its GDP in 1929... and we all know it took the Great Depression to unwind that debt.

So what's the point?  Spain will default.  And its economy is too big for the EU to save it.

In fact, its key index is already poised for a crash.  Notice the head and shoulders pattern in the IBEX:


Spain will likely trigger the EU collapse.  And that will then trigger a global collapse.  After all, US debt is currently 8 times its GDP:


Yep.