THE Eurozone Economics Thread pt 1 (merged) Archived

[dolanbaker]

The stock market always reminds me of a flock of sheep in a field surrounded by wolves, they're all looking at each other and will follow the first one that's spooked!

As the old saying goes, you don't have to be faster than the wolf , just faster than the slowest sheep!

[dolanbaker]

Nicolas Sarkozy: Greece should have been denied euro
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15487269

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said allowing Greece into the eurozone in 2001 was a "mistake".

He said Greece was "not ready" at the time. But, he added, it could be rescued thanks to Wednesday's EU deal on the euro debt crisis

In response, Greece's foreign minister told the BBC that Athens was not the source of the crisis, and that no country should be made a scapegoat.

Baaaa

[peripato]

Nicolas Sarkozy: Greece should have been denied euro
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15487269

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said allowing Greece into the eurozone in 2001 was a "mistake".

He said Greece was "not ready" at the time. But, he added, it could be rescued thanks to Wednesday's EU deal on the euro debt crisis

In response, Greece's foreign minister told the BBC that Athens was not the source of the crisis, and that no country should be made a scapegoat.

Baaaa

It won't be long before the ratings agencies wipe that smug smirk off Sarkozy's face with a credit downgrade of France. All those years of loose living (including bank bailouts) are about to be paid for.

[peripato]

Max Rocks!

Speaking of which, have you seen this excellent.two part video with Max Keiser

Those vid's are very good (you get bonus points if you can identify the 6 excerpts of classical music in the two videos ). There's no such thing as a free lunch, and all fiat currencies eventually die ... the dollar's days are severely numbered.

Do they include Mahler? I like Mahler. The pigmen are celebrating the creation of even more free lunches today, eventually they'll gorge on just one little wafer too many again, then...



Till then, "party on dudes!"

[Sixstrings]

Well the issue's been resolved.. the dow went through the roof.. everybody's rich and happy now Europe is saved (for a while)..

Thanks to China:

China is very likely to contribute to the eurozone’s bail-out fund but the scope of its involvement will depend on European leaders satisfying some key conditions, two senior advisers to the Chinese government have told the Financial Times.

Any Chinese support would depend on contributions from other countries and Beijing must be given strong guarantees on the safety of its investment, according to Li Daokui, an academic member of China’s central bank monetary policy committee, and Yu Yongding, a former member of that committee.

Financial markets reacted with relief hours after a European deal was agreed at a summit aimed at calming the two-year-long sovereign debt crisis. The plan includes recapitalising European banks, making them accept a loss of 50 per cent on their holdings of Greek debt and boosting the firepower of the rescue fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility.

The S&P 500, which rose 3.4 per cent, is on course for its best monthly gain since October 1974. The FTSE All World stock index gained 4.1 per cent, its best one-day rise since May 2010.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7505d210-00ba-11e1-8590-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1bzYujqhz

China wants "guarantees" of the safety of its European bailout.

China is SMART.. just stunning the geopolitical game they've been playing the last twenty years. Europe will wind up in the Chinese bloc. In reality China only has all this money because of the trade deficit -- they'll come to Europe's rescue using Europeans' own money. I guess China will rescue us too one day, and we too will have to kowtow to Beijing.

[Daniel_Plainview]

Max Rocks!

Speaking of which, have you seen this excellent.two part video with Max Keiser

Those vid's are very good (you get bonus points if you can identify the 6 excerpts of classical music in the two videos ). There's no such thing as a free lunch, and all fiat currencies eventually die ... the dollar's days are severely numbered.

Do they include Mahler? I like Mahler.

Unfortunately, Max Keiser didn't include any Mahler symphonies ... but he did include symphonies by Bruckner (8) and Mozart (36).

[Daniel_Plainview]

German Constitutional Court Halts EFSF Approval, Issues Temporary Injunction On Further Bailout Decisions

Spiegel reports that the constitutional court has "issued a temporary injunction banning the nine-person committee in the Bundestag from taking any decisions on the deployment by EFSF of German taxpayer money." In addition to this, the Court also put the whole German fast-track approval process in jeopardy after it expressed "doubts about the legality of a new panel of lawmakers set up by the German parliament to reach quick decisions on the release of funds from the euro bailout mechanism."

click

[Keith_McClary]

Vancouver Sun:
Debt accord averts global catastrophe
Great headline , don't bother clicking through to the lame article.

[evilgenius]

Mister market seems to think the crisis is over. The price of everything is up about 5% today. Silver is up about 2 bucks, copper about a buck and even oil is up a couple of bucks already. Happy days are here again, unless you are buying heating oil for the winter...

Mister Market certainly has, seeing as how the very next day the yield that Italy has to pay on its bonds has now gone over the theoretically unsustainable 6%. Even at that rate they could not sell all of the bonds they wanted to at auction.

[cephalotus]

German bad bank (FMS Wertmanagement, former hypo real estate) "discovered" 56 Billion(!) Euro of money, because they made a calculation mistake.

It is amazing how those errors can happen.

No English article available so far: http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/geld/bad ... -aufmacher

[dolanbaker]

Euro bailout - an animated explanation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog ... xplanation
Are you confused about what the Euro bailout actually is? So were we! Tom Meltzer tries to explain with the help of his animated friends …

Great quote at the end of the cartoon

Then we are screwed!

[dolanbaker]

China's only interested in maintaining growth, the money's useless while it's "resting in their bank account" so why not chuck it at Europe.

Even if the bailout fails, it will at least return when Europeans buy more Chinese products.

[dolanbaker]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CZr17HLH5U

The Germans are now running scared.

[DomusAlbion]

Mister market seems to think the crisis is over. The price of everything is up about 5% today. Silver is up about 2 bucks, copper about a buck and even oil is up a couple of bucks already. Happy days are here again, unless you are buying heating oil for the winter...

I don't quite get the ebullience we're seeing in the markets. The fundamentals have not changed or so it seems. The guillotine blade is still on its way down the Euro's neck is in the stocks. I'm confused.

[Sixstrings]

Mister market seems to think the crisis is over. The price of everything is up about 5% today. Silver is up about 2 bucks, copper about a buck and even oil is up a couple of bucks already. Happy days are here again, unless you are buying heating oil for the winter...

I don't quite get the ebullience we're seeing in the markets. The fundamentals have not changed or so it seems. The guillotine blade is still on its way down the Euro's neck is in the stocks. I'm confused.

Well..

"Global catastrophe averted" until the trillion euros run out. Then back to square one. Rally on until then.

[dolanbaker]

It's called, "not being the slowest camper when the bear starts running towards you", trade all way to the edge of the abyss!

[Anvil]

I was reading this
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/1 ... a-edition/ About the large scale economic warfare going on between china and the west and how the new bail out plan for the EU is to suck up to the BRICS whilst quietly stabbing them in the back. Except now stabbing china in the back wont work because they have all the ammo this time not the other way around like it usually is. I was trying to work out the bigger economic picture, when i decide to distract my self playing HO2. Then bingo it hit me a historical comparison was clear to me, the USA during and after WW2 bailed out the EU from the NAZI threat with money, military assistance and economic preference. So the USA bought the future by buying out the EU during WW2 and the EU went along gladly selling out there future to the USA if it could guarantee its safety from the the threat of the NAZIs and USSR. In many ways the same thing is happening today as it did in the EU and the west during and after WW2 but instead of military threats USSR and NAZIs threatening human rights, peace and freedom. Its an economic threat with the west begging china for a bail out and slowly chugging there way to permanently selling out there future to the Chinese in order to gain temporary economic assistance. The EU and the rest are not all the way to begging the Chinese for economic aid but give it time and an other economic depression and you will see. The alfather piss down on most of the western scum bags from a great height for the crimes they have committed against nature and developing nations.

[Revi]

I am feeling a bit of schadenfreunde about this. I think it's time the Eurozone has a trillion or two stolen from it. It's just like what the big banks did to us in 2008. The Central Banks have to be fed. Feed them! Feed them your whole economy. Your whole future. It's the only way. What if the whole banking system went down? Then we would have no pensions and the fat cats would be broke too. Now isn't it better that at least the fat cats are going to be sitting pretty when they have stolen our pensions and reduced the middle class of both the entire western world to penniless serfs? That's why I'm feeling schadenfreunde. Welcome to our world. I say we reoccupy our economy. Starve the beast. Time banks, alternative ways of living. Then the bankers will be sitting on a pile of fiat currency that nobody wants.

[Daniel_Plainview]

Mister market seems to think the crisis is over. The price of everything is up about 5% today. Silver is up about 2 bucks, copper about a buck and even oil is up a couple of bucks already. Happy days are here again, unless you are buying heating oil for the winter...

I don't quite get the ebullience we're seeing in the markets. The fundamentals have not changed or so it seems. The guillotine blade is still on its way down the Euro's neck is in the stocks. I'm confused.

The ebullience is misguided and shortlived:

Italian debt soars on EU bail-out fears
Fears over the ability of the eurozone bail-out to protect the region's embattled members have been heightened after Italy was forced to pay the highest price to issue debt since the launch of the euro.

Italy sold €8bn (£7bn) of 10-year bonds at [a record] 6.06pc, a level seen as unsustainable by analysts, in the first major test of market appetite since European leaders agreed steps to tackle the crisis. Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi is seen as critically weakened and there are doubts he will be able to push through the austerity measures demanded by markets. "[Italy] is still the bête noire of the whole eurozone problem," said Monument Securities strategist Marc Oswald.

In comments that appeared unlikely to calm concerns, Mr Berlusconi issued an extraordinary outburst against the single currency, blaming it for the scrutiny on Italy's finances. He described the euro as a "strange currency" that "has convinced nobody" and claimed that after Germany, Italy had the eurozone's strongest economy. The outburst came just hours after Klaus Regling, chief executive of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), arrived in Beijing to try to persuade China to help finance the eurozone's bail-out vehicle. China has said there will be no "charity" and Mr Regling warned it would likely take "several weeks" to hammer out a deal.

... In a further complication for the EFSF, Germany's constitutional court suspended the right of a small committee of politicians to approve the bail-out fund's actions. The nine-person group had been given the green light to sanction EFSF matters but its powers were suspended after two German politicians argued it infringed other Bundestag members' rights. Some sources suggested the suspension would curtail the EFSF's power to buy embattled countries' bonds in the market. ...

[Daniel_Plainview]

Furious Greeks lampoon German 'overlords' as Nazis with picture of Merkel dressed as an SS guard

Greeks angry at the fate of the euro are comparing the German government with the Nazis who occupied the country in the Second World War. Newspaper cartoons have presented modern-day German officials dressed in Nazi uniform, and a street poster depicts Chancellor Angela Merkel dressed as an officer in Hitler’s regime accompanied with the words: ‘Public nuisance.’ She wears a swastika armband bearing the EU stars logo on the outside.

The backlash has been provoked by Germany’s role in driving through painful measures to stop Greece’s debt crisis from spiralling out of control. Greeks are furious at the deal, even though it means the banks will write off 50 per cent of the country’s debt and Socialist prime minister George Papandreou said Greece had ‘avoided a mortal national danger’.

Opposition parties blasted the landmark agreement, with conservatives warning it condemned the country to ‘nine more years of collapse and poverty’. But it is the fury of ordinary Greeks which is raising eyebrows. Greek government officials who agreed to the belt-tightening moves have been portrayed in cartoons giving the Nazi ‘Sieg Heil’ salute. And German visitors flocking to ancient tourist sites are being met with a hostile welcome from some Greeks.

Berlin’s interference has revived historical enmities and evoked comparisons to the massive destruction of Greece at the hands of Hitler’s Germany more than 65 years ago. Cartoons have sprung up depicting the European Union’s ‘troika’ as ferocious soldiers in Second World War uniforms. ...

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