Die Schuldenprobleme der US-amerikanischen Bundesstaaten

Präsident Obama hat bereits versprochen, es werde in seinem Namen keine Bailouts mit Steuergeldern mehr geben: "There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period." Nun ist es natürlich bereits reichlich unwahrscheinlich, dass Obama diese seine Festlegung beibehielte, sollte eine von Wallstreets Großbanken nochmals in grobe Solvenzprobleme kommen. Wir wissen aus Erfahrung: Die Wahrheit ist in der Politik eine Tochter der Zeit.

Hinsichtlich der Schuldenprobleme, die sich in einigen US-amerikanischen Bundesstaaten auftun (siehe z.B. die Schuldenkrise in Kalifornien), stellt es sich jedoch noch weniger glaubwürdig dar, dass Obamas "No bailout"-Versprechen aufrecht bleiben kann. Das jedenfalls behauptet die Analystin Meredith Whitney:

Crippling debts and deficits are about to make individual states the next casualty of the credit crisis, analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.

Speaking as her firm, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, just released a lengthy report on the state of the states, [...] [Whitney said,]

"The similarities between the states and the banks are extreme to the extent that states have been spending dramatically and are leveraged dramatically," she said. "Municipal debt has doubled since 2000, spending has grown way faster than revenues."

[...]

There were some bright spots: Texas, Virginia and Nebraska were among states that have done a good job of controlling their finances over the years and aren't threatened as much.But other states, such as California and Michigan, will burden the entire country should the federal government decide to step in with a bailout. States are required to balance their budgets, but massive debt-service payments could prevent that from happening in many states and necessitate the federal government to step in.

"You have to look at the states and the risk that the states pose, because the crisis with the states will result in an attempt at least for the third near-trillion-dollar bailout," Whitney said.

Wir erinnern uns, wer Meredith Whitney ist:

Then came Meredith Whitney, with news. Whitney was an obscure analyst of financial firms for an obscure financial firm, Oppenheimer and Co., who, on Oct. 31, 2007, ceased to be obscure. On that day she predicted that Citigroup had so mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust. It’s never entirely clear on any given day what causes what inside the stock market, but it was pretty clear that Meredith Whitney caused the market in financial stocks to crash. By the end of the trading day, a woman whom basically no one had ever heard of, had shaved 8 percent off the shares of Citigroup and $390 billion off the value of the US stock market. […] Two weeks later, Citigroup slashed its dividend. From that moment […] people listened.

zitiert nach Lewis, Michael: The Big Short, S. xvi; Penguin: New York 2010

Man sollte also jedenfalls ernst nehmen, was diese Frau zu sagen hat.