2009-10-15

Why no other country has defaulted yet

I was trying to figure out why we still hadn't any country collapse or currency crisis with the massive debt deflation and defaults of all the over-leveraged individuals, companies, economies, states. I then thought the IMF must have been intervening, to postpone the collapses (it cannot prevent it, as their intervention just allows the same wealth and value destructive policies to be pursued even longer than they would have). For example, following the collapse of Iceland, one would have expected many easter countries to follow.

Unfortunately, finding the information is not simple. I spent quite some time on the IMF.org web site and on Google without being able to find a simple yet exhaustive list of the IMF bailouts since 2007.

Nonetheless, Reuters has published an interesting article back in March 2009 that I have completed with my own research. I am discarding loans that are in the $10 million range otherwise I would have had to list all the small islands of the world and the African countries.

Here are the results:
BELARUS $3.52b financial rescue package for Belarus on Jan. 12, 2009 - GDP: $60 billion
BOSNIA $1.57b (600 percent of the country’s quota) - GDP: $18 billion
COLOMBIA $10.5b - GDP: $240 billion
EL SALVADOR $0.8b loan - GDP: $22 billion
HAITI $1.2b (debt relief, with World Bank) - GDP: $7 billion
HUNGARY $28.1b economic rescue package (The arrangement entails exceptional access to IMF resources, amounting to 1,015% of Hungary's quota.) - GDP: $156 billion
ICELAND $2.1b loan for Iceland (The IMF deal was complemented by more than $3 billion in loans from Nordic countries, Russia and Poland as well as close to $5 billion or more by Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, making the whole package worth about $10b) - GDP: $16 billion
LATVIA $9.43b IMF-led rescue loan in 2008. The 7.5 billion euro package included financing from the EU, Nordic countries, the Czech Republic, Poland, fellow Baltic state Estonia and the World Bank. The IMF share was 1.68 billion euro. - GDP: $34 billion
MALAWI $0.077b - GDP: $4 billion
MEXICO $47b - GDP: $1100 billion
PAKISTAN $11.3b - GDP: $165 billion
POLAND $20.58b (1,000% of quota) - GDP: $527 billion
ROMANIA $9.665b (sept 2009) + $17.1 billion (TBC) (1,111% of Romania’s quota) - GDP: $200 billion
SERBIA $4b (560% of quota or close to 10% of its GDP.) - GDP: $50 billion
SEYCHELLES $0.026b rescue package - GDP: $0.82 billion
SRI LANKA $1.9b - GDP: $39 billion
TURKEY Markets expected a deal around $25 billion - GDP: $730 billion
UKRAINE $16.5b loan package - GDP: $180 billion

2 comments:

Sebastian said...

Michael Hudson, who was hired by Latvia to negotiate with the Swedish and German banks that originated the loans, has a fascinating account of what is happening here:
http://michael-hudson.com/articles/countries/090817IcelandLatviaWontPay.html

You can get an abridgment of the same in an interview he did with Max Keiser posted on Keiser's website or on YouTube.

pej said...

Very interesting, thank you Sebastian