Comments on: Sarkozy: Greek bailout will be good for the Euro http://sovereignspeculator.com/2010/03/07/sarkozy-greek-bailout-will-be-good-for-the-euro/ Thoughts on the markets and the decline of the west Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:41:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Graphite http://sovereignspeculator.com/2010/03/07/sarkozy-greek-bailout-will-be-good-for-the-euro/#comment-8709 Graphite Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:23:02 +0000 http://sovereignspeculator.com/?p=4198#comment-8709 The amazing thing to me is that, so far, governments have gotten away with simply <i>promising</i> to pay off on bad debts (with a few rare exceptions like AIG), and letting the Pavlovian dogs of the market and their insatiable appetite for risk do the rest of the work of the bailouts for them. Things should get interesting once one of these politicians finally comes on TV and says (in so many words), "yeah, we were just trying to bluff some confidence back in the market with all that, we're not really going to pay." Barney Frank almost said as much about the GSE debt and then had to backtrack this last week. The amazing thing to me is that, so far, governments have gotten away with simply promising to pay off on bad debts (with a few rare exceptions like AIG), and letting the Pavlovian dogs of the market and their insatiable appetite for risk do the rest of the work of the bailouts for them.

Things should get interesting once one of these politicians finally comes on TV and says (in so many words), “yeah, we were just trying to bluff some confidence back in the market with all that, we’re not really going to pay.” Barney Frank almost said as much about the GSE debt and then had to backtrack this last week.

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