What effect would sovereign default of a European country have on personal debt or a mortgage?
Patrick, This article points out three likely effects (direct and indirect) sovereign default can have on the individual: http://tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/economics/comments/the-sovereign-default-option-is-costly/ This looks at how a default may not look like a default - even if it is. But again, how defaults can impact the man in the street: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703323704574602030789251824.html The fascinating Argentine default is described in a blow-by-blow format here, including brief references to things like unemployment and personal savings: http://theinflationist.com/sovereign-default/argentine-sovereign-default-2002-argentina-financial-crisis Remember, though. Not all defaults are the same. And a modern-European country's default may look very different to what has occurred elsewhere. "This is a hard question to answer.  Government debt and mortgages are loosely related.  Banks typically use yields on government bonds to determine mortgage interest rates.  The banks must be able to get higher rates from the mortgage otherwise they would buy government bonds. Your question mentions default so I'm assuming a country has reneged on its promise to pay either the principal or interest on government bonds. The main thing to consider is ""Who does not get their money?"".  In other words, who does the government decide not to pay.  This is the important part.  The government will have some money so they could pay some bond holders.  They must decide who to shaft. For example, let's look at who holds Greek government debt.  Around 70% of Greek government debt is held outside Greece.  See table below.  The Greek government could decide to default only on the debt to foreign holders.  In that case the banks in France and Switzerland would take the loss on their bonds.  This could cause severe problems in France and Switzerland depending on the percentage of Greek bonds that make up the banks' assets.  Greek banks would still face losses, however, since the price of their Greek bond holdings would drop sharply when the government defaults.  Interestingly, the losses for the Greek banks may be smaller than the losses faced by the French and Swiss banks.  This is usually the favored option chosen by government since the French and Swiss don't vote in Greece. Yields on Greek government bonds would rise dramatically.  If your Greek mortgage is an adjustable rate mortgage then you could see some big adjustments upward.  If you live in France or Switzerland then the bank that owns your mortgage may go under if Greece defaults.  During liquidation the bank will sell their assets which includes mortgages and you will probably not notice any difference in your mortgage. As I stated earlier: this is a hard question to answer since the two financial instruments involved (bonds and mortgages) are similar but may or may not be related." "If the default happens through mass monetary inflation rather than openly (""We're not paying interest on our bonds"") then make sure you pay off your house.  There may not be a very long window to do so. If the currency becomes worthless, then it depends on what you have of value that would be accepted by the lender as payment.  If you don't have anything, the lender will take it back, as they're probably entitled to on the notes."
"What EU wanted to force Cyprus to do is to break the insurance contract the government has with the bank depositors. The parliament rightfully refused, and it didn't pass. In the EU, and Cyprus as part of it, all bank deposits are insured up to 100,000EUR by the government. This is similar to the US FDIC insurance. Thus, requiring the ""small"" (up to 100K) depositors to participate in the bank reorganization means that the government breaks its word to people, and effectively defaults. That is exactly what the Cyprus government wanted to avoid, the default, so I can't understand why the idea even came up. Depositors of more than 100k are not guaranteed against bank failures, and indeed - in Cyprus these depositors will get ""haircuts"". But before them, first come shareholders and bondholders who would be completely wiped out. Thus, first and foremost, those who failed (the bank owners) will be the first to pay the price. However, governments can default. This happened in many places, for example in Russia in the 90's, in Argentina in 2000's (and in fact numerous times during the last century), the US in the 1930's, and many other examples - you can see a list in Wikipedia. When government defaults on its debts, it will not pay some or all of them, and its currency may also be devaluated. For example, in Russia in 1998 the currency lost 70% of its value against the USD within months, and much of the cash at hands of the public became worthless overnight. In the US in 1933 the President issued an executive order forbidding private citizens keeping gold and silver bullions and coins, which resulted in dollar devaluation by about 30% and investors in precious metals losing large amounts of money. The executive order requiring surrender of the Treasury gold certificates is in fact the government's failure to pay on these obligations. While the US or Russia control their own currency, European countries don't and cannot devaluate the currency as they wish in order to ease their debts. Thus in Euro-zone the devaluation solutions taken by Russia and the US are not possible. Cyprus cannot devaluate its currency, and even if it could - its external debt would not likely to be denominated in it (actually, Russian debt isn't denominated in Rubles, that's why they forced restructuring of their own debt, but devaluating the currency helped raising the money from the citizens similarly to the US seizing the gold in 1930's). Thus, in case of Cyprus or other Euro-zone countries, direct taxes is the only way to raise money from the citizens. So if you're in a country that controls its own currency (such as the US, Russia, Argentina, etc) and especially if the debt is denominated in that currency (mainly the US) - you should be worried more of inflation than taxes. But if you're in the Euro-zone and your country is in troubles (which is almost any country in the zone) - you can expect taxes. How to avoid that? Deal with your elected officials and have them fix your economy, but know that you can't just ""erase"" the debt through inflation as the Americans can (and will), someone will have to pay." &gt;But reddit loves to use this stuff as an excuse for bitching and whining about how unfair it is that we have to actually pay back student loans/mortgages/cards/etc  So do you think we should bring back debtors' prisons?  The key to success with a US education is to take out the massive student loan and flee the US.  Get your MD and go earn a living somewhere else where the long dick of the creditors can't reach you.  Move to Dubai and practice medicine for a decade and laugh your ass off.     Should a person who has racked up 120k in student loan debt be condemned to a lifetime of serfdom?   I mean the whole system is broken, and you cannot force people to stay in the country and you cannot create a life of serfdom while paying that debt off.  Creditors should have to take risk too.   When government regulation moves in and says you cannot default, they've effectively made you a serf, reduced the risk to the lender.  It's a lender's job to assess risk.   Start by looking at what degree program someone is entering.   Medicine?  Okay here's a truckload of cash for you.  Liberal Arts?   Nothing.     It's become a farse.   Take out massive student loans where anyone can qualify, pursue a shit degree no one cares about, and be stuck paying it off for the rest of your life.  The regulations are all wrong.   You absolutely 100% should have the ability to free yourself from your debts through bankruptcy. "&gt; We've been deficit spending for generations and we're trillions in the hole, and that's the psychological issue hanging over our heads.  Let's unpack that a bit. What does ""trillions in the hole"" actually mean for the *issuer* of the dollar? It means that the issuer at various points has to redeem its own interest-bearing dollars (treasuries) for its own non-interest bearing dollars (reserves/notes/coins). That's not a hole. That's moving a balance from the savings account to the checking account at the same bank.  You don't think of your savings account balance as the bank being ""in the hole"" for checking account balances. You implicitly understand that the bank simply marks down the number in one account and marks up the number in the other and you don't fret that the bank might ""run out"" of checking account balances.  Treasuries have this same relationship to reserves. Not similar, not analogous to but the same. Treasury securities are literally interest-bearing accounts at the federal reserve. Reserves are literally demand accounts at the federal reserve. When a treasury matures, a treasury securities account is marked down, a reserve account is marked up. When a treasury is issued, a treasury securities account is marked up and a reserve account is marked down.  What you're thinking of as trillions ""in the hole"" is just trillions in a savings account balance.  That's what it means to have ""debt"" in a currency that you are the *issuer* of and why foreign-denominated debt is fundamentally different.  &gt;so we can design a system that will keep inflation low while we dump money into the economy  We already have that. There's no inflation monster under the bed. If there's an inflation problem it's that we're so paranoid about it we're not putting *enough* money into the economy and so inflicting unnecessary misery on ourselves.  &gt; the issue in my mind with dumping money while the debt situation is such a concern, is that speculators could sh*t the bed and devalue our currency  There's nothing a speculator can do vs a sovereign currency that the issuing central bank can't offset. So if you are a sovereign and the issuing central bank is within and beneath your authority, you have the last word and there's no such thing as bond vigilantes.  In contrast, if you take on sovereign obligations denominated in currencies where the issuing central bank sits outside your authority as is the case when you borrow/peg to foreign currency or enter a monetary union like the euro, you become just another currency user. Here, your government actually is kinda like a household and can go broke *in that foreign currency*.  Consider how that perspective sheds light on the ""mystery"" of why some countries actually experience a debt crisis and others don't. Why contrary to all the scaremongering, someplace like Japan for example can have 200% debt:GDP *and* near zero interest rates *and* no sovereign debt crisis. It's because Japan issues the yen, *sets* the interest rate on the yen and can't run out of yen.  People who don't understand this are what gave the [widowmaker](http://www.businessinsider.com/hedge-funds-feeling-confident-about-the-widowmaker-trade-in-japan-2012-12) its name. :) Time after time they line up to place bets on japanese government bond crisis, they're always wrong and always will be." "I agree that cutting spending is generally a bad idea in a bad economy. However, we cannot sustain deficit spending forever. Our government has been spending money it doesn't have for decades. Now that we need spending to boost the economy, we've started to run out of ammunition. Years of stupid spending have caught up with us in the midst of a major depression. It's bad, but reality.  So many people (including many people here on Reddit) have ideas that our debt-GDP ratio isn't a problem. Many people have pointed out that other countries have survived with much higher GDP ratios than ours. That is true, but we can't make that comparison based on that one variable. Those countries seemed to be on the brink of a major economic expansion as they conquered market shares in the global economy or developed new industries. As their economies started booming, they were able to pay down their debts. People argue that when our economy improves we can do the same.  The problem is that after spending $5 trillion, we are still in a terribly stagnant economy after three years of recovery. How long do they think it is going to take before the recovery kicks in? It's inevitable that sooner or later we need to cut debts. Even if we do see a sudden economic rebound, the amount of debt it would take to get there would be extreme at this rate. That would require major cuts in spending which would send us right back where we started.  Some people say that paying the debt is similar to paying down a mortgage. By those standards we are doing fine and it is more than affordable. That is a bad argument. For one thing, the revenue we generate in taxes is coming from economic growth developed by that spending. If you cut one, you cut the other. The way our economy is working right now, in order to generate more revenue to pay down the debt, we need to take on more debt. Also, unlike a mortgage, we are at the mercy of the financial markets. When investors decide that we have too much debt, the rates will rise or they stop buying altogether. Then we have to rely on the federal reserve to finance it, which can cause serious inflation. If we lose our reserve status (anyone who thinks this isn't possible is sadly delusional) then we are basically going to end up like Greece because we wouldn't be able to pay off our debts to foreign investors with our printing press.  It's also important to note that America has a very big advantage it doesn't really deserve. We have the world reserve currency. People say that we deserve to have that because our economy is stronger. That is circular logic, because so much of our economic strength is due to the fact we had the reserve currency in the first place. Where would we be without it? Would we still be the strongest economy in the world? I think that's an impossible question to answer, because we have had it and given a free pass for so long that we don't know what life would be like. We can sit and chastise Europe for not doing as well as us, but the truth is we have a huge advantage so it's not a valid comparison. Also, we may be doing better for now. But if our sovereign debt bubble bursts (either due to the loss of world reserve currency status or otherwise) we won't be any better off.  I don't believe in austerity in a depression, but this unsustainable deficit spending seems equally reckless. I think we need a more strategic plan that rests somewhere in the middle ground. Cutting spending on wasteful projects and redirecting that money into areas that are going to have a high return on investment in the form of GDP growth. Obama's roads don't qualify. Otherwise, if we keep wasting money we will someday reach the point where deficit spending is no longer an option and we have to cut it regardless of how stagnant the economy is. That would be really bad and we need to change gears before we reach that tipping point.   To answer your question, I think the people you speak of are wrong, but not stupid. They certainly have good points. The problem is that everyone looks at it as an ""either/or"" situation rather than seeing a continuum where the real answer may lie somewhere in the middle." "The risk is that greece defaults on it's debts and the rest of the eurozone chose to punish it by kicking it out of the Eurozone and cutting off it's banks from ECB funds. Since the greek government and banks are already in pretty dire straits this would leave greece with little choice but to forciblly convert deposits in those banks to a ""new drachma"". The exchange rate used for the forced conversions would almost certainly be unfavorable compared to market rates soon after the conversion. There would likely be capital controls to prevent people pulling their money out in the runup to the forced conversion. While I guess they could theoretically perform the forced conversion only on Euro deposits this seems politically unlikely to me." Sensationalist much? The economy has picked back up, people are optimistic about the future, more secure with their jobs, and thus debts of all sorts should be increasing. The question is how much can be handled before collapse? Well, from this article's own admission default rates and delinquencies are at historic lows. The 1t in debt means nothing without the context. "But do you know about a US state risking to go default now or in the past?  In 1847 four states - Mississippi, Arkansas, Michigan, and Florida - failed to pay all or some of their debts.  All of these states had issued debt to invest in banks.  From the detailed source listed below: ""...it should be remembered that all cases of state debt  repudiation, as contrasted with mere default, involved banks.""  Jackson had killed the federal central bank 10 years earlier and the states were trying to create their own inflationary central banks.  Six other states delayed debt payments from three to six years (source, page 103, this source has more details).  This is the only case I know of where US states defaulted.  US cities default more frequently. I'm very confused do US single states like IOWA have debt and emits obligations on their own like Italy does in EU? Yes.  Individual states can issue their own bonds. Oh, and just another little thing I would like to know, is Dollar a fiat currency too like the Euro? Yes, the US dollar is a fiat currency.  I think the better question is: ""Is there any currency that is not a fiat currency?""" In theory, anything can happen, and the world could end tomorrow.  However, with a reasonably sane financial plan you should be able to ride this out. If the government cannot or won't immediately pay its debt in full, the most immediate consequence is that people are going to be unwilling to lend any more money in future, except at very high rates to reflect the high risk of future default.   Presumably the government has got into this state by running a deficit (spending more than they collect in tax) and that is going to have to come to an abrupt end.  That means: higher taxes, public service retrenchments and restrictions of service, perhaps cuts to social benefits, etc. Countries that get into this state typically also have banks that have lent too much money to risky customers.  So you should also expect to see some banks get into trouble, which may mean customers who have money on deposit will have trouble getting it back.  In many cases governments will guarantee deposits, but perhaps only up to a particular ceiling like $100k. It would be very possible to lose everything if you have speculative investments geared by substantial loans.  If you have zero or moderate debt, your net wealth may decrease substantially (50%?) but there should be little prospect of it going to zero. It is possible governments will simply confiscate your property, but I think in a first-world EU country this is fairly unlikely to happen to bank accounts, houses, shares, etc. Typically, a default has led to a fall in the value of the country's currency.  In the eurozone that is more complex because the same currency is used by countries that are doing fairly well, and because there is also turbulence in other major currency regions (JPY, USD and GBP).  In some ways this makes the adjustment harder, because debts can't be inflated down. All of this obviously causes a lot of economic turbulence so you can expect house prices to fall, share prices to gyrate, unemployment to rise.  If you can afford it and come stomach the risk, it may turn out to be a good time to buy assets for the long term.   If you're reasonably young the largest impact on you won't be losing your current savings, but rather the impact on your future job prospects from this adjustment period. You never know, but I don't think the Weimar Republic wheelbarrows-of-banknotes situation is likely to recur; people are at least a bit smarter now and there is an inflation-targeting independent central bank. I think gold can have some room in a portfolio, but now is not the time to make a sudden drastic move into it.  Most middle class people cannot afford to have enough gold to support them for the rest of their life, though they may have enough for a rainy day or to act as a balancing component. So what I would do to cope with this is: be well diversified, be sufficiently conservatively positioned that I would sleep at night, and beyond that just ride it out and try not to worry too much.