🌍 Europe eats the bill - energy crunch reopens the EU sovereign debt crisis

“there continues to be escalating issues with debt and concerns about debt repayment across the EU. ... Greece made a payment recently, but Greece's debt to GDP is still over 200%. ... the spread on Italian debt has spiked over the last couple of weeks.”

“we pulled and we pressured Europe to really draw a hard line. But then now are kind of working around it so that the countries that suffer the most are Europe. ... according to Europe, a Lehman like situation in terms of economic contagion that could manifest over the next months.”

“countries like Germany and France are really going to question US leadership when they have basically a huge economic recession and they're wondering how they're going to heat their homes in the winter”

“Let me make a prediction. I think the Western Alliance is going to fracture come this winter.”

“It's supposed to be back up by July 21st. And so the real question is what happens if Putin hand checks Europe and just takes an extra day or two to get that thing back up and going?”

“So if you play all of that out, you start to see an issue where by, you know, October, November of this year, we're back into the same complexity where energy is the tip of the spear around which everybody starts to debate all of the national security issues that we have to deal with, the Ukraine war, et cetera, et cetera.”

“There's obviously a massive problem with getting gas to Western Europe for this winter.”

“And one of the byproducts of the production of fertilizer is CO2, which gets added to the production of beer to make it fizzy. Well, guess what? The Germans are not only about to run out of gas, they're about to run out of beer. You think they're going to keep supporting the Ukraine War when they find out that there's no beer for Oktoberfest?”

“Which is now going to cripple many economies of that entire continent unnecessarily.”

“seeing their national and sovereign debt skyrocket, which is now expected to happen. And as a result, the British pound is trading at its lowest level since 1985”

“The German energy minister yesterday said that if that happens, it could be a contagion equivalent to Lehman Brothers with respect to energy. You're already starting to see food riots, food insecurity, energy insecurity, rampant inflation, sovereign defaults.”

“So I think we're headed for not just an economic crisis, but a political crisis in Europe because the fundamental tension between the needs of these people, which is to basically preserve their economy and to stay warm in their homes, and the ideology of their leaders who are fanatically committed to waging a proxy war against Russia instead of finding a diplomatic outcome that was available last year, it was available in January, it was even available in March or April.”

“Yeah, Nat gas prices are still elevated, right? And Nat gas availability in Europe is obviously significantly restricted right now.”