The breakdown of talks between Greece and its bondholders appears to be a nightmare scenario. Standard & Poor's has threatened to declare Greece in technical default, the first for an EU member state since the introduction of the euro in 1999. Meanwhile, the IMF is warned "the euro crisis entered a perilous new phase" and lowered its global growth forecast for 2012.
Despite heightened risk of a 'disorderly' resolution to the Greek debt crisis, the financial markets gave a collective shrug on Tuesday. The Dow was recently down 0.3%, following similarly modest declines in Europe while the euro recovered from its early weakness to push beyond $1.30.
"As all things in the market...bad news is better than no news [and] we need to get through this," says Axel Merk, president and CIO of Merk Investments. "What policymakers have been working on is to stomach the default of a sovereign and Greece is pretty hopeless, no matter whether you call it a technical default or voluntary."
From Panic to Europhia
As inevitable as a Greek default may be, Merk concedes the news from Europe is likely to swing between "panics and euphoria" in the coming year. "The issue is, if things spread, you want to have that safety buffer... that 'ring of fire' around them, that's what the European Central Bank has been working on."
The good news, Merk says, is that because the bond market is holding European sovereigns to account, policymakers will stay engaged to prevent the worst-case scenario. As with other observers, he believes the ECB's pledge last year to provide unlimited loans to EU banks does provide the necessary "ring fence" around Greece, or other troubled sovereigns. (See: Jim O'Neill: Risk of European Contagion Now "Significantly Reduced")
"They'll be huge rallies and panics but ultimately at the end of the day Europe is going to be around [and] the eurozone is not going to fall apart," Merk says.
In fact, the fund manager believes the EU may be doing "too much," which is why he's currently more bullish on commodity currencies such as the Aussie dollar instead of the euro. Yet Merk remains most bearish on the dollar, thanks largely to the Fed's excessively easy policies, as we'll discuss in part two of this interview.
Aaron Task is the host of The Daily Ticker. You can follow him on Twitter at @aarontask or email him at altask@yahoo.com.


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