Mish & Max Keiser, Economic & Political Predictions for 2012

December 29, 2011 · Posted in Global Economics · Comment

Here are Mish’s predictions for 2012:

Severe European Recession as the sovereign debt crisis escalates: Austerity measures in Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal plunges all of Europe into a major recession. Spain and Portugal will follow Greece into an outright depression.

Political Crisis in Europe: French President Sarkozy loses to socialist challenger Francois Hollande. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition collapses. The Merkozy agreement is either modified to do virtually nothing or is not ratified at all. This chain of events will not be good for European equities or European bonds.

Relatively Minor US Economic Recession: The US will not avoid a recession in 2012. Retail spending ran its course with the tail-off into Christmas of 2011. The Republican Congress has little incentive for fiscal stimulus measures in 2012 so do not expect any. However, with housing already limping along the bottom in terms of construction and investment (not prices), a US GDP decline will not be severe. The US may see a recession even if GDP barely drops. Certainly the US recession will be far less severe than the recession in Europe and Australia.

Major Profit Recession in US: Profit margins in the US will be torn to shreds as businesses will be unable to reduce costs the same way they did in 2008 and 2009 (by shedding massive numbers of employees).

Global Equity Prices Under Huge Pressure: Don’t expect the same degree of reverse decoupling of US equities we saw in 2011. The US economy will be better than Europe, but equities globally will take a hit, including the US. Simply put, stocks are not cheap.

Fiscal Crisis in Japan Comes to Forefront: Japan’s fiscal crisis and debt to the tune of 200+% of GDP finally matters. The crisis in Japan will start out as a whimper not a bang, but will worsen as the year wears on. If Japan responds by monetizing debt, not a remote possibility at all, Japanese equities will massively outperform in nominal and perhaps even in real terms. “Real” means “yen-adjusted”, not “inflation-adjusted” terms.

Few Hiding Spots Other than the US Dollar: US treasuries and German bonds were safe havens in 2011, but with yields already depressed don’t expect huge gains. Expect to see a strengthening of the US dollar across the board against all major currencies. Moreover, cash (one the most despised asset classes ever), may outperform nearly everything, even if the dollar goes virtually nowhere. Hiding places will be few and far between for much of 2012.

US Public Union Pension Plans Under Attack: States finally realize the need to rein in pension plans much to the dismay of public unions. Social and economic tensions in the US rise.

Regime Change in China has Major Ramifications: China will start a major shift from a growth model dependent on housing and infrastructure to a consumer-driven model. The transition will not be smooth. Property prices in China will collapse and commodity prices will remain under pressure.

Hyperinflation Calls Once Again Will Look Laughable: Unless there is a major disruption in the Mideast (which I do not rule out by any means), oil prices will drop and food prices will follow. If so, we will once again see silly talk from the Fed about preventing “unwelcome drops in inflation”. As always, the deflation key is not prices at all but rather credit and credit marked-to-market. Expect credit in all forms to come under attack and expect junk bonds take a hit as well. By the way, regardless of what happens to oil prices, hyperinflation calls will look silly.

As always, out of all the experts out there, Mish’s predictions are probably the ones I would pay most attention to.

Tags: 2012 predictions, china, europe, gold, mike shedlock, mish

Finland, Netherlands, and Irelend Thwart Franco-German Plans; New Euro Accord To Include 23 Countries – For Now

December 9, 2011 · Posted in Global Economics · Comment

Merkozy plans are dead on arrival as a A rebellion by Finland, the Netherlands and Ireland is threatening to torpedo the Brussels summit plans:

Hours before leaders arrived in Brussels , the Finnish parliament ruled that treaty changes proposed for the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) were “unconstitutional”.

The summit was further put at risk with news that after failing stress tests, European banks need to raise €115bn (£98bn) in fresh capital to satisfy regulators.

Finland’s grand committee said decisions made by the ESM – the eurozone’s permanent bail-out fund set for launch in 2012 – had to remain unanimous, and not changed to the “qualified majority” that French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel have agreed.

The Finns are backed by the Netherlands, which fears proposals to withdraw veto powers from the ESM is an erosion of democracy and would make it vulnerable to funding bail-outs without recourse. Meanwhile, the Irish want to block plans for the “convergence and harmonisation” of the eurozone’s “corporate tax base”.

And this just in – New euro accord to include 23 countries:

The president of the European Council said Friday that a new intergovernmental treaty meant to save the euro currency will include the 17 eurozone states plus as many as six other European Union countries — but not all 27 EU members.

The failure to get agreement among all the members of the European Union at a summit meeting in Brussels reflected in large part a deep split between France and Germany on the one hand and Britain on the other. France and Germany are the two largest economies in the eurozone; Britain does not use the euro as its currency.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said early Friday he would have preferred a treaty among all the members of the European Union. But that could not be achieved, he said, because the British proposed that they be exempted from certain financial regulations.

“We could not accept this” because a lack of sufficient regulation caused the current problems, Sarkozy said. The new intergovernmental accord should be ready by March, he said.

Note Sakozy’s assumption that anyone who hears him talk is a complete moron. The Euromess is a complete and total result of bureaucratic regulation from all angles, to assume people can’t see that is to assume that people are literally mentally challenged.

And then to bring it up against the British who avoided this bureaucratic mess precisely by staying out of Euro currency regulations … that, my friends, truly takes the full force of arrogant, negligent, and shameless statesmanship that only a Nicholas Sarkozy could display.

Anyway, the number of future member stats is already down to 17+6, the Euro has officially begun to crumble. Expect more states to quit this failed experiment until it finally disappears where it belongs: the dustbins of history.

Tags: euro, europe

The Fed’s Secret Loans, Europe’s Crisis, and the Boring Patterns of Statist Propaganda

November 29, 2011 · Posted in General Economics · Comment

In response to recently published information about the Fed’s emergency loans, Bloomberg’s Felix Salmon was promptly ready to perpetrate this piece of grade A scumbaggery:

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is what a lender of last resort looks like. What you’re looking at here are three lines. The black line is Morgan Stanley’s market capitalization, which tends to hover in the $40 billion range but which fell as low as $9.8 billion in November 2008. The orange line is the amount that Morgan Stanley owed to the Federal Reserve on any given day — an amount which peaked at $107 billion on September 29, 2008. And the red line is the ratio between the two: Morgan Stanley’s debt to the Federal Reserve, expressed as a percentage of its market value.That ratio, it turns out, peaked at some point in October, at somewhere north of 750%.

Many congratulations are due to Bloomberg, for extracting this information from the Fed after a long and arduous fight. It couldn’t have come at a timelier moment: if the ECB wants to avert a liquidity crisis, charts like this give a sobering indication of just how far it might have to go, and how quickly it might have to act.

The Euromess has everything to do with the fact that the ECB exists in the first place, and the fact that it enabled irresponsible bureaucrats to hide behind relatively responsible ones and borrow beyond their respective taxpayers’ means.

Almost 3 years ago I already said that if European government bureaucrats don’t quit the centralization of power which enables the above, things would only get worse and worse.

Then about 2 years ago I wrote:

The truth is very simple: The best that can be done for the people of Greece is to not provide one cent of assistance to its corrupt, bloated, and union-controlled government apparatus. A country’s bailout is like a corporate bailout, only many times worse! From this logically follows that the absolute worst Europe could do to the people of Greece would be to give their rulers any more means to continue their irresponsible policies.

The European Currency Union and the European Union itself are both such gigantic failures that it is already pre-ordained that the entire experiment will go down in flames sooner or later. Now is certainly not that time yet. What we are seeing are just a few more cracks emerging in the structure of the system. The European bureaucrats will come up with some sort of pseudo solution to paper over and patch the Greek problem for now.

Even if the Greek government were saved to the detriment of the people it tyrannizes, this won’t be the last time we’ll be having this discussion, and it sure as hell won’t get any better!

We’re having that discussion again now, and the time has run out for patchwork and pseudo solutions. The system is going down as predicted.

To say that the Euromess is caused by a lack of even more ECB intervention is to say that the heroin addict’s withdrawal pains are to be imputed upon a lack of an increase in his dosage.

I think that’s pretty lazy and irresponsible stuff to put out there and it genuinely hurts reading it.

Wouldn’t it make sense at some point to stop and think a little more carefully and precisely about the things we say in public discourse?

Bank of England governor King pointed out a few weeks ago: “This phrase ‘lender of last resort’ has been bandied around by people who, it seems to me, have no idea what lender of last resort actually means, to be perfectly honest. It is very clear from its origin that lender of last resort by a central bank is intended to be lending to individual banking institutions and to institutions that are clearly regarded as solvent. And it is done against good collateral, and at a penalty rate. That’s what lender of last resort means.”

And about the Fed having solved any problems in the US … are you going to say the same thing when the public debt burden, subsidized by QE1,2,3,4,5…, will have reached an amount where the government’s automatic spending cuts start to kick in and begin to impoverish more and more of the millions of people who have been made dependent upon government handouts?

Or better yet, are people going to be asking for the Fed and government to step in, grab more power, and regulate all these banks’ irresponsible speculation binges, because for some inexplicable, magical reason they don’t seem to have much of an incentive to conduct business prudently, to pay themselves reasonable salaries, or to lend responsibly, and not, say … invest in Greek bonds for example?

The pattern is simple and boring: Keynesian and other statist clowns out there will continue doing what they’re paid for. They will support one stupid ass government spending and expansion program after another, applaud one newly created government institution after another, be completely incapable of predicting the long term effects of those unsustainable policies, ignore or even ridicule those who are capable, and then when the inevitable crisis hits they will boldly “predict” that a tragic crisis is going to hit, should all those unsustainable programs not be sustained.

This is truly embarrassing to watch.

But at the same time it’s encouraging to see other people around the world wake up to the truth, and ditch the repetitive dronings and platitudes of entitled and state tenured ivory tower academics whose cumulative output will supply plenty of instructive and awe-inspiring entertainment for future generations.

Tags: ecb, europe, european central bank, federal reserve bank, keynesian, lender of last resort

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) – A Treaty of Debt

October 30, 2011 · Posted in Global Economics · 1 Comment

So long as people give moral justification to organized aggression, namely the concept of government, there will be governments. So long as there are governments they will grow and grow until they completely cripple the economy they are leeching on or until they become unable to meet obligations entered into, triggering a reset.

In the long run, government power always tends towards centralization, with more and more power consolidated with fewer and fewer people, with less and less representation of the governed in the process.

It is true that, prompted by public ire from past failures, bureaucrats have throughout history devised methods to try and limit and balance state power through things like constitutions, bills of rights, balance of powers, parliaments, etc. What these measures have accomplished has been to slow down the growth, centralization, and overreach of the affected governments, but they have happened nonetheless, and with catastrophic results in many respects one could argue (1.4 million dead Iraqis might agree with me, just to bring up ONE example).

This is why even a limited government is so dangerous, because all the wealth and economic growth it brings about simply supplies more potential tax loot and thus sets the stage for more and more taxation and indebtedness, and an all the more gigantic and imperialistic state. (This is, by the way, why in the long run, after having suffered from repetitive government depredations again and again, at some point people will have to accept the validity of voluntaryism.)

These are the theories that I have been working with for years now, and there is plenty of historical evidence over the past millennia to corroborate them. The most prominent current example is of course the federal government in the United States, which has grown from a tiny government (about 7% of US GDP back then with lots of sovereignty for individual states) to the largest, most powerful, and most imperialistic government in the history of mankind, with more and more power being centralized in Washington, with Democrats and Republicans complicit in skillfully supplying their respective reasoning in their respective areas of public policy in order to consolidate power in the fields of social and military policies, respectively.

Another contemporary example is of course the European Union. Brussels represents what Washington has been in US history. Each individual crisis has been supplying and will continue to supply Brussels bit by bit with ammunition to expand its powers over member states in their endeavor of building a European Empire.

The ESM that is being discussed now fits right into this pattern and you can find out more about it in this informative clip:

Tags: esm, eu, europe, european stability mechanism, european union, eurozone

Eurozone Breakup Inevitable?

September 10, 2011 · Posted in General Economics · Comment

Mish writes in Europe Out of Time; Differences Impossible to Untangle; Merkel’s Mind is Fried; Eurozone Breakup Inevitable; “Let the Euro Die”:

Is the Euro Worth Saving?

Regardless of what you or I may think, that question is where European voters come in. From that standpoint it does not look pretty.

German Chancellor Merkel, Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, and Greek President George Papandreou will all be gone after the next set of elections.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy may bite the dust as well, and if he does it may be to a vehemently anti-Euro candidate.

All it takes is one government to say “to hell with this” and the whole mess unravels.

The current set of politicians all want to “save the Euro”. But what did the Euro buy Greece, Ireland, Spain, or Portugal except misery?

Even German and Finland voters wonder what it bought them.

Eurozone Breakup Inevitable

Merkel’s half-baked proposal raises more questions than answers. The market (and voters) will not possibly wait for details of her proposal to get hashed out. If this is the best Merkel can come up with, a Eurozone breakup is inevitable.

I think that a complete political breakdown of the European Union would be the best thing that could happen to Europeans. Ditch all European political institutions, but maintain the free mobility of persons, capital, and goods across countries, really the only positive aspect of the Eurozone project. Oh, and you want one unified currency that actually works? I know I’ve been saying this over and over again, but … how about a gold standard? Anyone?

Tags: euro breakup, europe, european union, eurozone

Irish People Say: Default! Other Governments Go MAD – Screwing the Future

December 1, 2010 · Posted in Global Economics · 4 Comments

The Independent writes:

A SUBSTANTIAL majority of the Irish people wants the State to default on debts to bondholders in the country’s stricken banks, according to a Sunday Independent/Quantum Research poll.

The finding that 57 per cent favour and 43 per cent oppose default reflects a growing view among policymakers and opinion formers that the State simply cannot support the debt burden it has taken on.

The telephone poll of 500 people nationwide has also found that a majority of around two-thirds opposes the headline measures in the Government’s four-year plan.

Following Fianna Fail’s loss of the by-election in Donegal last week, the findings will add to political uncertainty as an austerity Budget approaches on December 7.

As Ireland awaited the fine details of the international bailout, which are expected tonight, it was learned last night that the Irish delegation negotiating with the EU-IMF last week raised the issue of default.

“The Europeans went completely mad,” a senior government source said.

Mad? Why? Because it’s THEIR ass that’s on the line, not the Irish’s:

Total foreign bank exposure to Ireland’s economy is $844bn, or five times the value of Ireland’s GDP or economic output. Of that, German and UK banks are Ireland’s biggest creditors, with €206bn and €224bn of exposure respectively.

To put it another way, German and British banks on their own have each extended credit to Ireland greater than Irish GDP. Which doesn’t sound altogether prudent, does it?

As for direct bank-to-bank lending, overseas banks have provided Ireland’s banks with €169bn of loans, which is also greater than Irish GDP.

Here is another illustration on Germany’s banks’ exposure to Irish and other gambles:

Screwing the Future

It is important to understand that government debt is always about screwing the future to enrich connected people in the present:

Ironically, when you look at the political stage, all you will hear in regards to “solutions” to deficits in the end, will be tax hikes. These are not solutions. They are the ultimate manifestation of the very problem at hand. They are, in fact, the precise opposite of a solution. Keep this in mind whenever you hear politicians talk about deficit solutions. Raising taxes to reduce deficits is absolutely and 100% an admission that one has completely failed to solve this deficit problem, and in fact laid the final brick that was missing in the very process of the public’s depredation via deficit spending.

Thus European governments will fight tooth and nail to raise as much money as they possibly can in exchange for promising their lenders and increased loot from increased future theft.

In this particular case it will be Irish taxpayers in the future who will foot the bill.

So long as people cling on to the fantasy of the necessity governments, all this stuff will be so completely predictable that it’s almost boring, and it will continue to go on as I have been pointing out from the very beginning of when this financial crisis started hitting Europe.

Tags: europe, ireland, sovereign debt

“The Euro Game Is Up”

November 26, 2010 · Posted in Global Economics · Comment

“Just who the hell do you people think you are?”

We can see the Eurozone disintegrating slowly but surely, and ironically as a result of supposed integration policies.

I have said this many times – The sooner Europeans give up on the mad project that is the Euro currency, the sooner they can expect things to get better. The longer they cling on to it, the longer their plight will last …

Tags: europe

Roubini on Europe: We Are Kicking the Can Down the Road

May 10, 2010 · Posted in Global Economics · Comment

From Yahoo’s Tech Ticker:

With a $1 trillion bailout package for Greece and the other sick men of Europe, the EU and IMF spurred a huge global rally in stocks Monday, with the Dow rising 405 points, its biggest gain since March 2009.

The massive bailout prevented “another systemic seizure of the global financial system” and, “in the short run, markets are happy we’re not going to have another global meltdown like Lehman,” says NYU professor Nouriel Roubini, co-author of Crisis Economics.

But in the long run, Europe has just “kicked the can down the road,” Roubini says, agreeing with our earlier guest Richard Suttmeier.

Even $1 trillion isn’t enough so solve the “fundamental questions” facing Europe, the economist says, citing the following:

* — Even in Europe, There’s No Free Lunch: All of the bailout money is conditional on countries approving what Roubini calls “massive fiscal consolidation,” i.e. big austerity packages like Greece’s parliament just passed. Such measures mean fewer public sector jobs (and lower salaries for those who remain) and higher taxes in countries where a lot of people work for the government and already pay relatively high tax rates. “Politically can they do that…or will there be riots and strikes that are going to limit” fiscal austerity measures, Roubini wonders.
* — Tough Love Hurts: Raising taxes and cutting government spending should help alleviate the short-term debt crisis in Europe’s so-called PIIGS but will also likely lead to recession, if not outright deflation. “That will make it harder to force austerity” on the public, he says. There’s already violence and rioting in the streets of Athens. “The question is: Will we see the same thing in, for example, Lisbon, Madrid [and] throughout the euro zone?”
* — No Easy Way Out: One reason the European Union is in this mess is because few of its countries are able to compete in a global economy, especially since they lack the ability to deflate their currency, the economist says. Considering it took Germany 15 years to restructure its private sector so unit labor costs came down low enough to compete globally, nations like Greece, Portugal and Spain face a long, hard slog even if they embark upon such painful programs immediately.

So what does all that — and the political pressure against more bailouts in Germany — mean for the future of the euro and the EU itself?

In late April, Roubini said “in a few days, there might not be a euro zone for us to discuss,” at the Milken Conference.

In the accompanying clip, the founder of Roubini Global Economics says he was “just joking” about that dire prediction, which potentially contributed to the recent rout in Europe. But expect “volatility in economies and markets” is going to be with us for the foreseeable future, Roubini says, offering cold comfort (and an odd sense of humor).

Tags: europe, european union, roubini

EU Launches Frantic Bazooka – Euro Gives Up Early Gains

May 10, 2010 · Posted in Global Economics · Comment

Europe Pulls Out Bazooka Part II in 3D

Since Euro countries are grappling with deficits, they are vowing to spend more money to fight the consequences of deficits, EU Crafts $962 Billion Show of Force to Halt Crisis:

European policy makers unveiled an unprecedented loan package worth almost $1 trillion and a program of bond purchases to stop a sovereign-debt crisis that threatened to shatter confidence in the euro. Stocks surged around the world, the euro strengthened and commodities rallied.

Jolted by last week’s slide in the currency and soaring bond yields in Portugal and Spain, European Union finance chiefs met in a 14-hour session in Brussels overnight. The 16 euro nations agreed in a statement to offer as much as 750 billion euros ($962 billion), including International Monetary Fund backing, to countries facing instability and the European Central Bank said it will buy government and private debt.

The rescue package for Europe’s sovereign debtors comes little more than a year after the waning of the last crisis, caused by the U.S. mortgage-market collapse, which wreaked $1.8 trillion of global credit losses and writedowns. Under U.S. and Asian pressure to stabilize markets, Europe’s governments bet their show of force would prevent a sovereign-debt collapse and muffle speculation the 11-year-old euro might break apart.

“A very thick line has been drawn in the sand,” said Andrew Bosomworth, Munich-based head of portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co. and a former ECB official. “This is all in. What more could they have done?”

A 110 billion-euro bailout package for Greece approved last week by the EU and IMF failed to reassure investors, prompting yesterday’s renewed bid to bolster the euro.

How to Pay

“It might temporarily calm nerves but questions will come back later on how they will pay for this package when all of them need fiscal consolidation,” said Venkatraman Anantha- Nageswaran, who helps manage about $140 billion in assets as global chief investment officer at Bank Julius Baer & Co. in Singapore.

The MSCI World Index climbed 2.6 percent to 1,128 at 12:15 p.m. in Brussels. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures rallied 4.4 percent. The euro appreciated 2 percent to $1.30. Crude-oil futures gained 3.4 percent.

“The message has gotten through: the euro zone will defend its money,” French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde told reporters in Brussels early today after markets punished inaction last week.

ECB policy makers said they will counter “severe tensions” in “certain” markets by purchasing government and private debt, and the bank restarted a dollar-swap line with the Federal Reserve.

‘Overwhelming Force’

“This truly is overwhelming force, and should be more than sufficient to stabilize markets in the near term, prevent panic and contain the risk of contagion,” Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit Group in London, said in an e-mailed note. “This is Shock and Awe, Part II and in 3-D.”

…

Merkel’s Meeting

As Merkel’s cabinet held a late-night meeting in Berlin on the euro rescue, her party unexpectedly lost control of Germany’s most populous state in a regional election, potentially costing her a majority in the upper house of the federal parliament.

Goaded by Germany, the ministers made a fresh commitment to closer monitoring of government finances and more rigorous enforcement of the deficit-limitation rules.

The vow to push budget shortfalls below the euro’s 3 percent limit echoes promises that have been regularly broken ever since governments in 1999 set a three-year deadline for achieving balanced budgets. The euro region’s overall deficit is forecast at 6.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 and 6.1 percent in 2011.

Can you imagine? Governments that have regularly broken commitments to cut deficits? Unthinkable!

One thing’s for sure, as I said over 1 year ago:

The 3% ceiling won’t matter anymore from hereon. Consider the European stability treaty dead. One member state after another will violate the requirements. The fact that a bailout of some Euro states by others is discussed, just shows how torn this European Union really is, how severe its imbalances are. With discrepancies like these, it is completely unfeasible to maintain a currency union. The Euro will keep taking its beating for it.

The Euro

What are foreign exchange markets saying? Here’s the Euro today:

It rallied up as high as $1.31 on the announcement and has given up almost all those gains within a few hours already. This is volatility galore on the FX market!

This may be a result of frantic intervention on the part of the US, as the Federal Reserve opens credit line to Europe:

The Federal Reserve late Sunday opened a program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe in a move to head off a broader financial crisis on the continent.

Other central banks, including the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan also are involved in the dollar swap effort.

The move comes after the European Union and International Monetary Fund pledged a nearly $1 trillion defense package for the embattled euro, hoping to calm jittery markets and halt attacks on the eurozone’s weakest members. The ECB also jumped into the bond market Sunday night, saying it is ready to buy eurozone bonds to shore up liquidity in “dysfunctional” markets.

The Fed’s action reopens a program put in place during the 2008 global financial crisis under which dollars are shipped overseas through the foreign central banks. In turn, these central banks can lend the dollars out to banks in their home countries that are in need of dollar funding to prevent the European crisis from spreading further.

The Fed said action is being taken “in response to the reemergence of strains in U.S. dollar short-term funding markets in Europe,” and to prevent the spread of that strain to other markets and financial centers.

A so-called “swap” line with the Bank of Canada provides up to $30 billion. Figures weren’t provided for the other central banks. The arrangements are authorized through January 2011.

The debt crisis first erupted in Greece. Fears that it could spread to Spain, Portugal and other eurozone countries. The crisis has pushed up demand for the U.S. dollar and has sharply weakened the value of the euro, the currency used by 16 European countries. Eurozone ministers and the IMF this weekend approved a $140 billion rescue package of loans to Greece for the next three years to keep it from imploding.

The Fed had wound down these crisis-era programs with other central banks in February, along with other emergency programs to get lending flowing more freely again and return stability to financial markets. At that time, financial strains in the United States were easing, and the Fed began to take steps to move policy closer to normal.

It also had begun to lay out a plan to reel in the unprecedented stimulus money pumped out during the crisis. The Fed’s balance sheet ballooned to $2.3 trillion, more than double where it stood before the crisis struck. The program reopened on Sunday will expand the Fed’s balance sheet, economists say. However, the program poses little credit risk to the Fed because the arrangements are with other central banks, they added.

It is doubtful whether these currency swaps have ever accomplished anything but a very very short term relief.

We hear European bureaucrats rail against evil speculators who are daring to question the stability of the system. This is all repetitive nonsense which we can shrug off with a smile. I have said before that a truly meaningful reform of capital markets would require that governments remove themselves from the equation, rather than becoming the only factor in that equation:

what needs to happen is to bring down what has brought about the financial crisis in the first place.

Who has created all the excess fiat money that flowed into the system to blow up price bubbles? The Federal Reserve Bank – so just close it down already!

Who has created all the excess credit that blew up the bubble? The fractional reserve banks – so just end the system of fractional reserve banking already!

Who has granted oligopoly status to the rating agencies who one after another failed to assess credit risk appropriately? The SEC – so end the credit rating cartel already!

In fact who has taken away oversight from the stock exchange companies to try and oversee all stock exchanges in the country, missing one giant fraud after another? Which organization was close to Making Bernie Madoff their chairman?? The SEC – so get rid of it already!

Even after some of the worst excesses of subprime lending, who proudly remains the sole subprime lender in the country? The government owned banks! – So close them down already!

Who has been propping up financial markets in secret over decades with taxpayer money, creating malinvestments and false incentives left and right? The mighty President’s Working Group on Financial Markets! – So get rid of it already!!

What is it that made the common man put so much money into the stock market? It comes to a large degree from the incentive through tax savings for retirement accounts. If the taxes weren’t there in the first place, surely people would think twice about transferring their hard earned and saved money over to Wall St.

On top of that a policy manipulating and suppressing interest rates makes it completely unattractive to put money into savings accounts, and encourages people to be foolish. – So again, stop meddling with the credit markets, get rid of the central bank and with it would go all fractional reserve lending.

Why do you think it is so hard for honest small businesses to obtain funding in a flexible and straightforward manner? Why does it feel to most people like they are secluded from the majority of the action while Wall St. thrives? It is because every single government policy aiming at financial regulation has been designed to herd money into the stock market and lock it up in there for the kids to play with.

Which institution, out of all, is the least capable to be responsible about its finances, stay out of debt, live within its means? … it is of course the government itself.

Folks, wake up to reality, leave fantasy island. Come to your senses and work toward closing down that institution which is the root cause of all your problems: Close down the government and all the things I pointed out above and many more evils would automatically go with it.

So long as people don’t make these simple connections, they need not be surprised about the same problems popping up again and again, with the same short sighted responses protracting the problems again and again, choking our productive capacity until the system comes to a painful halt.

Tags: bailout, euro, europe, federal reserve bank

Europe’s Inevitable Plight

May 1, 2010 · Posted in Foreign Policy · Comment

Europe vs America

The failing and fundamentally flawed project called the European Union continues its slow, yet unstoppable, slide toward mad grandeur, imperialism, tyranny, collectivism, and fiscal chaos.

It is now coming to a minor clash between citizens within the individual European countries, and the governments who exploit them on behalf of the EU.

I do not believe that the European Union will get that same kind of free ride that the the growing central US government has enjoyed over the past two centuries. On the contrary, I expect opposition and healthy cynicism toward this ongoing centralization to grow incrementally. In particular the Eastern European nations have had their instructive lessons when it comes to becoming protectorates of an imperialistic and tyrannical force.

The US has had, over the centuries, the advantage of having a large part of public opinion behind the idea of a close union of American states (finding symbolic manifestation and direction in the War of Northern Aggression), an important factor when it came to enabling its central government to grow without major limitations in its way ever since.

This is not so much the case with Europe, at least not yet.

Many people in European countries are rather reluctantly moving along with the developments toward a more centralized union. I remember, growing up in Berlin, when politicians aspiring offices within the European government started the first campaigns for European parliament. People had no way of assigning any relevance to these efforts. What did we care for some guy asking us for his vote so he can pursue a career in Brussels? The detachment of European citizens from the European political process is completely justified.

So long as it didn’t affect Europeans fundamentally in their lives, they sort of acquiesced with this process. Now this is changing. People are beginning to notice that their own hard earned money is on the line to subsidize corruption in other member countries. This sentiment did flare up several times over the past decades, but never came to a culmination in the way that it is now. Populist right wing parties, whom I obviously have no sympathy for in general, have really been the only ones consistently pointing out these problems. So long as mainstream parties don’t pick up on this, I expect the popularity of such extremists to grow over the next 5-10 years.

Fiscal Discipline?

It is also noteworthy that in the US, individual states (except Vermont) are, by and large, required to balance their budgets:

All the states except Vermont have a legal requirement of a balanced budget. Some are constitutional, some are statutory, and some have been derived by judicial decision from constitutional provisions about state indebtedness that do not, on their face, call for a balanced budget. The General Accounting Office has commented that “some balanced budget requirements are based on interpretations of state constitutions and statutes rather than on an explicit statement that the state must have a balanced budget.”

I would be the last to claim that the US states are a beacon of fiscal responsibility. Many deficits are hidden in the form of substantial public sector pension plans. But as a tendency, existing restrictions provide for fewer frictions between member states.

Such provisions don’t exist in European countries. What does exist is a completely clawless tiger called the “Stability Treaty”. What it basically says is this: “It would be nice if you governments could try not to exceed a budget deficit of 3% of GDP. If you do, we’ll give you a big and instructive wag of the finger!”

This treaty is now, more than ever, null and void, but nobody likes to talk about it. The fact of the matter is that if you violate the treaty you won’t even get a wag of the finger, but you’ll be rewarded with more money! As I said over a year ago:

The 3% ceiling won’t matter anymore from hereon. Consider the European stability treaty dead. One member state after another will violate the requirements. The fact that a bailout of some Euro states by others is discussed, just shows how torn this European Union really is, how severe its imbalances are. With discrepancies like these, it is completely unfeasible to maintain a currency union. The Euro will keep taking its beating for it.

And it is precisely this which is currently stirring up the debate within Europe.

Why Do We Have to Pay?

The head of the ECB visited Berlin as Germans oppose the Greek bailout:

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet is on a diplomatic mission to Berlin as Germany’s reluctance to bail out Greece helps fan a fiscal crisis now burning around the euro region’s periphery.

Trichet and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn will brief German parliamentary leaders in Berlin around noon today about the $60 billion aid package for Greece, which has met with opposition in Europe’s biggest economy. The joint European Union-IMF package would require Germany to stump up the biggest individual loan to Greece.

“It’s a sales pitch in front of an audience that needs it,” said Jacques Cailloux, chief European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “The lawmakers probably need it spelled out that this is not about financing luxury pensions in Greece. Not helping Greece will unfortunately have a direct impact on the euro-area economy and German jobs.”

Standard & Poor’s yesterday cut Greece’s credit rating to junk status and slashed Portugal’s two notches, intensifying a bond market sell-off across the southern euro region amid concern that debt-ridden countries will struggle to refinance their loans. The crisis has highlighted the absence of a common fiscal policy to cement Europe’s monetary union, frustrating Trichet’s efforts to promote a “common destiny” for its 16 members.

‘Why do we have to pay?’

“Why do we have to pay for Greece’s luxury pensions?” Germany’s biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, Bild Zeitung, asked on its front page yesterday. Almost 60 percent of Germans don’t want to help Greece, Die Welt newspaper reported, citing a survey of 1,009 people.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble asked Trichet and Strauss-Kahn to speak with lawmakers to “facilitate direct insight into the actions as they stand.”

Trichet, Strauss-Kahn and Schaeuble will brief reporters on the talks at 2:30 p.m. in Berlin, a finance ministry spokeswoman said. Trichet declined to comment on the S&P downgrades yesterday.

In Greece, Prime Minister George Papandreou will speak around 8 p.m. local time at a conference entitled “Shaping the Agenda: In the face of a crisis for Greece and the EU.”

Trichet, who once called himself “Mr. Euro,” has been powerless to stop the currency’s 12 percent slide against the dollar in the past five months as politicians haggle over aid for Greece. While he presides over interest rates for the region, he has no say over how taxpayers’ money is spent.

IMF Money

Trichet’s appearance with Strauss-Kahn to promote the joint package comes less than two months after he dismissed the IMF’s financial involvement in a rescue package as inappropriate. Trichet argued that money from the fund would show Europe is incapable of solving its own crises.

“Trichet can only give his opinion,” said David Milleker, chief economist at Union Investment in Frankfurt. “The ECB can’t do anything else. It’s up to the politicians now.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing a crucial state election on May 9, which could explain some of her reluctance to write a check for Athens, said Juergen Michels, chief euro-area economist at Citigroup Inc. in London.

“We’ve never been in a situation like this before so it’s not that unusual to have national interests supersede those of the euro area,” he said.

Merkel’s Audience

Merkel drew applause from an audience in North Rhine- Westphalia this week when she said that “Greece must do its homework” before getting any aid.

The problem is the crisis is now rapidly spreading, undermining confidence in the euro and even fueling speculation it could splinter.

“The most frustrating point in all of this is that those who followed the rules must now help out those who didn’t,” Cailloux said.

Portugal, Ireland and Spain are “conspicuously vulnerable” and may need funding, former IMF chief economist and Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff said in an interview this week.

Euro-region members are considering holding a summit to discuss releasing aid to Greece, an official from the Spanish EU presidency, who declined to be named in line with policy, said yesterday.

In the meantime, “it’s crucial for Trichet to regain his stature by reminding lawmakers that they are all in the one boat,” said Michels.

Trichet on April 12 said the ECB wants “the governments of the euro area to live up to their responsibility.”

“Their countries share a common destiny,” he said.

Brain bending and fuzzy conceptual nonsense such as the statement from Jacques Callioux is of course completely inevitable. He is doing his job, that’s all and that’s OK. But I hope he doesn’t expect rational individuals to listen to him for a second. There is absolutely no justification for bailouts whatsoever, be it a corporation or, worse yet, a gang of people controlling police, army, and prisons, a.k.a the government.

The German government also held a special session on Greece:

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet met to debate help for Greece as Europe’s growing debt crisis tests her refusal to rush German approval of aid.

Key ministers stayed on after the weekly Cabinet session in Berlin today to discuss disbursing Germany’s 8.4 billion euro ($11 million) share of a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout. A government spokesman declined to provide further details.

Merkel is insisting Greece commit to several years of deficit reduction as a cut in the nation’s debt rating to junk yesterday drove up borrowing costs from Italy to Portugal and Ireland and boosted indicators of corporate credit risk around the world.

Action “has to be done now, has to be done very fast,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Secretary General Angel Gurria said in an interview today with Bloomberg television in Berlin before he was due to meet Merkel. “It’s not a question of the danger of contagion. Contagion has already happened. This is like Ebola. When you realize you have it you have to cut your leg off in order to survive.”

European stocks slid for a second day and the cost to insure against bond losses rose. Greek two-year note yields soared to 21.4 percent. The euro traded near a one-year low against the dollar.

To counter with yet another (German) limb-metaphor (since this seems to be the intellectual level of this debate): When you extend your small finger, people will want your whole arm. This is precisely what we’ll see. Once German taxpayers are on the hook for a Greek bailout, pension recipients in Spain, Portugal, and Italy are going to get in line and we will have the same debates. This is completely inevitable.

How much is needed for Greece?

The IMF says this:

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told German lawmakers in Berlin today that Greece may need as much as 120 billion euros ($159 billion) in aid, Green Party parliamentary spokesman Michael Schroeren said by phone today.

Our dear friends the bankers are saying this:

European policy makers may need to stump up as much as 600 billion euros ($794 billion) in aid or buy government bonds if they are to stamp out the region’s spreading fiscal crisis, said economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.

No contagion?

European policy makers continue to play down speculation of contagion, with ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark saying yesterday that Greece should be seen as a “unique case.” Leaders will wait until around May 10 before meeting again to discuss Greece, EU President Herman Van Rompuy said yesterday in Tokyo. He also said there was “no question” of Greece restructuring its debt.

Some economists are optimistic that market turmoil will ultimately force politicians and central bankers to do what’s necessary to rescue the euro region.

Eric Kraus, a strategist at Otkritie Financial Co. in Moscow, said he’s buying Greek bonds on the bet policy makers will eventually strike back.

“Sooner or later those morons in Brussels and Berlin will realize that they are playing with fire, have already been burned, and will have to stop feeding the flames,” said Kraus, who works at a brokerage part-owned by Russia’s second-biggest bank. “Then we should see a very nice bounce.”

Of course the ECB will say there is no contagion. And of course they are as always 100% wrong. Contagion will spread rapidly.

Irony and hypocrisy will always we so rampant and staggering in disasters such as the one above. Thus Kraus is almost right when he makes a statement like the one above. Only that the morons he is referring to are not playing with fire by not bailing out Greece, but rather by considering that very option. Also, the morons don’t only sit in Brussles and Berlin, they also sit in offices in banks in Moscow and have signs on their desks saying “Eric Kraus”.

Merkel’s language already makes it obvious: Germany will go along with the package to bailout Greece, one way or another. She will sell it as a victory to have put strict requirements on the Greek bureaucrats to pursue fiscal discipline once they have been rewarded for their past indiscipline. This is of course how incentives work in the fantasy land of government officials. On the other hand, every sane individual sees it how it is: as sheer and utter madness.

All of this is completely inevitable until people reject the fantasies of interventionism and understand the blessings of voluntaryism.

Tags: bailouts, europe, greece