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COUNTDOWN TO MARCH 2012

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Jan 162012

GROWING WORRIES IN ATHENS

A Greek Default Would Hit the ECB Hard

Hopes that Greece can be saved are dwindling. Athens had hoped to reach a deal with its creditors on a 50 percent debt haircut, but banks have now made it clear that efforts to reach an agreement could fail. Should the country go bankrupt, the European Central Bank stands to lose the most.

Prepare For Europe Collapse Before New Year

A Changing Europe, A Moral Question - Not A Political One, Back to the basics, Bond Market, CDOs, Collateral Damage, Coming Social Unrest, Consumption Ran the Old Economy, Decapitalization, Deflation-Inflation-Stagflation, Deleveraging, Devaluation, Dismal Science-Ignorant Scientists?, Economic Analysis Isn't Science, European Union?, Fiat Currency, Financing Terrorism, Having Fun With Derivatives, History of Finance, IMF Issues - Discussion, Insolvency, Integrity and Responsibility, It starts with a foundation, IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER AND MONEY, It's the Tribes, It's Your Turn to Cry FOR ME, Let's Call What It Is - DEPRESSION, No Bank Is Indispensable, PANDEMIC, Patience is a virtue...Delusion is a vice, Pig-Headed Economic Policy May Still Lead to Disaster, PIIGS Default?, Political Chaos, Read and Weep Entries, Smaller Can Be Better, Strategizing Suppy Chain Links, Subsidiarity, The Big Fat Greek Question, The Consequences of Greed, The Currency Wars Officially Begin, The Financial Elite, The Global Economy, The Importance of Strategic Planning, The Intrusion of UNLAWFUL Authority, The Judeo-Christian Political Coalition, The Suffering Poor, The Ticking Euro Bomb, This self-serving arbitrariness, Time For A New Third Party, Unemployment Catastrophe, Unindicted Co-Conspiritors, Unintended Consequences, Wage Deflation, Watch The China Market, We Are All Cooked, We Need Open Derivative Models No Responses »

Nov 122011

It’s official: The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) plan announced at the EU summit on October 27th is essentially dead prior to arrival.

As a consequence, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy appear to be betraying signs of throwing in the towel on the Euro project as it exists today. They appear to be actively contemplating ways to engineer an orderly breakup of the Euro.

As financial market participants gets wind of their intentions – albeit tentative – expect financial markets to accelerate the unfolding of events. The entire Euro edifice could collapse before the New Year.

EFSF Chief: The Insurance Plan Is Dead Prior To Arrival

When the Chief of the EFSF is pessimistic about the capacity of the EFSF to be leveraged to an extent that is adequate to the task at hand, then you might as well kiss the whole thing goodbye.

In a little noted article in Thursday’s FT, Klaus Regling, head of the EFSF essentially admitted that the plan agreed upon at the EU summit on October summit to use the EFSF as collateral for a first-loss insurance scheme is essentially dead.

As I predicted would occur in an article of mine several weeks ago entitled “Europe’s Inane Idea: Fake Brady Bonds,” the EFSF chief has acknowledged that there is no interest on the part of investors to purchase PIIGS bonds with a first-loss guarantee of only 20%.

Regling believes that a first-loss guarantee of 30% may be required to garner any interest.

Personally, I have serious doubts that there would be sufficient interest. Any issuance that actually requires a 30% loss guarantee in order to be viable simply has an implicit default risk profile that will be unable to garner sponsorship of sufficient size.

Since there are only about 250 billion euros available for the EFSF first-loss insurance scheme, that means that, even assuming 30% were sufficient, the mechanism would only be adequate to cover about 800 billion euros worth of debt issuance by Italy and Spain — and any other euro area country that needed funding.

It has been estimated that roughly two trillion euros of funding are needed to simply merely meet projected roll-over and fresh financing needs through mid 2013. Therefore, the 800 billion projection is totally insufficient to the task at hand.

If $800 billion in guarantees are all that Europe can come up with, Europe would probably better off wasting precious resources on this scheme at all.

That is why the EFSF first-loss guarantee proposal seems to be dead on arrival. The plan is totally insufficient, and therefore is unlikely to be implemented at all.

I believe that this realization is thoroughly discouraging the Eurocrats that are charged with structuring the EFSF insurance facility and selling it to investors. These Eurocrats are relaying their pessimism back to Merkel and Sarkozy in real time. This in turn, is prompting Merkel and Sarkozy to begin to contemplate “exit strategies.”

Imminent Fiasco

Because Merkel and Sarkozy are unwilling or are unable to support the only viable option available to them that is to fund bond purchases via the ECB, they appear to be engaging in preliminary speculations regarding a possible exit plan. The problem is that there is no viable exit plan that would not entail a total economic and financial disaster.

It will be impossible for Merkel, Sarkozy and other European leaders to prepare an exit strategy without their intentions being leaked to the press. Financial markets will therefore unravel any and all plans that they contemplate before they can even commit them to paper.

As soon as markets realize that the original EFSF scheme is being abandoned and that the entire Euro project will be restructured, the Euro will be crushed, the European banking system will become insolvent and global financial markets will freeze up.

Merkozy Musings

Sarkozy is already openly musing about a “two-speed” Europe. He envisions a group of countries that will quickly move towards tight fiscal and economic integration and another group of countries that will remain fiscally and monetarily independent.

Sarkozy has stated that he believes that a tight federation is impossible for a large group of economically, politically and culturally disparate countries. The implication is that the group of 16 nations that currently comprise the Euro is probably too large to be manageable.

At the same time, Merkel is already dreaming about a “New Europe.” Exactly what Germany’s Chancellor means by this is ambiguous. However, it is clear that Merkel has in mind much tighter fiscal and economic integration. In this regard Merkel must know that several current Euro members may be unable or unwilling to join in such a tight federation.

The problem with Sarkozy’s and Merkel’s musings is that they are completely irrelevant and even counterproductive to the current task at hand. The issues that they are touching on were issues that needed to have been resolved at the inception of the Euro. At this point, the question is how the damage can best be undone, not to debate what should have been.

Conclusion

Merkel and Sarkozy will soon learn that an orderly break-up of the Euro is not possible. Even the slightest hint that a breakup is being contemplated will cause a global financial disturbance that is so great that any perceived benefits of a break-up will be completely overwhelmed by the costs that will be imposed by the market.

Prepare For Europe Collapse Before New Year by James A. Kostohryz

This self-serving arbitrariness

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Sep 242011

“Yesterday, the textbook was thrown out the window. All asset classes saw sudden and sharp moves far in excess of normal volatility patterns. To an old timer, that points to one conclusion. Liquidation. Wide-spread liquidation across asset classes. Currencies, bonds, commodities and stocks all moved swiftly and sharply in a direction that screamed – Seek safety! Raise cash! Get liquid…

All of that had a quick and discernible negative impact on markets. But, the selling was far more pervasive and dramatic than simply a conscious adjustment of positions based upon new data. Thursday’s action screamed liquidation – and not all of it voluntary.”

Art Cashin, 22 September 2011

Every time the central banks and their affiliates get desperate, some economic essayist trots out an outlandish argument about why gold is a ‘barbarous relic.’ Here is one that tops even the almost petulant argument of Willem Buiter in 2009.

The Price of Gold in 2160 – Statsguy and James Kwak

I had to read this essay twice to make sure it just was not satire. I can summarize my reaction by saying that finding gold in outer space with assumed technologies speaks to supply, but the author does not present any assumptions about population, economics structures, and of course future demand.

The method by which gold is formed in relatively rare supernova events is fairly well known, and its distribution relative to other elements and compounds is not completely eccentric, at least not as random and eccentric as pseudo-scientific economic theories might become these days.

The author’s premise of the discovery of new bullion supplies in outer space is analogous to the discovery of the New World by Europeans, and the remarkable finds of gold and silver on those two vast continents.

And yet here we are today.

Some might say that the author was merely saying in a cute way that commodity based currencies always fail, with an example being salt or Yap stones as Mr. Buiter had argued to greater effect.

And I would say that all currencies do go in and out of favor in their time, since there is an element of relativism in value that can be enforced by ruling authorities, who themselves tend to come and go, even if in their time these authorities might seem invincible, their empires intended to last for a thousand years.

But some stores of value, not based on passing utilitarian criteria or force, do tend to be resilient, and come back again and again, and retain an element of value from generation to generation. Or as some might with a more profound understanding of money might say, they maintain the confidence of their steadfastness that is a pre-requisite of sound money that is difficult to maintain by mere force of will.

As some historians of money have pointed out, the Federal Reserve was initially set up to emulate this type of external immutability of value in what later became a purely fiat currency. As men like Andrew Jackson would have predicted, they failed in exactly the same ways and for the same reasons that every other attempt at this has failed throughout history.

All systems are prone to corruption and decay, but none so much as those that rely exclusively on the goodness and wisdom of small groups of powerful men, especially when acting in secret.

It does seems quite cheeky for a modern economist to criticize a natural store of value with a 5000 year history, while standing on the platform of a purely fiat currency, given the short half life of every fiat currency throughout history. They may be recreated and devalued, but they never retain much of their value and character, with the only remnant their name.

I hear the sounds of printing presses over the horizon. Get ready for Quantitative Easing European style, and massive European bailouts, and increasingly absurd arguments from the econo-sphere as they avoid the subject of justice for the sake of expediency.

I have some limited sympathy for the dilemma facing the increasingly desperate western central banks, and understand their rationalizations. But they are doing something that is the very epitome of moral hazard, and abuse of power, in their attempts to stabilize the unsustainable, without allowing for meaningful change and reform.

The heart of the issue is that the existing monetary and financial system is becoming increasingly arbitrary and corrupt. A relatively small group of interconnected crony capitalists wishes to create a digital money out of nothing, and distribute it increasingly as they will, to whom they will.

And this is the basis of my resentment with this policy abuse, and the irritation with the assault on reason by those in the financial demimonde engaging in what might be politely called perception management.

This self-serving arbitrariness, even if done for ‘good motives,’ is the very reason why all fiat currencies fail. No matter how you want to rationalize it they are going to create money out of nothing, and give it to whom they will, while corrupting the political system in the process.

And the cumulative results of this abuse of power are corrosive to society. Lawless example by a ruthless few brings out the worst in all the people, always. And that is a shame.

“Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”

Louis D. Brandeis

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – Liquidation Panic – Martian Gold – Comex Hikes Margins

JESSE’S CAFE

“…shocked disbelief”

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Apr 102010

Book Excerpt: Roger Lowenstein’s “The End of Wall Street” – BusinessWeek

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.” — Alan Greenspan, testimony before the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, Oct. 23, 2008

The crash of 2008 put to rest the intellectual model that inspired, and to a large degree facilitated, the bubble. It spelled the end of the immodest faith in Wall Street’s ability to forecast. No better testimony exists than the extraordinary recanting of former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, the public official most associated with the thesis that markets are ever to be trusted.

Does It Make Sense to Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act?

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Feb 202010

In the present system, the more unrestricted the banks are, the more money they can generate “out of thin air,” and the more damage they can inflict upon the wealth-generation process. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak

Fear

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Aug 032009

“Swine flu is not the only thing we are neurotic wrecks about. Over at the Home Office, ministers warn about the likelihood of an al Qaeda terrorist attack,” says a Daily Mail op-ed on “today’s culture of fear.” As to which, Prison Planet maintains its drum beat of reporting on pandemic-flu-related mass graves being dug and martial law plans being laid here and abroad — while The Pakistan Daily assures readers it’s not the H1N1 virus we should fear but the pending vaccine. Two thirds of New Zealand travelers now view the world as more dangerous than when they first went abroad — with terrorism, crime and disease topping their worries, NZCity has an insurance company survey showing.

Women and children first…

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Aug 012009

CDC gives priority to certain groups for swine flu vaccine

By Thomas H. Maugh II

Pregnant women, children and healthcare workers are among those recommended for inoculation, an advisory committee says. The vaccine is expected to be available by the end of October. >>

We’ve Wiped Out All The New Jobs Of The 21st Century

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Jul 102009

What’s the best way to express just how bad the job market is? You could look at the soaring unemployment rate, or perhaps the ever-shortening work week. How about this: Total nonfarm payrolls, notes economist James Hamilton, are now back to where they were in mid 2000, and in a few months they’ll certainly be back to pre-2000 levels. 21st century job creation: gone.

All Jobs Created in the 21st Century Are Now Gone – Clusterstock

Potential Costs of Next Pandemic

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Apr 282009

…..beside all the pain and suffering…..

From Reuters’ Tan Ee Lyn this past weekend:

… health experts have long warned that the next flu pandemic was overdue and urged countries around the world to prepare for the dramatic economic impact of such a catastrophe.

Below are estimates of economic costs of such a disaster:

• The World Bank estimated in 2008 that a flu pandemic could cost $3 trillion and result in a nearly 5 percent drop in world gross domestic product. The World Bank has estimated that more than 70 million people could die worldwide in a severe pandemic.
• Australian independent think-tank Lowy Institute for International Policy estimated in 2006 that in the worst-case scenario, a flu pandemic could wipe $4.4 trillion off global economic output.
• Two reports in the United States in 2005 estimated that a flu pandemic could cause a serious recession of the U.S. economy, with immediate costs of between $500 billion and $675 billion.
• One report, from the Congressional Budget Office, said hospitals would have difficulty controlling infection and might become sources for spreading the illness.
• A second report by New Jersey-based WBB Securities LLC predicted a one-year economic loss of $488 billion and a permanent economic loss of $1.4 trillion to the U.S. economy.
• SARS in 2003 disrupted travel, trade and the workplace and cost the Asia Pacific region $40 billion. It lasted for six months, killing 775 of the 8,000 people it infected in 25 countries.

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