Draghi Archives - Page 7 of 12 - The Automatic Earth

Investors hate stocks – again. Amid a six-year bull market that’s notable mainly for how little conviction there is in it, equity sentiment is plunging at a historic rate, falling by some measures at the fastest pace since Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker had just finished pushing up interest rates in the 1980s. The cost to hedge against stock losses is soaring, valuations are contracting, and bearishness among professional stock handicappers is rising the most in three decades. Fret not. All of this is good news for bulls, if history is any guide. Since 1963, the S&P’s 500 Index has advanced an average 11% in the year after newsletter writers surveyed by Investors Intelligence were as pessimistic as they are now, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That compares with an annualized return of 8.3%.

Skepticism is one thing the rally since 2009 hasn’t lacked – and it may be the best thing stocks have going for them as corporate profits fall, concerns deepen over China’s travails, oil and commodities plunge and the Fed turns more pessimistic on global growth. Some traders even say they see bargains after S&P 500 posted its first 10% retreat in four years. “This is the least-believed economic recovery and the least-believed bull market of our careers,” said Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at Chicago-based Nuveen Asset Management, which oversees $130 billion and bought stocks during the August selloff. “The nervousness means people have stepped to the sidelines. The question is, who is left to sell? Everybody who has cash is a potential buyer.”

Investors have bailed out of stocks at every sign of trouble since 2009, from the euro crisis to ebola, with the latest catalyst coming from China’s devaluation of its currency. The distrust has been a barrier to euphoria, a quality that historically is the bigger threat to bull markets. Fear reigns, spreading faster than any time since 1984 as the S&P 500 tumbled 10% over four days in August. At the start of this month, the bull-to-bear ratio in Investors Intelligence’s survey of newsletter writers fell to a four-year low of 0.9. In April, when bulls dominated the market that was heading for an all-time high, the ratio reached 4.1.

“..they MUST raise rates or they will bankrupt countless pension funds and international where emerging markets will go into default..”

• Yellen Is Trapped in the Worst Nightmare Ever (Martin Armstrong)

Yellen has inherited a complete nightmare. Thursday’s decision to delay yet again the long-awaited liftoff from zero interest rates is illustrating that the world economy is totally screwed. There is a lot of speculation about why the Fed seems so reluctant to “normalize monetary policy”. There are of course the typical domestic issues that there is low inflation, weak wage gains in the face of strong job growth, a hike will increase the Federal deficit and then there is the argument that corporations that now have $12.5 trillion in debt. All that is nice, but with corporate debt, our clients are locking in long-term at these levels, not funding anything short-term.

Those clients who have listened are preparing for what is to come unlike government which has been forced to shorten the average duration of their debts blind to what happens when rates rise, which will be set in motion by the markets – not Yellen. Fed is really caught between a rock and a very dark place. Yes, they have the IMF and the world pleading with them not to raise rates for it will hurt other debtors who borrowed excessively using dollars to save money. The Fed is also caught between domestic policy objectives that dictate they MUST raise rates or they will bankrupt countless pension funds and international where emerging markets will go into default because commodities have collapsed and they have no way of paying off this debt that has risen to about 50% of the US national debt.

By avoiding the normalization of interest rates (hikes), the Fed has encouraged government to spend far more than they realize because money is cheap. This will eventually light the fire under the economy helping to fuel the Sovereign Debt Crisis. There appears to be no hope for the Fed and they will be forced to raise rates only when they see asset inflation in equities. Then they will have no choice. This is the worst possible mess and the longer they have waited to normalize interest rates, the worst the total crisis is becoming for they will have zero control over the economy and once that is seen, holy Hell will break lose.

“..a structural shift has beset the world economy.”

• Yellen Pause Ups Pressure on Draghi as Global Pessimism Mounts (Bloomberg)

The global economy caused Janet Yellen to pause for thought. It could spur Mario Draghi to act. After the Federal Reserve chair held off from a U.S. interest-rate increase amid concerns that world growth will weaken, her counterpart at the ECB may give clues on the need for further stimulus for the euro area. Draghi and other Governing Council members will make public appearances this week, while data releases will show whether the currency bloc is succumbing to, or shaking off, the gloom. Like the U.S., the euro area is stuck with stubbornly low inflation. Unlike Yellen, Draghi can’t yet rely on domestic demand to lift prices. Whether because the Fed’s delay leads to a stronger euro, or because of the drag of emerging markets, economists see it as increasingly likely that the ECB will be called on its pledge to boost its €1.1 trillion bond-buying program if needed.

“The worry is that, previously, central banks assumed that global growth would be materially stronger in 2016, but that doesn’t look likely now,” said Nick Kounis at ABN Amro in Amsterdam. “If the Fed had hiked rates, it would have given the ECB some breathing space. Now the pressure is on them again.” The ECB’s optimism that a home recovery coupled with stronger external demand would steer inflation back to the goal of just under 2% is now being replaced by concern that a structural shift has beset the world economy. Executive Board member Peter Praet, the institution’s chief economist, said in an interview published over the weekend that policy makers “won’t hesitate to act” if it they reach that conclusion. Draghi’s lieutenants have been reinforcing that message since the Fed’s rate decision last week.

Benoit Coeure, the ECB’s markets chief, said in a speech in Paris on Friday that prospects for growth in the euro area have “clearly weakened,” and aren’t helped by a euro that’s now strengthening against the currencies of its main trading partners. The single currency has gained 3.5% in trade-weighted terms since mid-July and more than 4% against the dollar. European bonds jumped after the Fed’s Sept. 17 decision to keep its benchmark rate at a record low. Both Praet and Coeure speak in public on Monday, followed by Draghi’s appearance at a European Parliament hearing in Brussels on Wednesday. Hours before Draghi addresses lawmakers, purchasing managers’ surveys for September may tell investors whether Europe’s manufacturing and services industries are indeed succumbing to lower external demand, or whether domestic consumers are helping to prop them up.

“..public understanding of the Fed’s behavior “an essential foundation for the monetary stability we currently enjoy.”

• Fed’s Lacker Says Economy Strong Enough For Higher Rates (Reuters)

Richmond Federal Reserve President Jeffrey Lacker on Saturday said he dissented at a Fed policy meeting because he thought the economy was now strong enough to warrant higher interest rates. Fed policymakers on Thursday voted to keep the Fed’s target interest rate at between zero and a quarter point. “Such exceptionally low real interest rates are unlikely to be appropriate for an economy with persistently strong consumption growth and tightening labor markets,” Lacker said in a statement. He was the lone dissenter among the 10 Fed officials who voted at the meeting. Lacker said the Fed’s target should rise by a quarter point. Lacker has a history of dissent in Fed policy meetings. In 2012, he voted against eight straight policy decisions by the central bank.

At the time he was urging the Fed to wind down asset purchases that were aimed at stimulating the economy. Regarding Thursday’s decision at the Fed, Lacker said a rebound in consumer spending and “tightening labor markets” meant the economy no longer needed zero interest rates. He said keeping interest rates at their current level deviated from the way the Fed has responded to the economy in the past, which was dangerous because public understanding of the Fed’s behavior was “an essential foundation for the monetary stability we currently enjoy.” “Such departures are risky and raise the likelihood of adverse outcomes,” Lacker said.

Extending the narrative.

• Fed’s Williams Still Sees 2015 Rate Hike After ‘Close Call’ (Reuters)

An interest rate hike will likely be appropriate this year given the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision last week to stand pat was a “close call,” a top Fed policymaker said on Saturday. John Williams, a centrist and president of the San Francisco Fed, said the arguments for and against beginning to tighten U.S. monetary policy are about balanced now that the economy is on solid footing, giving him confidence in continued economic and labor market growth. Williams, the first U.S. policymaker to speak publicly since the Fed’s much-anticipated decision on Thursday, suggested he is almost ready to pull the trigger on a rate hike. He acknowledged the risks from a slowdown in China and global downward pressure on inflation, noting a rate rise in 2015 is not guaranteed.

But he said full U.S. employment should be achieved “in the near future” and inflation, while still too low for comfort, should gradually move back to a 2% goal. “Given the progress we’ve made and continue to make on our goals, I view the next appropriate step as gradually raising interest rates, most likely starting sometime later this year,” he said at a weekend conference on the China-U.S. financial system. The Fed’s decision to leave rates near zero “was a close call in my mind, in part reflecting the conflicting signals we’re getting,” he said. “The U.S. economy continues to strengthen while global developments pose downside risks to fully achieving our goals.”

Falling further as the day goes on. “The violations, which affect nearly half a million vehicles, could result in as much as $18 billion in fines.”

• Volkswagen Plunges 25% After US Emissions Cheat Scandal (Bloomberg)

Volkswagen dropped the most in almost seven years after it admitted to cheating on U.S. air pollution tests for years, risking billions in potential fines and a backlash from consumers in the world’s second-biggest car market. The shares declined as much as 17%, or €27.9, to €134.5 in Frankfurt, the most since Nov. 3, 2008. The drop extends the slump for the year to 25%, valuing the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company at €65.3 billion. Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn said on Sunday that the company is cooperating with the probe and ordered its own external investigation into the issue. The CEO said he was “deeply sorry” for breaking the public’s trust. VW has halted sales of the car models involved, which were a cornerstone of Winterkorn’s effort to catch up in the U.S.

The violations, which affect nearly half a million vehicles, could result in as much as $18 billion in fines. Criminal prosecution is also possible. “If this ends up having been structural fraud, the top management in Wolfsburg may have to bear the consequences,” said Sascha Gommel, a Frankfurt-based analyst for Commerzbank AG, whose share rating is under review. The German carmaker admitted to fitting its U.S. diesel vehicles with software that turns on full pollution controls only when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday. The violations, which affect nearly half a million vehicles, could result in as much as $18 billion in fines. Criminal prosecution is also possible.

Analysts at Kepler Cheuvreux downgraded the shares to “hold” from “buy,” cutting their target price 27% to €185. Volkswagen faces not only a short-term drop in sales and hit to its reputation but also the longer-term risk of litigation in the U.S., the analysts wrote in a note on Monday. During normal driving, the cars with the software – known as a “defeat device” – would pollute 10 times to 40 times the legal limits, the EPA estimated. The discrepancy emerged after the International Council on Clean Transportation commissioned real-world emissions tests of diesel vehicles including a Jetta and Passat, then compared them to lab results. Volkswagen had counted on clean, powerful diesel cars to help it build its sales in the U.S., where it has struggled for years. Sales of VW-brand cars in the country dropped 10% last year to 366,970.

Lame duck.

• Greece’s Year Of Tumult Enters New Chapter As Tsipras Dominates (Bloomberg)

Greek voters had the choice to reject the man who led their country closer than ever to being forced out of Europe’s single currency. Instead, they embraced him. Alexis Tsipras and his Coalition of the Radical Left, or SYRIZA, emerged from a second election in eight months with a level of support barely diminished from the emphatic victory that catapulted him both into power and a standoff with the euro region. SYRIZA, which took 35.5% of the vote compared with 28.1% for the center-right New Democracy, will enter a coalition with the same small party that helped it rule before. While the victory tightens Tsipras’s hold over Greek politics, it also exposes the paradoxes of a country whose economy is a shadow of its former self and where controls remain on bank withdrawals.

After coming to power pledging to end austerity and restore “dignity,” Tsipras now must implement the further sharp spending cuts and tax increases he ended up agreeing to in exchange for €86 billion of fresh European aid. The electorate has voted to return to power a party that “ditched its promises, switched its policies, and caused the collapse of Greek banks, bringing in an unneeded recession,” said Stathis Kalyvas, a professor of political science at Yale University. On the other hand, “this government will be called to implement a stringent set of fiscal and structural reforms that it vigorously rejected before,” he said.

What EU says is non-negotiable.

• Debt Relief Tops Tsipras Agenda, Party Official Says (Reuters)

Negotiations over Greece’s debt will top the agenda for Prime Minister-elect Alexis Tsipras from Monday as he prepares for a return to office following a surprisingly easy national election win, a senior source from his party said. Tsipras and his leftist SYRIZA party clinched a clear victory in Sunday’s poll as voters put aside his dramatic U-turn over Greece’s international bailout to offer him a second chance to steer a battered economy to recovery. SYRIZA said on Sunday it plans to govern in a coalition with the small right wing Independent Greeks party, the same partner Tsipras chose after winning the country’s previous general election in January. But to strengthen his hand in talks with EU partners over how to ease Greece’s debt burden, he will seek a broader consensus among the parties he defeated on Sunday, the party source said.

“We will continue negotiations in the coming period, with the debt issue being the first and most important battle,” the source said. “We will ask all political forces to support our efforts.” Some European governments, particularly Germany, are opposed to cutting Greece’s debt – a so-called haircut – but not averse to stretching out its repayment schedule. Eurozone officials told Reuters last week that governments are ready to cap Greece’s debt-servicing costs at 15% of GDP annually over the long term. That would mean the nominal payment would be lower if the Greek economy struggled, higher if it was more robust, they said.

Tsipras is also planning to form a national council for European policy, including representatives of parties other than the Independent Greeks and which would advise the finance minister, the SYRIZA source said. Centre-left daily newspaper Ethnos tipped Euclid Tsakalotos, the former finance minister who brokered terms of the bailout accord in August, to be re-appointed. JP Morgan analyst Malcolm Barr said he expected some sort of debt restructuring to be in place by early next year. “We continue to think that… the (bailout) programme will make enough progress to allow a restructuring of loans from euro area countries by the end of the first quarter of 2016,” he wrote in a note.

Brussels has lost all sense of the limits of interfering in sovereign nations. This is none of Schulz’s business.

• EU’s Schulz Says Cannot Understand Tsipras’ Greek Coalition Choice (Reuters)

The head of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, lamented on Monday the decision by Greek leftist Alexis Tsipras to renew a coalition with the small right-wing Independent Greeks party. Tsipras stormed back into office with an unexpectedly decisive election victory on Sunday, claiming a clear mandate to steer Greece’s battered economy to recovery. The vote ensured Europe’s most outspoken leftist leader would remain Greece’s dominant political figure, despite having been abandoned by party radicals last month after he caved in to demands for austerity to win a bailout from the eurozone. Speaking to France Inter radio, Schulz said he could not understand Tsipras’ decision to bring the Independent Greeks, who polled less than 4% of the vote, back into government.

“I called him (Tsipras) a second time to ask him why he was continuing a coalition with this strange, far-right party,” Schulz said. “He pretty much didn’t answer. He is very clever, especially by telephone. He told me things that seemed convincing, but which ultimately in my eyes are a little bizarre.” Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos says the bailout by the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund has reduced Greece to the status of a debt colony.

The party differs from Syriza on many traditionally conservative issues, pledging to crack down on illegal immigration and defend the close links between the Orthodox Church and the state. Schulz said he admired Tsipras for the way he had navigated through the last year to get himself re-elected, but said Kammenos was a loose canon who always needed to be controlled. “It’s politically and strategically something that you have to admire,” he said. “But after … this renewed mandate with this far-right, populist party, that I don’t understand.”

The US must be part of the solution too.

• A Frontline Solution to Europe’s Refugee Crisis: Remember Ellis Island (WSJ)

Tabanovce, Macedonia: This quaint Macedonian village provides a useful vantage point for anyone hoping to grasp the scale of the current European refugee crisis. Up to 7,000 refugees have been passing through here daily before crossing the border with Serbia. A generation ago this region escaped communism, then fought bitter ethnic and sectarian wars that lasted until 2001. Now its nations find themselves in the eye of a humanitarian storm. And Europe is no closer to a durable solution. Short of military intervention to stabilize some of the Middle East hotspots the refugees are fleeing, the only long-term response is to develop legal, safe conduits that bring refugees to European Union-funded and operated frontline processing centers, say, on the Greek and Italian isles and Turkey’s western coast.

Asylum-seekers would be offered fair, humane and expedient processing. Those relying on trafficker routes would be routed back to these centers. Accepted refugees would be placed depending on host-country capacity, family and communal ties, and related factors. The U.S. experience on Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century is instructive. The island processed an astonishing 1.25 million immigrants in 1907, a banner year for U.S. immigration. In the next decade U.S. immigration authorities also mastered immigrant processing—including ultra-efficient medical checks and questioning—aboard ships. The situations aren’t precisely analogous. At Ellis Island’s height as a processing center, America maintained a more or less open-door policy.

But the main lesson for Europe today lies in the American government’s ability at that time to impose order on human chaos on a scale similar to the current refugee crisis. Central to that success was the existence of a singular executive with broad discretion to examine, process, accept and in some cases reject migrants. Compare that achievement with Europe’s mess today. As the crisis mounted, the states on the Balkan corridor—Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey—provided refugees easy passage toward Hungary. Macedonia and Serbia especially became efficient at getting refugees in and out of their territory as quickly as possible, sometimes within a day. Balkan governments knew that most refugees were headed for Germany, Sweden and the like, and after minimal processing they granted papers allowing refugees to head north.

Should have been done from the start.

• Central Europe Gives Up On Holding Refugees Back From Austria (Guardian)

The countries of central Europe suspended their resistance this weekend to Europe’s largest refugee exodus since the second world war, as Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia all shunted tens of thousands of people towards Austria, reversing most recent attempts to block their passage. At least 15,000 refugees mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq were funnelled from Croatia into Hungary and then onwards to Austria over the weekend, the Austrian news agency APA said, after Hungary temporarily gave up trying to stop refugees from crossing its border. Another 2,500 have crossed from Croatia into Slovenia, despite Slovenia initially trying to block their passage. The moves represent a volte-face from both countries – and in particular from Hungary.

The Budapest government had previously tried to stop the entry of undocumented travellers by building a fence along its southern border with Serbia, and by posting military vehicles on its western border with Croatia. But by Sunday, its resistance was mostly rhetorical. The country admitted thousands of refugees over the weekend from Croatia, whose shared border is not yet blocked by a fence, even as foreign minister Péter Szijjártó promised tougher measures in the future. Szijjártó said: “We are a state that is more than 1,000 years old that throughout its history has had to defend not only itself, but Europe as well many times. That’s the way it’s going to be now.”

Thousands more continued to enter Europe on Saturday and Sunday at the other end of the refugee route in the Greek islands, where coastguards said that 24 people were feared to have drowned on Sunday. An inflatable refugee boat, attempting to reach Lesbos from the Turkish shoreline, capsized before it reached its destination, and only 22 out of 46 passengers were rescued. The number of migrant shipwrecks in the Aegean has increased in recent days, with Sunday’s incident the sixth in a week of accidents that have left around 100 dead.

For many of the survivors, the trauma has not ended with their rescue: it emerged on Sunday that more than 200 Syrians and Iraqis saved by the Turkish coastguard following the sinking of their ship near Kos had allegedly been threatened with deportation back to the war zones they had just fled. One Syrian survivor, who asked not to be named as she is still in detention, said in a voice message: “They are threatening us that Syrians will be deported to Syria, Iraqis to Iraq. If they send us back to Syria we will die.” The Turkish government has denied any Syrians will be deported.

No kidding, the headline still said ‘emergency summit’.

• We Must Act Together, Says Merkel Ahead Of Refugee Summit (Guardian)

A divided European leadership will try to seek a credible response to the continent’s worst migration crisis since second world war at an emergency summit on Wednesday. As central European countries abandoned attempts to stop thousands of refugees from crossing their borders towards Austria on Sunday, German chancellor Angela Merkel called on her peers to accept joint responsibility. “Germany is willing to help. But it is not just a German challenge, but one for all of Europe,” Merkel told a gathering of trade unionists. “Europe must act together and take on responsibility. Germany can’t shoulder this task alone.“ Striking a more sceptical tone on migration than in previous weeks, Merkel also warned that Germany could not shelter those who were moving for economic reasons rather than to flee war or persecution.

“We are a big country. We are a strong country. But to make out as if we alone can solve all the social problems of the world would not be realistic,” she told a gathering of the Verdi trade union. The foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Latvia will hold talks on Monday with their counterpart from Luxembourg, which currently holds the EU presidency, aimed at addressing divides between neighbouring states. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, who chairs EU summits, said on Twitter on Sunday following a weekend visit to Jordan and Egypt that the EU needed to help Syrian refugees find a better life closer at home.

That will be one of the topics of discussion for Wednesday’s summit in Brussels as hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants brave the seas and trek across the Balkan peninsula to reach the affluent countries of northern Europe. The 28-member bloc has struggled to find a unified response to the crisis, which has tested many of its newer members in the east that are unaccustomed to large-scale immigration. On Sunday Hungary erected a steel gate and fence posts at a border crossing with Croatia, the EU’s newest member state. Overwhelmed by an influx of some 25,000 migrants this week, Croatia has been sending them north by bus and train to Hungary, which has waved them on to Austria.

Europe remains in bland denial of reality. And that’s dangerous.

• Merkel Coalition at Odds Over Proposal to Cap EU Asylum Places (Bloomberg)

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said he doesn’t “understand” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere’s proposal for the European Union to set an upper limit to the number of people it accepts as asylum seekers. “It’s the opposite of what the Chancellor has rightly said, namely that those who arrive in Germany and apply for asylum need a fair procedure,” Gabriel, who’s also chairman of the Social Democratic Party, said Sunday on ARD public television. “It is not a solution to establish quotas for asylum seekers. Incidentally, it is also contrary to the German constitution.” Support for two German opposition parties not represented in parliament rose as criticism of Merkel’s handling of Europe’s refugee crisis mounted.

Backing for the Free Democrats, Merkel’s former coalition partner, and the anti-euro Alternative for Germany party each increased 1%age point to 5% in a weekly poll, Bild am Sonntag reported. “We can’t host all the people from conflict areas and all poverty refugees who want to come to Europe and to Germany,” de Maiziere told Germany’s Spiegel magazine. “The right way would be that we in the EU commit ourselves to fixed, generous quotas for the admission of refugees.” A call by one of his party deputies that de Maiziere, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, should resign unless he succeeds at accelerating asylum procedures was “nonsense,” Gabriel said.

Labor Minister Andrea Nahles said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk public radio she expects German unemployment figures to rise next year due to “a significant increase” in the number of refugees seeking work as “not every refugee who comes now is already automatically a qualified worker.” All parties represented in the lower house of parliament shed 1%age point in the Emnid poll, with Merkel’s Christian Union bloc dropping to 40%, her Social Democrat coalition partner to 24%, the Greens to 10% and the Left party to 9%.

How about 1 million, just to begin with?

• 15,000 More Refugees To Be Resettled In US Next Year (WaPo)

The United States will increase its cap on the number of refugees it admits and resettles to 85,000 in the coming fiscal year and to 100,000 in 2017, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Sunday. The additional refugees, up from 70,000 in the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, will come from countries around the world. But the increase largely reflects the 10,000 Syrian refugees that the White House earlier this month promised to admit. Kerry said the administration is exploring ways to admit even more, but Congress must approve enough money to cover the extra cost of resettlement. “This step is in keeping with America’s best tradition as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” Kerry said in announcing the increase during a visit to Berlin to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Even before Syrian refugees began streaming into Europe in recent weeks, the State Department had been considering a modest increase of about 5,000 refugees, including more from Congo, where human rights abuses are rampant. At the end of each fiscal year, the State Department announces the new target number for refugees. Although the administration can unilaterally set a numerical goal for the refugees it wants to accept, it is up to Congress to agree to fund the resettlement. In the current fiscal year, it cost $1.1 billion to bring 70,000 refugees to the United States, put them through an orientation program run by refugee charities and have them dispersed throughout the country. It was not immediately clear how much more it will cost to bring in more Syrians.

One of the reasons it is so expensive is that every refugee must undergo extensive background checks under security measures enacted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Those checks have been taking 18 to 24 months for Syrians, according to State Department figures. A senior State Department official said many, many more refugees could be admitted if officials can find ways to streamline the system without jeopardizing security. Refugees admitted for resettlement are selected from lists provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. So far, about 1,600 of more than 18,000 Syrians referred by the U.N. refugee agency since the conflict began have arrived in the United States about 1,500 in this fiscal year alone. More than 10,000 are well along in being vetted, and they are expected to arrive in much greater numbers in the coming months.

Let’s be honest, that UN meeting willl lead to nothing at all.

• UN Meets To Fight Poverty, Europe Puts Up Razor Wire To Keep Poor Out (Guardian)

The contrast could hardly be sharper. Razor wire fences are being constructed to keep the uprooted poor out of the European Union at the very moment the United Nations meets to agree anti-poverty goals for the next 15 years. No question, the gathering in New York will be a regular jamboree. There will be mutual backslapping about the progress that has been made over the past 15 years, a good deal of it justified. Countries will solemnly pledge to meet the 17 sustainable development goals, with 169 specific targets, by 2030. They will turn a blind eye to what is happening in Serbia, Hungary, Croatia and Austria. The truth, though, is that there is a link between the UN shindig and the most severe refugee crisis in generations: inequality.

It is the obvious disparity between life in a rich country and life in a poor country that makes the long and dangerous journey to the west attractive. It is the gap between rich and poor within developed countries that has helped foster a deep suspicion, not just of unlimited migration, but of free movement of capital and goods as well. And without addressing inequality head on, ensuring that growth benefits the poor by as much as it benefits the rich, there is not the remotest chance that the ambitious goals being embraced in New York this week will be met. Here’s the picture. The SDGs replace the millennium development goals that set the framework for poverty reduction between 2000 and 2015, but are much tougher.

The MDGs sought to make progress in areas such as poverty reduction or infant mortality: the SDGs will commit the international community to more ambitious goals, which include ending poverty and hunger, and ensuring healthy lives and access to quality education for all. There are reasons to be optimistic. Much progress has been made in the past two decades, in large part due to the rapid growth in China. One billion people have been lifted out of poverty and the MDG objective of halving the number living below the global agreed minimum was achieved five years early. This will be seen by world leaders as evidence that even more can be done in the next 15 years.

But achieving the new SDGs would be a gargantuan task in the best of times. And these are not the best of times. China is growing more slowly, with concerns that doctored official figures mask a hard landing. Emerging markets in the rest of the world are being hurt both by weaker Chinese demand for their commodities and by the continued sluggishness of the big western economies. The Great Recession of 2008-09 continues to cast a long shadow.

Back to the future. “Mr. Xi is backfilling his vision and seeking a fresh source of legitimacy by reinventing the party as inheritor and savior of a 5,000-year-old civilization.”

• Why China Is Turning Back to Confucius (WSJ)

One Thursday morning in June, 200 senior officials crammed into an auditorium in the Communist Party’s top training academy to study a revolutionary idea at the heart of President Xi Jinping’s vision for China. They didn’t come to brush up on Marx, Lenin or Mao, staple fodder at the Central Party School since the 1950s. Nor were they honing their grasp of the state-guided capitalism that defined the nation for the last 35 years. They came to hear Wang Jie, a professor of ancient Chinese philosophy and a figure in the country’s next ideological wave: a renaissance of the traditional culture the Communist Party once sought to destroy.

For two hours, Prof. Wang says, he reeled off quotes from Confucius and other Chinese sages—whom the party long denounced as feudal relics—and urged his audience to incorporate traditional concepts of filial piety and moral rectitude into their personal and professional lives. “I’m getting hoarse,” Prof. Wang says over a cup of green tea after class. The previous day, he had lectured at the culture ministry and, the day before, at the commerce ministry. Monday would be the insurance regulator. “Xi Jinping’s words,” he says, “have lit a fuse.” Two years after outlining a “China Dream” to re-establish his nation as a great world power, Mr. Xi is backfilling his vision and seeking a fresh source of legitimacy by reinventing the party as inheritor and savior of a 5,000-year-old civilization.

The shift forms the backdrop for Mr. Xi’s visit to the U.S. this week and could shape China for years. Mr. Xi appears to be seeking to inoculate Chinese people against the spread of Western political ideals of individual freedom and democracy, part of what some political insiders say he views as a long-term contest of values and ideology with the U.S. The effort is gaining urgency now, as an economic slowdown and stock-market rout fray the social compact of the last three decades in which citizens traded political freedom for rapid wealth creation. With Communist dogma and Chinese-style capitalism losing appeal, the party needs fresh ideas. “It’s like the prodigal son returning,” says Guo Yingjie, a University of Sydney Chinese-studies professor who wrote a book on Chinese cultural nationalism. “China has had more than a century of anti-traditionalism. Now they’re heading in the opposite direction.”

Well, obviously: “You f***ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?”

• Was Standard Chartered Flouting US Iranian Sanctions? (FT)

The expletive-laden exclamation attributed to a senior Standard Chartered executive in 2006 may well come back to haunt the British bank. “You f***ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians?” For US authorities, who included the quote in a legal filing, the statement came to define StanChart’s “obvious contempt” for American banking regulations, including sanctions designed to cut Iran off from access to the US dollar. Nine years on, after paying nearly $1bn in fines to US regulators and law enforcement agencies for sanction breaches and compliance failures, StanChart seems no closer to ending its legal problems. An FT investigation has identified transactions involving Iran that could put the bank at risk of severe penalties ranging from further fines to suspension or loss of its crucial dollar clearing licence.

Documents seen by the FT suggest that StanChart continued to seek new business from Iranian and Iran-connected companies after it had committed in 2007 to stop working with such clients. These activities include foreign exchange transactions that, people familiar with StanChart operations say, would have involved the US dollar. The documents suggest the bank — a few months after a costly settlement with US authorities in 2012 — was still internally reviewing its client list and was unable to determine in certain cases whether customers were Iranian or not. For Bill Winters, the American former JPMorgan investment banker who took over as StanChart’s chief executive in June, the stakes could hardly be higher. The London-listed lender, that specialises in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, is already grappling with slowing growth in emerging markets and a slide in commodity prices.

While it has relatively small operations in the US, the loss of its dollar clearing licence would deal a crippling blow to StanChart’s ability to finance the trade, energy and cross-border activities that have become its main focus. Suspending the dollar clearing rights for banks accused of breaching sanctions is a rare punishment. But US regulators have cracked down hard on institutions for breaching sanctions on Iran, amid concerns about money flowing to the country’s nuclear programme or to militant Islamist organisations such as Hizbollah in Lebanon or the Palestinian group, Hamas. The US has mostly relied on levying heavy fines against non-US banks for using dollars to do business with Iran — frequently causing controversy in those banks’ home countries. BNP Paribas last year paid $8.9bn in fines and had some dollar clearing rights suspended temporarily for such breaches, prompting angry accusations from French politicians of US over-reach.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

• Nine On Lagarde List Being Probed For Money Laundering (Kath.)

Greek judicial authorities are investigating the possibility that up to nine people on the Lagarde list of Greeks with deposits at the Geneva branch of HSBC were involved in a large money-laundering network, Kathimerini understands. Prosecutors from Greece recently questioned Herve Falciani, the former HSBC employee who extracted the data on the list, and he is believed to have given them information that points to the existence of a major money-laundering operation. Prior to speaking to Falciani, Greek authorities had identified three suspects. Kathimerini understands that Greek prosecutors, led by the head of the first instance prosecutor’s office, Ilias Zagoraios, have been in contact with counterparts in France, Spain and Italy regarding the matter. They are expected to make a second trip to Paris to interview Falciani in the coming weeks.

More trouble on the way.

• The Massacre Of The Kurds And The Silence Of Europe (M5S Lower House)

“In the last few days, Turkish Military units have entered northern Iraq in an operation against the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The Ankara government has defined it as land-based incursion and a “short-term” measure to finally “eliminate” the “rebels”. We are given to believe that Erdogan took the decision to intervene following the PKK attack in Igdir last Tuesday which killed 13 local police officers. But the truth is that for some months now, the Turkish army has being besieging the only entity that has demonstrated it is really able to stop the advance of ISIS. And Europe stays silent, enclosed in a shell of hypocrisy and opportunism. The “popular resistance” cells have collapsed.

They were formed last March when different member states (including Italy) gave the green light to sending in arms to the Peshmerga. Even the government stays silent. There’s not a word from Minister Gentiloni even while the Turkish air force is continuing an indiscriminate attack on rebels and civilians. This is not simply shameful. It’s showing the double standards used by the West where people are ready to tear their hair out when looking at the dead body of little Aylan, but where they are careful to stay silent when their own interests, or the interests of their allies are at stake. In fact, Turkey is the only member that NATO has in the Middle East.

It is in a strategic position (to the East it has borders with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Iran, to the South East it borders Iraq and to the South, Syria). The USA cannot do without it and the EU feels it has a duty to protect it. It doesn’t matter whether the game play involves the sacrifice of the fundamental rights of a people who for decades have been legitimately claiming their independence and autonomy. This is why the EU remains silent even in relation to Erdogan’s intentions to change the constitution to give himself more powers and even thinking of the city of Cizre that is now on its last legs – after suffering a blackout for more than a week, without new supplies of food and water. And meanwhile ISIS is moving forward, conquering, and threatening our country, but above all threatening the survival of democracy.

Reads the Automatic Earth?

• Safe Assets In A World Gone Mad (Chatham)

Gold and silver are good assets to hold to insure the preservation of EXCESS wealth but there are other assets that are even more valuable longterm. Those things that can be used to produce a product are the elements that can be used to leverage your time, resources and talents to produce wealth. The ability to produce excess is the basis of the need for wealth preservation. Physical goods in the form of equipment that can be used to create or produce goods needed by society are the basis of prosperity and wealth in the world. Gold and silver only become necessary when society begins to produce more products than the producer can use. This excess production is then traded for those things that can preserve the value of this excess production until it is needed by individuals.

Machines to build or repair such as saws and hammers, sewing machines, metal fabricating machines such as lathes and mills and machines to convert raw materials to value added products such as steel to I beams or pots and pans, wheat to flour or pasta, lumber to finished furniture and cotton to cloth are the assets that define how prosperous you are as a nation. A nation derives its wealth from having a product to sell. That will never change. It is true for nations as well as for individuals.

Individuals need to have the ability to produce something in excess of their needs to advance to the need to store that excess. This requires tools and equipment in most cases. You do not necessarily need to process your own resources to generate this excess. A miller can provide the equipment to grind grain for the community taking part of the production for his time and effort. This gives rise to the service economy where individual specialization is traded for other services and resources rendered. In most cases this service will require specialized equipment not possessed by the general population. This specialized equipment is an asset more valuable than gold and silver in many cases.

Only 4% of Swiss know.

• People Have No Idea How Money Is Created (PM.org)

Interesting news from our sister organisation MoMo in Switzerland: The survey results from a master’s thesis from the Institute of Finance and Banking at Zurich University confirm that Swiss people have no idea about how Swiss Francs are created. Here are the results and the main reactions from the press: A survey has been carried out as part of a master’s thesis at the University of Zurich about the level of knowledge in the general population about the financial system. The results are astonishing:
• Only 13% know that private commercial banks provide the majority of the money in circulation.
• However, 78% of the Swiss population would like money to be produced and distributed solely by a public organisation working for the common good, such as the National Bank.
• Only 4% preferred the system we actually have today – that money is mostly created by private, for-profit companies such as commercial banks.

The survey results reinforce the Vollgeld Initiative, which currently has more than 90,000 signatures of the 100,000 required to force a binding national referendum in Switzerland. The study shows clearly that the Swiss people do not know who actually creates the Swiss Franc: Only 13% of the population are aware that, in the current system, private banks produce the majority of the money through the extension of loans. 73% mistakenly believe money is created by the state or by the Swiss National Bank.

Debt Rattle August 21 2015

Aug 212015

August 21, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:58 am Finance Tagged with: China, Draghi, Macedonia, panic mode, refugees, stocks, super predator, Syriza, tear gas, Tsipras 8 Responses »

Lewis Wickes Hine Newsies in St. Louis, N. Broadway and De Soto 1910

• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras Steps Down To Trigger New Elections (Guardian)

• Syriza Rebels Break Away To Form New Party ‘Leiki Anotita’ -Popular Unity- (BBC)

• The Colony Of Italy (M5S Lower House)

• Asia Stocks Tumble as China PMI Hits Six-Year Low; Shanghai -4.27% (Bloomberg)

• Global Stocks In ‘Panic Mode’ As China Factory Slump Drags On Markets (Guardian)

• Commodity Rout Erases $2 Trillion From Stock Values (Bloomberg)

• Stock Market Correction: Is This A New Global Financial Crisis? (Guardian)

• The Asian Century Hits a Speed Bump (Bloomberg)

• China Wants Great Power, Not Great Responsibility (Pesek)

• Can Kickers United – Why It’s Getting Downright Hazardous Out There (Stockman)

• The Baby Boom Will Never Retire (MyBudget360)

• Draghi’s Post-Holiday Inbox Stuffed With Trouble (Bloomberg)

• How Long Can Saudi Arabia Hold Out Against Cheap Oil? (Bloomberg)

• UK New Home Builds Fall 14% In Three Months Despite Election Pledge (PA)

• Brazil’s Unemployment Rate Hits Five-Year High in July (WSJ)

• World Breaks New Heat Records In July (AFP)

• The Unique Ecology Of Human Predators (Phys Org)

• Macedonia Police Use Tear Gas Against Migrants (BBC)

Democracy in progress.

• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras Steps Down To Trigger New Elections (Guardian)

Seven months after he was elected on a promise to overturn austerity, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has announced that he is stepping down to pave the way for snap elections next month. As the debt-crippled country received the first tranche of a punishing new €86bn bailout, Tsipras said on Thursday he felt “a moral obligation to place this deal in front of the people, to allow them to judge … both what I have achieved, and my mistakes”. The 41-year-old Greek leader is still popular with voters for having at least tried to stand up to the country’s creditors, and his leftwing Syriza party is likely to be returned to power in the imminent general election, which government officials told Greek media was most likely to take place on 20 September.

The prime minister insisted in an address on public television that he was proud of his time in office and had got “a good deal for the country”, despite bringing it “close to the edge”. He added that he was “shortly going to submit my resignation, and the resignation of my government, to the president”. The prime minister will be replaced for the duration of the short campaign by the president of Greece’s supreme court, Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou – a vocal bailout opponent – as head of a caretaker government. Tsipras won parliamentary backing for the tough bailout programme last week by a comfortable margin, but suffered a major rebellion among members of his ruling Syriza party, nearly one-third of whose 149 MPs either voted against the deal or abstained.

The revolt by hardliners, angry at what they view as a betrayal of the party’s anti-austerity pledges, left Tsipras short of the 120 votes he would need – two-fifths of the 300-seat assembly – to survive a censure motion, leading to speculation that he would call an early confidence vote. He has now decided to skip that step, opting instead to go straight to the country in an attempt to silence the rebels and shore up public support for the three-year bailout programme, which entails a radical overhaul of the Greek economy and major reforms of health, welfare, pensions and taxation.

Government sources had long suggested that an announcement on early elections was on the cards as soon as Athens had got the first instalment of the new package – Greece’s third in five years – and completed a critical €3.4bn debt repayment to the European Central Bank, due on Thursday. Some analysts had speculated that the prime minister might wait until early October, by which time Greece’s creditors would have carried out their first review of the country’s reform progress and perhaps come to a decision about debt relief – a potential vote-winner for the prime minister.

Is Tsipras wise enough to use this to his full advantage?

• Syriza Rebels Break Away To Form New Party ‘Leiki Anotita’ -Popular Unity- (BBC)

Rebels from Greece’s main party, left-wing Syriza, are to break away and form a new party, Greek media reports say. Prime minister and Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras stood down on Thursday, paving the way for new elections. The move came after he lost the support of many of his own MPs in a vote on the country’s new bailout with European creditors earlier this month. Greek media reports say 25 rebel Syriza MPs will join the new party, called Leiki Anotita (Popular Unity). The party will be led by former energy minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, who was strongly opposed to the bailout deal, reports say. A list of MPs joining the party published by the Ta Nea newspaper showed that the parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopulou and former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis were not among its members. Both had opposed a new bailout deal, with Ms Konstantopulou highly critical of her former ally Mr Tsipras.

From Beppe Grillo’s parliamentarians. Dead on. “The 5 Star MoVement wants to show Europe what it means to have people in government who are free to make decisions.”

• The Colony Of Italy (M5S Lower House)

“From Crete to Santorini, from Mykonos to Thessaloniki – it’s official: 14 of the Greek airports making the most money, will be handed over to Germany until 2055. Before now, things were conquered with wars. Now it’s done with the Euro. In Italy, companies called Lamborghini, Ducati, Italcementi and other giants have been in German hands for more than a year. Parmalat, Galbani, Eridania, Bulgari, Gucci, Buitoni, Sanpellegrino, Perugina, and Motta have landed up in French hands. Between 2008 and 2013, 437 of the most famous Italian brands have ended up in foreign hands. They’ve converted us into an outlet, where they come “shopping” from all over the world and the government doesn’t even notice. Recently, English and South Africans have bought Peroni beer and Gancia sparkling wine.

And that’s not considering Ansaldo that’s gone to the Japanese, Terna and Pirelli to the Chinese, and the Valentino brand to the Arabs. And how much longer before the Colosseum gets purchased? Greece was first strangled by the conditions to get their budget balanced for the Euro, those same constraints that Germany and France allowed themselves not to respect on so many occasions. Now that the country is totally dependent on the transfer of funds from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they are being obliged to give up the family jewels in exchange for a bit of small change. In these new wars of conquest, Germany and France are acting like their masters.

In Greece, they are buying up the services that make the most money: last year Greece had a record number of 23 million tourists and it’s obvious that the airports are a gold-mine. This is why they want them. And in exchange the banks can open their doors. In Italy, on the other hand, they have bought up the “Made in Italy” companies, with a quasi-military strategy. First, the governments led by the PD, Forza Italia and Lega, strangled them by increasing taxes, because “it’s what Europe asked us to do”. Then, that same “Europe” (in actual fact the Franco-German alliance) bought them up from owners who found their backs to the wall. A bit like what happens in war-time when cities are razed to the ground and then the reconstruction business starts.

Europe needs to experience once more the joy of having sovereign states, states that don’t accept being bought out while saying “thank you”. If you want to give us the possibility of governing, our idea of Italy is clear: we want to bring back home many of the excellent companies that are Made in Italy. We could do this by using the Italian Strategic Fund of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti that will be able to buy them. By buying back these “family jewels” we are creating an opportunity to relaunch top quality employment in Italy. Profits from “Made in Italy” will stay in Italy and will make Italy rich. We must also have discussions about thie “Euro” that cannot be a weapon used to colonise other States. The 5 Star MoVement wants to show Europe what it means to have people in government who are free to make decisions.”

Getting serious.

• Asia Stocks Tumble as China PMI Hits Six-Year Low; Shanghai -4.27% (Bloomberg)

Asian stocks tumbled with U.S. index futures, oil and emerging currencies as a gauge of Chinese manufacturing plunged to the lowest since 2009, underscoring the weakness in global demand. Gold and the yen extended gains. Benchmark gauges in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia headed for bear markets, dragging down the MSCI Asia Pacific Index by 2.4% at 2:34 p.m. in Tokyo. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures dropped 0.5% after the gauge fell the most in 18 months. Gold is set for its biggest weekly advance since January as the selloff in emerging markets spreads. U.S. oil headed for an eighth straight weekly slide, its longest streak since 1986. “We’ve been expecting a correction and it looks like we’re getting one,” said Mark Lister at Craigs Investment Partners.

“The S&P had held up, now it’s back in negative territory. The whole world’s looking a little bit sad. China still looks really worrying on a number of fronts.” China’s decision to devalue its currency amid slowing growth and the prospect of higher U.S. interest rates has spurred a wave of selling across emerging markets and commodities. The first read on Chinese economic activity in August added to concern that the slowdown in global growth is deepening, boosting the appeal of haven assets such as gold, the yen and sovereign bonds. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is heading for its biggest weekly loss since 2011. Japan’s Topix index slid the most since July 8 on Friday and the Kospi gauge in Seoul set for its worst week since May 2012. The MSCI All-Country World Index has lost 3.1% this week.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped 2.3%, taking declines since an April high beyond 20%. Taiwan’s benchmark gauge dropped 2.7% to finish in a bear market and the Jakarta Composite Index slid 2.1%. The Shanghai Composite Index slumped 3%, taking the week’s loss beyond 10%. The gauge briefly erased all its gains since the government began efforts to prop up the market in July. About $2.2 trillion was wiped from the value of global stocks in the first four days of the week. The S&P 500 slipped out of the 70-point trading range it has been stuck in since March, falling below 2,040 to as low as 2,035.73 on Thursday. It closed below its 200-day moving average for the first time since July 9.

The Federal Reserve will decide whether to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006 on Sept. 18. Bets on liftoff taking place next month have been wound back since the last meeting as oil slumped, China cut the value of its currency and the Fed’s own minutes showed concern among policymakers about the pace of inflation. The decision is “only four weeks away and the world’s looking pretty vulnerable,” said Stephen Halmarick at Colonial First State Investment. “If they delay you might see some support coming through to U.S. markets because then the dollar probably comes down a bit from where it is now and some of those pressure points may be relieved, at least in the short term.”

Everyone’s sinking now.

• Global Stocks In ‘Panic Mode’ As China Factory Slump Drags On Markets (Guardian)

Stock markets across Asia-Pacific went into “panic mode” on Friday after more signs of a weakening Chinese economy compounded overnight losses on Wall Street and European bourses. China’s factory sector shrank at its fastest pace in more than six years in August as domestic and export demand dwindled, a private survey showed, adding to worries that the world’s second-largest economy may be slowing sharply and sending financial markets into a tailspin. China’s surprise devaluation of the yuan and heavy selling in its stock markets in recent weeks have sparked fears that it could be at risk of a hard landing which would hammer world growth. Markets in countries whose economic fortunes are closely linked to China’s growth tumbled.

Japan’s Nikkei average dropped more than 2% to six-week lows on Friday while the Kopsi index in South Korea fell 2.25%. Shares in Australia are having their worst month since the global financial crisis hit in October 2008. On Friday afternoon the benchmark ASX200 was down 2.2% at 5,173 points and is down 8.8% so far in August, according to broker Commsec. The Australian dollar was also hammered, falling 0.5% to as low as US72.85c. The Aussie, which is seen as a proxy for the Chinese economy, has fallen about 1% in the past week. The Hang Seng stock index in Hong Kong was down 2.32% while the Shanghai Composite index was 3% lower.

Commodities also suffered. US crude hit fresh six and a half year lows near $40 a barrel as it headed for its eighth straight weekly decline, the longest weekly losing streak since 1986. Brent crude for October delivery was down 29c at $46.33. “Global markets are in panic mode as the full scale of China’s slowdown becomes clearer,” said Angus Nicholson at IG Markets in Sydney. The long-awaited interest rate rise by the US federal reserve, pencilled in for as early as September by many analysts, was now looking much less likely, Nicholson added. “The potential for further devaluations in the Chinese yuan not only make a US rate hike in September unlikely, but increasingly even put a December rate hike at risk.”

Deflation in action.

• Commodity Rout Erases $2 Trillion From Stock Values (Bloomberg)

The value that commodity producers have lost in the past year almost equals India’s entire economy. Slumping prices for raw materials have wiped out $2.05 trillion from the shares of mining and oil companies since the middle of last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That compares with India’s $2.07 trillion gross domestic product. Prices plunged after years of overinvestment led to a supply glut at the same time that economic growth is slowing in China, the biggest consumer of commodities. The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 raw materials dropped Wednesday to its lowest since 2002, paced this year by declines in nickel, sugar, and crude oil.

Oil companies have reduced spending by $180 billion this year while maintaining dividends, according to Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based energy consultant. As a prolonged decline lowers revenue, it may be harder for the industry to avoid slashing payments. “The energy is the worst, the materials, industrials have been a disaster,” says Donald Selkin at National Securities Corp. in New York. “The problem is their ability to pay dividends. That’s the question, as far as the valuation is concerned.” Another blow has come from a stronger dollar. Currencies of commodity producers in such countries as Canada and Russia are slumping, lowering production costs. That’s helped boost Russian oil supply to a post-Soviet high this year, adding to the global glut.

Is this a question?

• Stock Market Correction: Is This A New Global Financial Crisis? (Guardian)

The jitters in the City have nothing to do with the state of the UK economy and nothing to do with the speculation that Greece might eventually be forced out of the single currency. They have everything to do with concerns that the next global financial crisis has begun in emerging markets. As ever, the riposte to this suggestion is “it’s different this time”, with good reason considered the four most dangerous words in financial markets. Panglossian investors can always think up a hundred reasons why it’s different this time, up to the moment when reality smacks them in the face.

The optimists argue that China is adroitly easing its way to slower but more sustainable growth, that the fall in commodity prices has been caused by over-supply rather than a shortage of demand, and that the rest of the world has had plenty of opportunity to prepare itself for an increase in interest rates from the Federal Reserve later this year. The pessimists would say that China’s hard landing is being disguised by dodgy official figures, that oil and metals prices are falling because demand is faltering and that the $1tn of capital that has flowed out of emerging markets in the past year is evidence of a sharp drop in investor confidence.

As Russell Jones and Bimal Dharmasena of Llewellyn Consulting note: “The export-led model has run its course. In many ways, it sowed the seeds of its own destruction, the emphasis on exchange rate competitiveness and foreign exchange reserve accumulation morphing into undue monetary laxity, excessive credit growth, asset price inflation, income inequalities, and malign financial imbalances similar to those built up in the advanced economies pre-2007.” Many emerging market countries assumed that high commodity prices would last for ever. They spent up to their income, and then some. They now have a twin deficit problem: they are running budget and current account deficits. Capital flowed into emerging markets when zero interest rates in the west set off a search for higher yield in markets that were seen as a bit riskier but still safe. Now those markets are seen as not nearly so safe as they were and a lot riskier than the west.

“Beijing will have to choose between propping up the equity market and defending the currency from further downside pressure: “They will not be able to do both.”

• The Asian Century Hits a Speed Bump (Bloomberg)

Trade slowing, currencies weakening, stocks falling, economic growth waning and political wobbles emerging. 2015 is proving a bumpy year in what’s meant to be the Asian century. The confluence of stresses – from China’s slowdown, the fallout from the yuan’s devaluation, doubts over Abenomics, disappointment with Modi and Jokowi, and deepening vulnerabilities among smaller economies – comes as the Federal Reserve contemplates raising interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. Weakening currencies can help boost export competitiveness, but also raise the cost of servicing U.S. dollar debt. And when devaluations start spreading, there are fears of a new currency war.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch economists say they’re concerned about the competitive impact on the rest of Asia from a weaker yuan, as China’s market share of exports to the U.S. and the EU was growing even before the devaluation. Demand for Asian-made goods was already stumbling amid uneven recoveries in the U.S. and Europe before the yuan devaluation. Now, “northeast Asia will likely face greater competitive pressures from China’s devaluation given stronger trade linkages and overlapping exports,” BofA economists say. Asian stocks have reflected the worsening outlook. China has seen the wildest ride, with a first-half surge reversing course since June. While China’s FX hoard is the envy of the world, even it isn’t bottomless. Analysts at BMI Research say Beijing will have to choose between propping up the equity market and defending the currency from further downside pressure: “They will not be able to do both.”

Re: Nicole’s eroding Trust Horizon: “China is facing an “erosion in trust in government (stock bubble, Tianjin blast, etc.)” both at home and abroad.”

By the way, Brussels wants the same as Beijing: no responsibility.

• China Wants Great Power, Not Great Responsibility (Pesek)

Forty-three years after Richard Nixon made his famous visit to China, that country has seemingly decided to take a page from the former U.S. president’s Treasury Department. As China lowers the value of the yuan, the country’s economic policy makers are mimicking the blasé attitude of Nixon-era Treasury chief John Connally, who dismissed international complaints about U.S. monetary policy with a curt remark: “It’s our currency, but it’s your problem.” To be fair, Japan has acted with similar self-interest since late 2012, when its 35% devaluation began. But that raises a prickly question: What options do Asia’s smaller economies have when the region’s two biggest seem intent on passing their own vulnerabilities onto everyone else?

China will be watching closely for the region’s response, for economic as well as political reasons. Beijing’s designs for regional leadership have always depended on winning the loyalty of its neighbors in order to reduce America’s financial, diplomatic and military role in Asia. Vietnam has already initiated a devaluation of its own, lowering the value of the dong by 1% on Wednesday in order to keep pace with China. Less clear are the potential responses of South Korea, Indonesia or the Philippines. China claims it’s just doing what the IMF asked in moving to a more market-determined exchange rate. But markets have taken so badly to China’s 3% devaluation because no one really believes President Xi Jinping’s government when it says bigger drops aren’t coming.

Take yesterday’s Bloomberg News report that China’s wealthiest investors have been the quickest to bail out of plunging stocks. China would surely deny Communist Party cronies are getting tipoffs on when it’s best to sell, but investors would be forgiven if they felt skeptical. The government’s obsessive efforts to censor deadly explosions at a toxic-material warehouse in Tianjin have only fed suspicions that Xi’s team is obfuscating on economic matters, too. As Patrick Chovanec of Silvercrest Asset Management told me in a Twitter exchange, China is facing an “erosion in trust in government (stock bubble, Tianjin blast, etc.)” both at home and abroad.

Another strong outing by Stockman

• Can Kickers United – Why It’s Getting Downright Hazardous Out There (Stockman)

It’s getting downright hazardous out there, and not just because the robo-machines were slamming the “sell” key today. The real danger comes from the loose assemblage of official institutions which claim to be running the world. They might better be referred to as “can kickers united.” It is now blindingly obvious that they have lapsed into empty ritualism, contrivance and double-talk in the face of a global economy and financial system that is becoming more unstable and incendiary by the day. Who in their right mind would pile $95 billion of new debt on the busted remnants of Greece? Likewise, how can Japan possibly consider enacting still another round of fiscal stimulus, as did Prime Minister Abe’s chief advisor recently, when it already has one quadrillion yen of debt?

And what geniuses are trying to fix the bankrupt finances of China’s local governments by swapping trillions of crushing bank loans for equivalent mountains of new municipal bonds? But it is on the home front where kicking the can has been taken to an egregious extreme. By what rational calculus can it be said, as the Fed did in its meeting minutes today, that 80 months of free money has not quite yet done the job? And that is exactly what these mountebanks had to say:

“The Committee concluded that, although it had seen further progress, the economic conditions warranting an increase in the target range for the federal funds rate had not yet been met. Members generally agreed that additional information on the outlook would be necessary before deciding to implement an increase in the target range.”

Say again! We are now 74 months into a so-called “recovery” cycle that is well longer than the post-war average, yet the Fed is still manning the emergency fire hoses.

Full liquidation.

• The Baby Boom Will Never Retire (MyBudget360)

Some of you might remember the glossy highly produced advertisements back in the early 1980s when Wall Street decided it was time to turn American retirement plans into casinos. The slow and agonizing death of the pension plan was supposed to be replaced by the beautiful and wonderful world of the 401(k) plan. Save for 30 years and in the end, you will be a millionaire just like your friends on Wall Street that sincerely care about your financial future. Of course since then, we have found out about junk bond scandals, mutual fund fees that make loan sharks look conservative, and of course the financial shenanigans of giving people toxic mortgages that were essentially ticking time bombs of destruction. This was the industry that was put in charge of helping you plan for your future. We are now a generation out from those slick ads and the results have been disastrous for most Americans.

A recent analysis found that half of US households 55 and older have no money stashed away for retirement. Planning for retirement takes time. Saving money is a slow process. There was a time when simply stashing money into CDs and savings bonds was enough to have a nice nest egg if you were diligent enough. Yet for the last decade, most banks are paying close to 0% on their savings accounts thanks to the Fed’s low rate policy to juice the markets. Since the true inflation rate is much higher, you are essentially letting your money rot away. So the only other option is for people to invest in the stock market or try to leverage into real estate. The stock market is largely an arena for the wealthy. Half of Americans own no stocks at all. Now after a generation, we are finding out that most people did not follow in the footsteps of those glossy over produced retirement ads.

Much of it is of his own making.

• Draghi’s Post-Holiday Inbox Stuffed With Trouble (Bloomberg)

The euro area’s monetary-policy makers aren’t getting to slumber through the dog days of August. Even with talks over Greece’s third bailout wrapped up, European Central Bank officials are having their repose disturbed by developments that could jolt their plan to revive the region’s economy. In coming weeks, they’ll have to deal with a world in which China has devalued its currency, oil has slumped to almost $40 a barrel, and investors in emerging markets are walking wounded. The ECB’s Governing Council meets in Frankfurt on Sept. 3, sandwiched between the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual policy pow-wow in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a gathering of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in Ankara.

As the Fed considers raising its interest rates as soon as next month, ECB President Mario Draghi and his colleagues could find themselves discussing policy action of a very different kind. “The pressure for the ECB to bring forward the discussion about an extension or expansion of its quantitative-easing program beyond summer 2016 has increased significantly,” said Ruben Segura-Cayuela at BofAML. “Deflationary pressures coming from China, emerging markets and the decline of commodities’ prices are making it harder for the ECB to hit its inflation target.” In assessing whether they’ll reach that goal – inflation of just under 2%, compared with 0.2% in July – the ECB is watchful of how investors hedge against prices in the future. Since the end of July, the outlook has worsened.

So-called five-year, five-year forward inflation swaps show that market-based consumer-price expectations slid to about 1.6% this month, almost as low as when QE started in March. The drop in the price of oil, down by a third since June, and cheaper imports into Europe as Asian currencies follow the yuan lower, may compound the problem. Adding to the uncertainty, the Greek government plans to hold an election on Sept. 20, just before the first review of its new bailout program. Stubbornly low inflation in the euro area – as in the U.S. and the U.K. – increases the risk that broad-based price decreases, or deflation, could creep in. It also drags on economic growth, which slowed to a sluggish 0.3% in the 19-nation bloc last quarter. This month’s inflation figures will be published on Aug. 31.

When will internal trouble start?

• How Long Can Saudi Arabia Hold Out Against Cheap Oil? (Bloomberg)

The oil price was near its lowest in more than a decade, cash reserves were being depleted, emerging markets were in turmoil and Saudi Arabia was beginning to panic. “It was a very scary moment,” said Khalid Alsweilem, former head of investment at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the country’s central bank. “And luckily at that point, oil prices started going up. Not by design, by good luck.” That was 1998, and now Saudi Arabia’s fortunes threaten to turn again. This time, luck might not be enough as the government tries to protect the wealth of a nation whose economy has swelled by five times since then. The bastion of conservative Sunni Islam also is paying for an expanding role in regional conflicts in the face of a resurgent Iran and Islamic State extremists who have bombed Saudi mosques.

Economists are predicting a budget deficit of as much as 20% of GDP and the IMF forecasts a first Saudi current-account deficit in more than a decade. Reserves at the central bank tumbled 10% from a year ago, or by more than $70 billion. As a result, bets on the devaluation of the riyal are surging. The Tadawul All Share Index lost 18% in the past three months and dragged stocks down across the Gulf region. The benchmark’s moving averages made a so-called death cross on Aug. 18, a sign to some investors that more losses are ahead. The Saudis have “played a waiting game,” Robert Burgess at Deutsche Bank said. “The budget for next year is going to be a very important milestone that the markets are going to be focusing on quite intently.”

With oil prices down by more than half over the past 12 months to below $50, Saudi Arabia faces many of the same financial problems it did in 1998. The difference is the sheer cost of maintaining the state as an employment machine and guarantor of the riches that Saudis have become accustomed to since the last squeeze. Subsidized gasoline costs 16 cents per liter and while there’s the religious levy called zakat, there is no personal income tax in the nation of 30 million people. “The Saudi government can’t continue to be the employer of first resort, it can’t continue to drive economic growth through the big infrastructure projects and it can’t keep lavishing on subsidies and social spending,” said Farouk Soussa at Citigroup.

Can’t keep the Ponzi going without new ‘candidates’.

• UK New Home Builds Fall 14% In Three Months Despite Election Pledge (PA)

The number of new homes being started in England fell at its steepest rate for three years in the last quarter, official figures show. The 14% drop in housing starts to 33,280 in the period from April to June is the biggest decline since the first three months of 2012, according to seasonally adjusted government data. Starts are 6% lower year on year. It means the pace of new housebuilding is 32% below the peak level in 2007, but remains nearly double the trough it reached during the financial crisis in 2009. The fall comes after a 29% rise in the first quarter of this year, the biggest increase on records going back to 2006. For the year to June 2015, there was a total of 136,320 starts, down 1% on the year before, according to the figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Housing completions for the quarter were 4% up on the previous period at 35,640, and 22% up year on year. But they remain 26% below their 2007 peak. In the year to June, completions totalled 131,060, a 15% increase on the previous 12-month period. The housing charity Shelter said this was only half the 250,000 needed to deal with the country’s housing shortage. Its chief executive, Campbell Robb, said: “Once again, these figures show that we’re not building anywhere near the number of homes needed each year, leaving millions of ordinary, hardworking people priced out. “And worryingly, despite claims by the government that progress is being made to solve our chronic housing shortage, the number of new homes started has actually decreased.”

This will get much, much worse.

• Brazil’s Unemployment Rate Hits Five-Year High in July (WSJ)

Brazil’s unemployment rate surged to a five-year high last month and came in far above forecasts as the country’s troubled economy likely took a turn for the worse. The jobless rate in six major metropolitan areas jumped to 7.5% in July from 6.9% in June, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, or IBGE, said Thursday. Economists polled by the local Agência Estado newswire had forecast a median unemployment rate of 7%. The swift deterioration in Brazil’s job market comes as the nation’s economy is expected to suffer its deepest recession in more than two decades this year, with economists calling for a contraction of more than 2%. Most now expect the decline to continue, albeit at a more moderate pace, through 2016.

Rising unemployment could ramp up the pressure on Brazil’s embattled president, Dilma Rousseff, whose approval ratings have plunged to a record-low 8% just 10 months after she was elected to a second term. Ms. Rousseff’s popularity has been weighed down by the bad economy, rising inflation, and a massive corruption scandal surrounding state-run energy firm Petróleo Brasileiro SA, where she served as chairwoman from 2003 to 2010.

Ms. Rousseff’s administration is struggling to push fiscal austerity measures through an unruly Congress in hopes of clamping down on the government’s swelling budget deficit. At stake is Brazil’s investment-grade credit rating which, if lost, would trigger higher borrowing costs and huge outflows of foreign money from foreign investment funds. Antigovernment lawmakers—and thousands of protesters who took to the streets on Sunday—are even calling for Ms. Rousseff’s impeachment, though legal experts say there appears to be little justification for such a move.

Past point of no return.

• World Breaks New Heat Records In July (AFP)

The world broke new heat records in July, marking the hottest month in history and the warmest first seven months of the year since modern record-keeping began in 1880, US authorities said Thursday. The findings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed a troubling trend, as the planet continues to warm due to the burning of fossil fuels, and scientists expect the scorching temperatures to get worse. “The world is warming. It is continuing to warm. That is being shown time and time again in our data,” said Jake Crouch, physical scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “Now that we are fairly certain that 2015 will be the warmest year on record, it is time to start looking at what are the impacts of that? What does that mean for people on the ground?” he told reporters.

The month’s average temperature across land and sea surfaces worldwide was 61.86 Fahrenheit (16.61 Celsius), marking the hottest July ever. The previous record for July was set in 1998. “This was also the all-time highest monthly temperature in the 1880-2015 record,” said NOAA in its monthly climate report. “The first seven months of the year (January-July) were also all-time record warm for the globe,” NOAA said. When scientists looked at temperatures for the year-to-date, they found land and ocean surfaces were 1.53 F (0.85 C) above the 20th century average. “This was the highest for January-July in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.16 F (0.09 C).”

The most deadly and most tragic species.

• The Unique Ecology Of Human Predators (Phys Org)

Want to see what science now calls the world’s “super predator”? Look in the mirror. Research published today in the journal Science by a team led by Dr. Chris Darimont, the Hakai-Raincoast professor of geography at the University of Victoria, reveals new insight behind widespread wildlife extinctions, shrinking fish sizes and disruptions to global food chains. “These are extreme outcomes that non-human predators seldom impose,” Darimont’s team writes in the article titled “The Unique Ecology of Human Predators.” “Our wickedly efficient killing technology, global economic systems and resource management that prioritize short-term benefits to humanity have given rise to the human super predator,” says Darimont, also science director for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

“Our impacts are as extreme as our behaviour and the planet bears the burden of our predatory dominance.” The team’s global analysis indicates that humans typically exploit adult fish populations at 14 times the rate of marine predators. Humans hunt and kill large land carnivores such as bears, wolves and lions at nine times the rate that these predatory animals kill each other in the wild. Humanity also departs fundamentally from predation in nature by targeting adult quarry. “Whereas predators primarily target the juveniles or ‘reproductive interest’ of populations, humans draw down the ‘reproductive capital’ by exploiting adult prey,” says co-author Dr. Tom Reimchen, biology professor at UVic. Reimchen originally formulated these ideas during long-term research on freshwater fish and their predators at a remote lake on Haida Gwaii, an archipelago on the northern coast of British Columbia.

This is going to break Brussels.

• Macedonia Police Use Tear Gas Against Migrants (BBC)

Macedonia is a key route for migrants trying to reach prosperous northern EU countries (archive picture) Macedonian police have fired tear gas to disperse thousands of migrants trying to enter from Greece. It comes a day after Macedonia declared a state of emergency in two border regions to cope with an influx of migrants, many from the Middle East. Large numbers spent the night stuck on Macedonia’s southern frontier, and tried to charge police in the morning. The Balkan nation has become a major transit point for migrants trying to reach northern EU members. Some 44,000 people have reportedly travelled through Macedonia in the past two months, many of whom are escaping the conflict in Syria.

Tsipras Invites Schäuble To Fall Into His Own Sword

Jul 122015

July 12, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:32 pm Finance Tagged with: Draghi, Greece, Schäuble, Troika, Tsipras 14 Responses »

DPC On the beach, Coney Island 1907

Too many voices the past few days are all pointing the same way, and I’ve always thought that is never good. A guessing-based consensus, jumping to conclusions and all that. Look, it’s fine if you don’t have all the answers, no matter how nervous it makes you.

What I’m referring to in this instance is the overwhelming conviction that Greece and Tsipras have conceded, given in to the Troika, flown a white flag, you get the drift. But guys, the battle ain’t over yet.

So here’s an alternative scenario, purely hypothetically (but so in essence is the white flag idea, always got to wait for the fat lady), and for entertainment purposes only. Let ‘er rip:

Tsipras, first through holding a referendum, and then through delivering a proposal that at first sight looked worse than what the Troika provided before the referendum, has managed a number of things.

First, his domestic support base has solidified. That’s what the referendum confirmed once more. Second, he’s given the Troika members, plus the various nations that think they represent them, something that was sure from the moment he sent it to them: a way to divide and rule and conquer the lot.

Tsipras has set the IMF versus the EU versus the ECB. Schäuble snapped at Draghi last night: ”Do you hold me for a fool?” Germany itself is split too, Merkel and Schäuble are at odds. Germany and France don’t see eye to eye anymore. The US doesn’t see eye to eye with any party involved.

Italy is about to tell Germany to stop its shenanigans and get a deal done. The True Finns may get to decide the entire shebang, with less than 1 million rabid voters calling the shots for 320 million eurozone inhabitants.

From that point of view, Tsipras has done a great job at playing the other side of the table off against each other. So much so, it doesn’t even have to have been intentional, and it still works out great. He’s exposed the entire EU structure as a bag of bones, let alone a naked emperor.

Moreover, imagine this also purely hypothetical and for entertainment purposes only notion: maybe Tsipras has known forever that for Greece to stay inside the eurozone was a losing proposition. But he never had the mandate. Well, after Schäuble’s antics last night, that mandate has come a lot closer. And it’s not even just in Greece either.

And he may not even need such a mandate: Schäuble may do the job for him. If Tsipras pokes him just a little more, he’ll throw such a hissyfit that Alexis will be able to get Greece out of the euro without carrying the blame himself. And get money for the effort. Lots of money.

And that’s not all: he’ll sow division in the ranks to such an extent that the whole EU won’t survive. How can Schäuble stay in his post after this? How can Draghi? He’s shown them all, for the whole world to see, to be nothing but hot air bags of bones. Their entire credibility is shot to bits.

What’s coming out now in the western press are little factoids like Draghi was vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International when those infamous swaps were arranged through the bank, that allowed Greece to hide its debt and be eligible for euro membership, and that have already cost the country $5 billion down the road so far.

And that Schäuble accepted 100,000 marks from Canadian/German arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber in 1999, a move that brought down both Helmut Kohl and Schäuble himself, clearing the way for…drumroll… Angela Merkel. Case has never been entirely solved, no charges were laid against Kohl or Schäuble.

If that’s what Tsipras was aiming for, great. But even if he wasn’t, consciously, still great. The Troika is finished and will never be the same. Nor will the EU. Sometimes all you have to do is make someone so mad they’ll blow up, just find the right trigger point.

And it’s not as if I didn’t warn about this. On the eve of the referendum, I said:

With Yanis Gone, Now Troika Heads Must Roll

It’s time for the Troika to seek out some real men too. It cannot be that the winner leaves and all the losers get to stay. The attempts to suppress the IMF debt sustainability analysis were a shameful attempt to mislead the people of Greece, and of Europe as a whole. And don’t forget the US: Lagarde operates out of Washington. It cannot be that after this mockery of democracy, these same people can just remain where they are.

It’s time for Europe to show the same democratic heart that Varoufakis has shown this morning. And if that doesn’t happen, all Europeans should make sure to leave the European Union as quickly as they can. Because that would prove once and for all that the EU is no more than a cheap facade, a thin veil behind which something pretty awful tries to hide its ugly face.

But you know, these people think they’re untouchable. They’re not, and Tsipras has exposed that. Not bad for a weekend’s work.

I hear a lot of talk about regime change, and all the Greek opposition leaders being invited to Brussels. But a party that has a solid and rising approval rating and support base is not easy to topple. I think the regime change will have to take place on the other side of the negotiating table (Tsipras will shuffle some seats, but that’s all he needs to do).

From my purely hypothetical and for entertainment purposes only scenario, Tsipras has set the perfect trap for the other side of the table. He’s driving them apart, setting them off against each other, putting them into incompatible positions, and making the positions of quite a few of them untenable.

This is no longer about saving Greece, it’s about saving the entire European edifice. And that is a losing battle, certainly as long as the assclowns are involved that have run the show up to now.

As hypothetical as this all may be, I think perhaps it’s a good idea to give Alexis Tsipras a bit more of the benefit of the doubt.

With Yanis Gone, Now Troika Heads Must Roll

Jul 062015

July 6, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: Dijsselbloem, Draghi, Juncker, Lagarde, Merkel, Schäuble, Schulz, Troika, Varoufakis 13 Responses »

Dorothea Lange ‘A season’s work in the beans’, Marion County, Oregon 1939

Now that Yanis Varoufakis has resigned, in the kind of unique fashion and timing that shows us who the real men are, it’s time to clear the other side of the table as well. The new finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, should not have to face the same faces that led to Europe’s painful defeat in yesterday’s Greek referendum.

That would be an utter disgrace, and the EU would not survive it. So we now call for Juncker, Lagarde, Schäuble, Dijsselbloem, Draghi, Merkel and Schulz to move over.

It’s time for the Troika to seek out some real men too. It cannot be that the winner leaves and all the losers get to stay.

The attempts to suppress the IMF debt sustainability analysis were a shameful attempt to mislead the people of Greece, and of Europe as a whole. And don’t forget the US: Lagarde operates out of Washington.

It cannot be that after this mockery of democracy, these same people can just remain where they are.

It’s time for Europe to show the same democratic heart that Varoufakis has shown this morning. And if that doesn’t happen, all Europeans should make sure to leave the European Union as quickly as they can.

Because that would prove once and for all that the EU is no more than a cheap facade, a thin veil behind which something pretty awful tries to hide its ugly face.

Here is Yanis’ explanation behind his resignation:

Minister No More! (Yanis Varoufakis)

The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage. Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.

Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today. I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum. And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.

We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office. I shall support fully Prime Minister Tsipras, the new Minister of Finance, and our government. The superhuman effort to honour the brave people of Greece, and the famous OXI (NO) that they granted to democrats the world over, is just beginning.

Here’s to a real man!

Time to get scared, time to change plan
Don’t know how to treat a lady
Don’t know how to be a man
Time to admit, what you call defeat
Cause there’s women running past you now
And you just drag your feet

Man makes a gun, man goes to war
Man can kill and man can drink
And man can take a whore
Kill all the blacks, kill all the reds
And if there’s war between the sexes
Then there’ll be no people left

And so it goes, go round again
But now and then we wonder who the real men are

– Joe Jackson

QE Breeds Instability

Jun 052015

June 5, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:49 pm Finance Tagged with: bonds, Draghi, fake, Minsky, QE, stability, volatility, Yellen, ZIRP, zombie 1 Response »

Dorothea Lange Farm boy at main drugstore, Medford, Oregon 1939

Central bankers have promised ad nauseum to keep rates low for long periods of time. And they have delivered. Their claim is that this helps the economy recover, but that is just a silly idea.

What it does do is help create the illusion of a recovering economy. But that is mostly achieved by making price discovery impossible, not by increasing productivity or wages or innovation or anything like that. What we have is the financial system posing as the economy. And a vast majority of people falling for that sleight of hand.

Now the central bankers come face to face with Hyman Minsky’s credo that ‘Stability Breeds Instability’. Ultra low rates (ZIRP) are not a natural phenomenon, and that must of necessity mean that they distort economies in ways that are inherently unpredictable. For central bankers, investors, politicians, everyone.

That is the essence of what is being consistently denied, all the time. That is why QE policies, certainly in the theater they’re presently being executed in, will always fail. That is why they should never have been considered to begin with. The entire premise is false.

Ultra low rates are today starting to bite central bankers in the ass. The illusion of control is not the same as control. But Mario and Janet and Haruhiko, like their predecessors before them, are way past even contemplating the limits of their powers. They think pulling levers and and turning switches is enough to make economies do what they want.

Nobody talks anymore about how guys like Bernanke stated when the crisis truly hit that they were entering ‘uncharted territory’. That’s intriguing, if only because they’re way deeper into that territory now than they were back then. Presumably, that may have something to do with the perception that there actually is a recovery ongoing.

But the lack of scrutiny should still puzzle. How central bankers managed to pull off the move from admitting they had no idea what they were doing, to being seen as virtually unquestioned maestros, rulers of, if not the world, then surely the economy. Is that all that hard, though, if and when you can push trillions of dollars into an economy?

Isn’t that something your aunt Edna could do just as well? The main difference between your aunt and Janet Yellen may well be that Yellen knows who to hand all that money to: Wall Street. Aunt Edna might have some reservations about that. Other than that, how could we possibly tell them apart, other than from the language they use?

The entire thing is a charade based on perception and propaganda. Politicians, bankers, media, the lot of them have a vested interest in making you think things are improving, and will continue to do so. And they are the only ones who actually get through to you, other than a bunch of websites such as The Automatic Earth.

But for every single person who reads our point of view, there are at least 1000 who read or view or hear Maro Draghi or Janet Yellen’s. That in itself doesn’t make any of the two more true, but it does lend one more credibility.

Draghi this week warned of increasing volatility in the markets. He didn’t mention that he himself created this volatility with his latest QE scheme. Nor did anyone else.

And sure enough, bond markets all over the world started a sequence of violent moves. Many blame this on illiquidity. We would say, instead, that it’s a natural consequence of the infusion of fake zombie liquidity and ZIRP rates.

The longer you fake it, the more the perception will grow that you can’t keep up the illusion, that you’re going to be found out. Ultra low rates may be useful for a short period of time, but if they last for many years (fake stability) they will themselves create the instability Minsky talked about.

And since we’re very much still in uncharted territory even if no-one talks about it, that instability will take on forms that are uncharted too. And leave Draghi and Yellen caught like deer in the headlights with their pants down their ankles.

The best definition perhaps came from Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research in Chicago, who told Bloomberg: “You want to shove rates down to zero, people are going to make big bets because they don’t think it can last; Every move becomes a massive short squeeze or an epic collapse – which is what we seem to be in the middle of right now.”

With long term ultra low rates, investors sense less volatility, which means they want to increase their holdings. As Tyler Durden put it: ‘investors who target a stable Value-at-Risk, which is the size of their positions times volatility, tend to take larger positions as volatility collapses. The same investors are forced to cut their positions when hit by a shock, triggering self- reinforcing volatility-induced selling. This is how QE increases the likelihood of VaR shocks.’

QE+ZIRP have many perverse consequences. That is inevitable, because they are all fake from beginning to end. They create a huge increase in inequality, which hampers a recovery instead of aiding it. They are deflationary.

They distort asset values, blowing up prices for stocks and bonds and houses, while crushing the disposable incomes in the real economy that are the no. 1 dead certain indispensable element of a recovery.

You would think that the central bankers look at global bond markets today, see the swings and think ‘I better tone this down before it explodes in my face’. But don’t count on it.

They see themselves as masters of the universe, and besides, their paymasters are still making off like bandits. They will first have to be hit by the full brunt of Minsky’s insight, and then it’ll be too late.

Debt Rattle June 1 2015

Jun 012015

June 1, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:26 am Finance Tagged with: China, derivatives, Draghi, liquidity, migrants, money creation, QE, Shale, swap, TBTF, timebomb, Tsipras 1 Response »

Lewis Wickes Hine Whole family works, Browns Mills, New Jersey 1910

• QE For The People: Monetary Policy For The Next Recession (Bloomberg)

• The Liquidity Timebomb – Monetary Policies Create Dangerous Paradox (Roubini)

• Bond Dealers Enfeebled as Liquidity Breakdown Boosts Derivatives (Bloomberg)

• Top US Fund Managers Attack Regulators (FT)

• Banks Are Not Intermediaries Of Loanable Funds – And Why This Matters (BoE)

• Alexis Tsipras: The Bell Tolls for Europe (The Automatic Earth)

• Defiant Tsipras Threatens To Detonate Crisis Rather Than Yield To Creditors (AEP)

• Greece’s Creditors’ Crazy Commands (KTG)

• The Key Reason Why Euro’s Future Is Uncertain (Ivanovitch)

• Draghi Deflation Relief Means Little With Greek Threat Unsolved (Bloomberg)

• Shale Oil’s House of Cards (TheStreet)

• China Considers Doubling Its Local Bond-Swap Program (Bloomberg)

• China $550 Billion Stock Wipeout Reminds Traders of 2007 Catastrophe (Bloomberg)

• Hedge Fund Activists Are Japan’s Best Friend (Pesek)

• Sydney And Melbourne Are ‘Unequivocally’ In A House Price Bubble (Guardian)

• Czech Finance Minister Proposes Referendum on the Euro (WSJ)

• Prime Minister Renzi Bruised In Italy’s Regional Elections (Politico)

• Over 5,000 Mediterranean Migrants Rescued Since Friday (Reuters)

“Nobody, so far as I’m aware, is arguing that it wouldn’t be effective. What, then, is the objection?”

• QE For The People: Monetary Policy For The Next Recession (Bloomberg)

By pre-crash standards, the big central banks have made and continue to make amazing efforts to support demand and keep their economies running. Quantitative easing would once have been seen as reckless. The official term of art – unconventional monetary policy – tacitly acknowledged that. But QE isn’t unconventional any longer. It mostly worked, the evidence suggests. The world avoided another Great Depression. Yet even in the U.S., this is a seriously sub-par recovery; growth in Europe and Japan has been worse still. Now imagine a big new financial shock. It’s quite possible that all three economies would fall back into recession. What then?

According to your economics textbook, the obvious answer is fiscal policy. But bringing fiscal expansion to bear in a sustained and effective way proved difficult after 2008. Next time round, the politics might be harder still, because public debt has grown and concerns about government solvency (warranted or otherwise) will be greater. Sooner rather than later, attention therefore needs to turn to a new kind of unconventional monetary policy: helicopter money. One thing’s for sure: The idea needs a blander name. Milton Friedman, who argued that central banks could always defeat deflation by printing dollars and dropping them from helicopters, did nothing to make the idea acceptable. Put it that way and most people think the notion is crazy.

How about “QE for the people” instead? It has a nice populist ring to it – suggesting a convergence of financial excess and the Communist Manifesto. The problem is, it isn’t bland. It sounds even bolder than helicopter money. “Overt monetary financing” is closer to what’s required, but something even duller would be better. Whatever you call it, the idea is far from crazy. Lately, more economists have been advocating it, and they’re right. The logic is simple. If central banks need to expand demand – and interest rates can’t be cut any further – let them send a check to every citizen. Much of this money would be spent, boosting demand just as Friedman said. Nobody, so far as I’m aware, is arguing that it wouldn’t be effective. What, then, is the objection?

“..the longer central banks create liquidity to suppress short-run volatility, the more they will feed price bubbles in equity, bond, and other asset markets.”

• The Liquidity Timebomb – Monetary Policies Create Dangerous Paradox (Roubini)

A paradox has emerged in the financial markets of the advanced economies since the 2008 global financial crisis. Unconventional monetary policies have created a massive overhang of liquidity. But a series of recent shocks suggests that macro liquidity has become linked with severe market illiquidity. Policy interest rates are near zero (and sometimes below it) in most advanced economies, and the monetary base (money created by central banks in the form of cash and liquid commercial-bank reserves) has soared – doubling, tripling, and, in the US, quadrupling relative to the pre-crisis period. This has kept short- and long-term interest rates low (and even negative in some cases, such as Europe and Japan), reduced the volatility of bond markets, and lifted many asset prices (including equities, real estate, and fixed-income private- and public-sector bonds).

And yet investors have reason to be concerned. [..] though central banks’ creation of macro liquidity may keep bond yields low and reduce volatility, it has also led to crowded trades (herding on market trends, exacerbated by HFTs) and more investment in illiquid bond funds, while tighter regulation means that market makers are missing in action. As a result, when surprises occur – for example, the Fed signals an earlier-than-expected exit from zero interest rates, oil prices spike, or eurozone growth starts to pick up – the re-rating of stocks and especially bonds can be abrupt and dramatic: everyone caught in the same crowded trades needs to get out fast.

Herding in the opposite direction occurs, but, because many investments are in illiquid funds and the traditional market makers who smoothed volatility are nowhere to be found, the sellers are forced into fire sales. This combination of macro liquidity and market illiquidity is a timebomb. So far, it has led only to volatile flash crashes and sudden changes in bond yields and stock prices. But, over time, the longer central banks create liquidity to suppress short-run volatility, the more they will feed price bubbles in equity, bond, and other asset markets. As more investors pile into overvalued, increasingly illiquid assets – such as bonds – the risk of a long-term crash increases. This is the paradoxical result of the policy response to the financial crisis. Macro liquidity is feeding booms and bubbles; but market illiquidity will eventually trigger a bust and collapse.

Risk where it doesn’t belong.

• Bond Dealers Enfeebled as Liquidity Breakdown Boosts Derivatives (Bloomberg)

As Wall Street retreats from its traditional role as the bond market’s middle man, investors frustrated by sudden gyrations and a lack of liquidity are turning to derivatives – in a big way. In the world’s biggest debt markets, including the U.S., Europe and Japan, the number of futures contracts on government debt reached a post-crisis high in May after doubling since 2009. Trading of German bund options and Italian futures also hit records. While some are using derivatives to hedge against higher U.S. interest rates, Pioneer Investment Management and BlackRock Inc. are also shifting into more obscure corners of the fixed-income world as rules to limit bank risk-taking have made it harder to trade at a moment’s notice. Since October 2013, dealers that trade with the Fed have slashed U.S. debt inventories by 84%.

“Liquidity risk is a big challenge,” said Cosimo Marasciulo, the Dublin-based head of fixed income at Pioneer, which oversees $242 billion. “And it’s now affecting an asset that was once considered most liquid – government bonds.” Derivatives, contracts based on underlying assets that can provide the same exposure without tying up as much capital, have become a popular option after central banks started to purchase bonds as a way to boost growth following the financial crisis, which has sapped supply and increased volatility. Over that time, bond buying by major central banks has inundated economies with at least $10 trillion of cheap cash, according to Deutsche Bank. [..]

The shift into derivatives has accelerated as the world’s biggest banks scale back their bond-trading businesses to comply with higher capital requirements imposed by Basel III, which went into effect this year. For Treasuries, the share of transactions by primary dealers has dwindled by more than half to 4% since the end of 2008, according to the Institute of International Finance, a lobbying group for banks. And in the past year, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and RBS have have either cut back their fixed-income trading desks or are weighing reductions in those businesses. That’s made getting the bonds you want at the price you need more difficult, especially when markets are moving.

Are the biggest funds TBTF?

• Top US Fund Managers Attack Regulators (FT)

US fund managers have launched a new attack on global regulators as they fight a rearguard action against possible rules that would treat groups such as Fidelity and BlackRock as threats to the financial system. The Financial Stability Board, a global watchdog chaired by Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, is exploring whether to designate the biggest asset managers as “systemically important” and hit them with tougher rules and heightened scrutiny. But Fidelity said the FSB’s approach was “irredeemably flawed” and told regulators in a letter that regulating a fund manager as systemically important “would be counterproductive and destructive”.

Fund managers argue that they do not pose systemic dangers to financial stability because they do not take deposits, guarantee returns or face the risk of sudden failure like a bank. But regulators have other concerns. Last month Mr Carney highlighted the risk on investor runs on “funds that offer on-demand redemptions but invest in less liquid assets”. The watchdogs are also looking at the stability impact of securities lending by asset managers, and the complexity of fund businesses structured as holding companies, which bear a growing resemblance to banks. Empowered by the leaders of the G20 top economies, the FSB has already designated 30 banks and 9 insurers as global institutions that require tighter regulation because of their potential to cause systemic contagion.

Next in its sights are asset managers, although the FSB, which is based in Basel, Switzerland, is debating whether it makes more sense to regulate entire institutions or particular products and activities. Fidelity and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Sifma), a US trade group, accused the FSB of ploughing ahead while ignoring an avalanche of empirical studies and previous industry comments.

Not the first time BoE people address this, but still somewhat surprising from a central bank. Central to the Steve Keen vs Krugman debate.

• Banks Are Not Intermediaries Of Loanable Funds – And Why This Matters (BoE)

In the intermediation of loanable funds model of banking, banks accept deposits of pre-existing real resources from savers and then lend them to borrowers. In the real world, banks provide financing through money creation. That is they create deposits of new money through lending, and in doing so are mainly constrained by profitability and solvency considerations. This paper contrasts simple intermediation and financing models of banking. Compared to otherwise identical intermediation models, and following identical shocks, financing models predict changes in bank lending that are far larger, happen much faster, and have much greater effects on the real economy

Since the Great Recession, banks have increasingly been incorporated into macroeconomic models. However, this literature confronts many unresolved issues. This paper shows that many of them are attributable to the use of the intermediation of loanable funds (ILF) model of banking. In the ILF model, bank loans represent the intermediation of real savings, or loanable funds, between non-bank savers and non-bank borrowers. But in the real world, the key function of banks is the provision of financing, or the creation of new monetary purchasing power through loans, for a single agent that is both borrower and depositor. The bank therefore creates its own funding, deposits, in the act of lending, in a transaction that involves no intermediation whatsoever.

Third parties are only involved in that the borrower/depositor needs to be sure that others will accept his new deposit in payment for goods, services or assets. This is never in question, because bank deposits are any modern economy’s dominant medium of exchange. Furthermore, if the loan is for physical investment purposes, this new lending and money is what triggers investment and therefore, by the national accounts identity of saving and investment (for closed economies), saving. Saving is therefore a consequence, not a cause, of such lending. Saving does not finance investment, financing does. To argue otherwise confuses the respective macroeconomic roles of resources (saving) and debt-based money (financing).

The paper shows that this financing through money creation (FMC) description of the role of banks can be found in many publications of the world’s leading central banks. What has been much more challenging is the incorporation of the FMC view’s insights into dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models that can be used to study the role of banks in macroeconomic cycles. DSGE models are the workhorse of modern macroeconomics, and are a key tool in macro-prudential policy analysis. They study the interactions of multiple economic agents that optimise their utility or profit objectives over time, subject to budget constraints and random shocks. The key contribution of this paper is therefore the development

My post yesterday of Tsipras’ integral text for Le Monde.

• Alexis Tsipras: The Bell Tolls for Europe (The Automatic Earth)

Judging from the present circumstances, it appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim. To some, this represents a golden opportunity to make an example out of Greece for other countries that might be thinking of not following this new line of discipline. What is not being taken into account is the high amount of risk and the enormous dangers involved in this second strategy. This strategy not only risks the beginning of the end for the European unification project by shifting the Eurozone from a monetary union to an exchange rate zone, but it also triggers economic and political uncertainty, which is likely to entirely transform the economic and political balances throughout the West.

Europe, therefore, is at a crossroads. Following the serious concessions made by the Greek government, the decision is now not in the hands of the institutions, which in any case – with the exception of the European Commission- are not elected and are not accountable to the people, but rather in the hands of Europe’s leaders. Which strategy will prevail? The one that calls for a Europe of solidarity, equality and democracy, or the one that calls for rupture and division? If some, however, think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake. I would suggest that they re-read Hemingway’s masterpiece, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.

Ambrose acknowledges what I wrote quite some time ago: “The matter has moved to a higher level and is at this point entirely political.”

• Defiant Tsipras Threatens To Detonate Crisis Rather Than Yield To Creditors (AEP)

The Greek prime minister has accused Europe’s leaders of ‘issuing absurd demands’. Greek premier Alexis Tsipras has accused Europe’s creditor powers of issuing “absurd demands” and come close to warning that his far-Left government will detonate a pan-European political and strategic crisis if pushed any further. Writing for Le Monde in a tone of furious defiance after the latest set of talks reached an impasse, Mr Tsipras said the eurozone’s dominant players were by degrees bringing about the “complete abolition of democracy in Europe” and were ushering in a technocratic monstrosity with powers to subjugate states that refuse to accept the “doctrines of extreme neoliberalism”.

“For those countries that refuse to bow to the new authority, the solution will be simple: Harsh punishment. Judging from the present circumstances, it appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim,” he said. The Greek leader, head of the radical-Left Syriza government, issued a stark warning that his country will not submit to these demands and will instead take action “to entirely transform the economic and political balances throughout the West.” Alexis Tsipras made his thoughts known in a piece for Le Monde, the French newspaper “If some, however, think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake. I would suggest that they re-read Hemingway’s masterpiece, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”,” he said.

The words originally come from John Donne’s Meditation XVII, with its poignant reminder that the arrogant can be blind to their own demise. “Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him,” it reads. Mr Tsipras’s article is a thinly-disguised warning that Greece may choose to default on roughly €330bn of debt in the biggest sovereign default ever, and pull out of the euro, rather than breech its key red lines. The debts are mostly to European official creditors and the European Central Bank. The situation has become critical after depositors withdrew €800m from Greek banks in two days at the end of last week, heightening fears that capital controls may be imminent.

Mr Tsipras’s choice of words also implies that Greece may turn its back on the Western security system, presumably by shifting into the orbit of Russia and China. The article comes as Panagiotis Lafanzanis, the energy minister and head of Syriza’s powerful Left Platform, returns from Moscow after securing a provisional deal with Gazprom to build part of the “Turkish Stream” gas pipeline through Greece. The Russian energy minister, Alexander Novak, said over the weekend that the project has been agreed in principle. ” We are now discussing technical details,” he said. Greek officials have told The Telegraph that Russia is offering up to €2bn in up-front credit to sweeten the arrangement, though it will not be a state-to-state transaction.

Greek banks’ holdings of Greek bonds got a 53.5% haircut in a Private Sector Involvement scheme in 2012.

• Greece’s Creditors’ Crazy Commands (KTG)

Creditors command and demand, Greece is willing but … some red lines cannot be set aside. Apart from that, creditors’ commands are anything but logical as their demands could be only described as crazy. Furthermore the creditors seem divided as to what they demand from Greece with the logical consequence that the negotiations talks have ended into a deadlock. According to Greek media reports, “While the European Commissions wants austerity measures worth €4-5 billion for the second half of 2015 and the 2016, the IMF raises the lot to €7 billion for 2016. The all-inclusive austerity package should include among others €2.7 billion cuts in pensions.

The Pensions Chapter is one of the thorns among the negotiation partners, and Greece would love to postpone it for after the provisional agreement with the creditors. While it is not clear whether it is the IMF or the EC or both, it comes down to the command that “Pensions should not be higher of 53% of the salary due to the financial situation of the social security funds.” Pension for a civil servant (director, 37 years of work) should come down to €900 from €1,386 today after the pension cuts during the austerity years. Pension for private sector – IKA insurer (37 years of work, 11,000 IKA stamps) and salary €2,300 should come down to €1,250 from €1,452 today after the austerity cuts. (examples* via here)

Of course, with the PSI in March 2012, Greece’s social security funds suffered a huge slap in their deposits in Greek bonds. According to the Bank of Greece report of 2012, social security funds were holding Greek bonds with nominal value €18.7 billion euro. The PSI gave them a new look with a nice hair cut of 53.5%. Guess, how many billions euros were left behind. If one adds the loss of contributions due to high unemployment, part-time jobs, uninsured jobs and the disappearance of full time jobs in the last 3-4 years, the estimations concerning the money available at the Greek social insurance funds are … priceless!

Everyone hesitates when push comes to shove.

• The Key Reason Why Euro’s Future Is Uncertain (Ivanovitch)

The need to consider technical aspects of investment options in a currency of an allegedly very uncertain future is a permanent challenge for the euro area portfolio analysis. In spite of that, the region’s political leaders seem oblivious to the widely held view that the common currency is just a flimsy and provisional political structure. If they understood that reality, their loose talk about the “euro crisis” and the euro’s “doubtful long-term viability” would never be uttered, because without their currency the Europeans would not even have a customs union that was laboriously built and implemented ever since the Treaty of Rome came into effect on January 1, 1958. Indeed, like Caesar’s wife, the permanence of the euro should be above any suspicion.

Sadly, the unbearable lightness of the euro area politicians gives no confidence in their resolve to rally around their single currency – an epochal achievement and a unique symbol of European unity. The serious and continuing degradation of the political situation in France is the main reason for my euro pessimism. France has been the country that originated and carried most of the policies and institutions designed to bring a hostile and divided continent back together. France, unfortunately, seems in no position to play that noble role anymore. France is mired in a deep economic and fiscal crisis, and its leader is one of the country’s most unpopular acting presidents ever. An opinion poll, published May 30, shows that 77% of the French people don’t want President François Hollande to run for re-election in 2017.

His main rival, the former President Nicholas Sarkozy, fares no better: more than 70% of the French would not support his presidential candidacy two years from now. That leaves Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel (representing two close center-right parties) alone in a leadership position, despite credibility problems caused by destabilizing spying scandals and a fraying governing coalition with Social Democrats. It, therefore, should not be surprising that there is no political decision on Greece’s legitimate demand to renegotiate unreasonable austerity conditions imposed upon its deeply impoverished population. The French and German leaders seem paralyzed, even though they know that forcing Greece out of the monetary union would spell the end of the euro – with incalculable damages to the European and world economies.

Deflation is here because people don’t spend. That’s a far wider issue than just Greece.

• Draghi Deflation Relief Means Little With Greek Threat Unsolved (Bloomberg)

With a solution to the Greek crisis still out of reach, Mario Draghi can count on at least one piece of good news this week: euro-area consumer prices are rising again. Economists in a Bloomberg survey forecast that the inflation rate rose to 0.2% in May from zero in April. The report, due on Tuesday, would follow improving data from Spain and Italy and mark the first price increase in six months. While the European Central Bank president can take comfort from the fading deflation risk, he and his fellow policy makers will be distracted by a looming Greek loan repayment that could make or break months of negotiations aimed at funding the country and preventing a splintering of the currency bloc.

As the economy stutters through its recovery, concerns about the debt crisis are putting the reins on consumer and business sentiment across the region. “There’s not a huge uncertainty about the economic outlook, there’s more uncertainty about Greece,” said Holger Sandte, chief European analyst at Nordea Markets in Copenhagen. The return of inflation is “good news for the ECB,” he said. “In the months ahead, while we might get a setback, the tendency is upward.” The improving inflation backdrop partly reflects a rebound in oil prices since falling to a six-year low in January. ECB policy makers may also see it as a sign their €1.1 trillion stimulus is working. Draghi said last month that the unconventional actions “have proven so far to be potent, more so than many observers anticipated.” Governing Council member Patrick Honohan said that price inflation is “getting back up.”

“..it was undeniable proof that as a nation, we had completely bolloxed this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

• Shale Oil’s House of Cards (TheStreet)

I knew that the conventional wisdom on the drop in oil prices after the OPEC meeting in November, 2014 was going to be ascribed solely to the Saudis, a conclusion that was far too simple to explain the massive collapse. No, something else, something even more important was going on. The Saudi reticence to cut production was just a catalyst. The bigger theme was an already overdue bust that was happening in U.S. shale oil. This oil bonanza had been built on a house of cards, ready at any moment to topple over. The list of fragile flaws in the system was long. Each state had its own set of regulations and oversights on leases and operations, with no consistent framework for oil shale fracking.

Despite (or because of) the complete freedom in oversight, fracking for oil from shale had grown at a frightening and undisciplined pace. As prices declined, it became clear that much of this breakneck activity had been financed by very risky and highly leveraged capital investments that mirrored some of the worst pyramiding schemes I had ever seen. But because prices had been high, many of the shortcomings had been conveniently overlooked: Oil was being taken out of the ground as quickly as it could be drilled. The months following the OPEC announcement showed me just how rickety the entire structure for retrieving shale oil had become. Oil companies that had been the darlings of Wall Street not one year earlier were now losing 70 to 80% of their share value, as their corporate bonds, which were already poorly rated, risked complete default.

Virtually every company involved in shale production was forced to slash development budgets, hoping to ride out what they prayed was a temporary dip in the price of oil. Yet projected production numbers from all of these players continued to rise, almost insuring that prices would stay cheap. What had been a universally optimistic industry not 6 months prior had changed overnight into a frightened group playing a collective game of chicken, as oil producers hunkered down with reduced budgets and hoped like mad that the “other guy” would go broke first. That shale oil had folded like a cheap suitcase so quickly and completely was incredible to witness and, I thought, incredibly important: it was undeniable proof that as a nation, we had completely bolloxed this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“An expansion would signal officials are confident in the template..” No, it means things are not going as planned, and that is due to debt to shadow banks.

• China Considers Doubling Its Local Bond-Swap Program (Bloomberg)

Chinese policy makers are considering plans to as much as double the size of a clean-up program for shaky local government finances, according to people familiar with the discussions. In what would be the second stage of the program, a further 500 billion yuan ($81 billion) to 1 trillion yuan of local-government loans would be authorized to be swapped into bonds issued by provinces and cities, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks are private. The first stage of the bond swap, currently under way, is 1 trillion yuan.

An expansion would signal officials are confident in the template they’ve crafted for reducing risks from a record surge in borrowing that local authorities took on to fund a glut of investment projects. The complex process – which includes inducements for banks to buy new, longer-maturity, lower yielding bonds — is alleviating a funding crunch among provinces that had threatened to deepen the economy’s slowdown. “It’s solving the cash-flow issue at the local governments and ensuring that infrastructure projects this year aren’t delayed,” said Nicholas Zhu at Moody’s, referring to the initial 1 trillion-yuan program. He said any additional quota probably would be for debt swaps in 2016.

Much more of this to come.

• China $550 Billion Stock Wipeout Reminds Traders of 2007 Catastrophe (Bloomberg)

The rout wiped out about $350 billion of market value in a week on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. It so traumatized traders that eight years later they still refer to the decline by the date it began: the 5/30 catastrophe. The milestone for the modern Chinese stock market, which began in 1990, started on midnight, May 30, 2007, with Hu Jintao’s government unexpectedly announcing it would triple a tax on stock trading. The plunge sparked by the pronouncement had followed a breathless rally, making it eerily similar to last week’s events. On Thursday, stocks erased almost $550 billion in value after surging 143% on the Shanghai Composite Index over the past year. Traders could be forgiven for a wave of deja vu mixed with a dollop of dread: In 2007, stocks recovered from their May losses only to drop more than 70% over the next 12 months from an October peak. Here’s a look at the similarities and differences between China’s markets then and now. What’s similar:

* Timing of declines: Both selloffs followed rallies that sent the benchmark index up more than 100% in just months. Thursday’s tumble in Chinese stocks came after brokerages tightened lending restrictions and the central bank drained cash from the financial system. The Shanghai Composite shed 6.5% and fell another 0.2% in volatile trading on Friday. On May 30, 2007, the Shanghai gauge also tumbled 6.5% after the government raised the stamp tax to 0.3% from 0.1%. The measure aimed to cool the stock market after it doubled in about six months and almost quadrupled from the end of 2005. By June 4, the benchmark had lost 15%. The market then started to stabilize and rose another 66% to an all-time high in October 2007 before tanking again as the global financial crisis raged.

* Rookie traders: The two stock rallies were fueled by record amounts of new investors, increasing fluctuations. About 29 million new stock accounts have opened this year through May 22, almost as many as in the previous four years combined, according to the China Securities Depository & Clearing Corp. Margin debt on the Shanghai exchange has soared more than 10-fold in the past two years to a record 1.35 trillion yuan ($220 billion) on Thursday. In the first five months of 2007, more than 20 million stock accounts opened, four times the amount in all of 2006. Margin trading, or investing with funds borrowed from brokerages, wasn’t allowed then.

” Japan remains 30 years behind its peers in how its companies are run..”

• Hedge Fund Activists Are Japan’s Best Friend (Pesek)

Japan has New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb to thank for its biggest stock market surge since 1988. Investors have been taking inspiration from Loeb’s surprising success with the Japanese robot maker Fanuc. When Loeb bought a stake in the notoriously opaque company earlier this year and started demanding changes, few in corporate Japan believed he would get anywhere. It’s not just that Fanuc was known for its insularity; foreign activist investors had a long history of failure when dealing with corporate Japan. So when Fanuc President Yoshiharu Inaba started heeding Loeb’s demands – inviting journalists to the company’s campus near Mt. Fuji, opening a shareholder relations department and doubling the %age of profit the company pays out to shareholders – other foreign investors took note.

They began flocking to the Nikkei stock exchange in hopes of getting at the trillions of dollars sitting on Japan’s corporate balance sheets. (It’s estimated that executives are hoarding cash that amounts to half the country’s annual $4.9 trillion of output.) But the stock surge doesn’t represent a broader vote of confidence in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic program – nor should it. Abe has failed to carry out the bold structural reforms – lowered trade barriers, less red tape for startups and loosened labor markets – that he promised would enliven growth and boost corporate profits. Investors are aware that Japan’s latest economic data isn’t very good: Household spending is weak (down 1.3% in April), 340,000 people have given up on the labor market and inflation is back at zero.

But if Abe is wise, he will leverage the uptick in foreign investment to reignite his reform program. After all, Japan’s new foreign investors are a demanding and vocal crowd, and their goals are broadly in alignment with Abe’s. “They tend to speak out in ways that locals won’t, adding to the pressure on management to change,” says Jesper Koll, former JPMorgan, and adviser to Japan’s government. “That’s something to be supported in the current environment, not silenced.” Abe has already started leading a charge for more stringent corporate governance standards. Last year, Tokyo implemented a stewardship code urging investors to shame underperforming CEOs and introduced an index of 400 Japanese companies doing a good job of providing returns on investment.

Last week, Abe unveiled a code of conduct for executives along with requests that companies increase the number of outside directors. But Chicago money manager David Herro says that for all Abe’s efforts, Japan remains 30 years behind its peers in how its companies are run. Corporate Japan still indulges in cross-shareholdings and permits itself male-dominated boards, and the country’s timid media does little to hold it to account. “Japan has gone from zero to two,” Herro told Bloomberg News last week. “It’s improving. But we need to get to eight, nine or 10.”

A discussion like climate change: denied until it’s too late.

• Sydney And Melbourne Are ‘Unequivocally’ In A House Price Bubble (Guardian)

Sydney and parts of Melbourne are “unequivocally” experiencing a house price bubble, according to Treasury secretary John Fraser. Speaking at Senate estimates in Canberra on Monday, Fraser said he was concerned about the amount of money being poured into the housing market with interest rates at a record low of 2%. “It does worry me that the historically low level of interest rates are encouraging people to perhaps overinvest in housing,” Fraser said. As Sydney saw an auction clearance rate of 87.4% at the weekend, Fraser said: “When you look at the housing price bubble evidence, it’s unequivocally the case in Sydney.” It was also “certainly the case in higher priced areas in Melbourne”, he said, but elsewhere in Australia the evidence was “less compelling”.

Fraser’s comments give an insight into his role as a member of the Reserve Bank of Australia board, which has voted twice this year to cut interests rates, including at its May meeting. If his concerns reflect a wider view on the board, it suggests Tuesday’s monthly meeting of the board will not see another rate cut. However, his remarks will be tempered by figures released on Monday which showed that home prices dipped in May for the first time in six months, with Sydney’s booming property market losing a bit of steam. Home values in Australia’s capital cities fell by 0.9%, with drops recorded everywhere except Darwin and Canberra, the latest CoreLogic RP Data home value index showed.

Sydney’s home values fell 0.7%, with Melbourne down 1.7% and Hobart posting the biggest fall with a 2.7% slide. For the year to 31 May, home values were up by 9%, with the average property priced at $570,000. It came as approvals for the construction of new homes fell 4.4% in April, which was much worse than market expectations of a 1.5% fall. Over the 12 months to April, building approvals were up 16.6%, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. Approvals for private sector houses rose 4.7% in the month, and the “other dwellings” category, which includes apartment blocks and townhouses, was down 15%.

Europe and democracy remains an uneasy relationship.

• Czech Finance Minister Proposes Referendum on the Euro (WSJ)

The Czech finance minister on Sunday proposed letting the public have a say in whether the country should adopt the euro through a nonbinding referendum. The proposal caused disagreement in the Czech Republic cabinet. Roughly two-thirds of the population in the European Union country are against giving up the national currency, the koruna. After meeting the prime minister, the central bank governor and the country’s president at a special gathering to discuss the Czech position toward Europe’s common currency, Finance Minister Andrej Babis said he proposes holding a nonbinding public referendum in 2017—in conjunction with expected general elections—on whether to adopt the euro.

The purpose of holding a referendum would be “so that citizens can express themselves, like they’ve done in Sweden,” said Mr. Babis, who himself hasn’t yet taken a position on the currency issue and is widely considered a top candidate for the premier’s post after the next elections. In a 2003 referendum, Swedish voters rejected switching to the euro. Sweden continues to use the krona despite having a treaty obligation to switch to the euro at some point. Such a referendum in the Czech Republic wouldn’t break treaties but would serve as a gauge of public opinion before politicians embark on the potentially treacherous task of surrendering the national currency.

Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka dismissed the idea, saying while there is no deadline by which the country must adopt the euro, the Czech Republic—like the 12 other countries that have joined the bloc since 2004—is bound by accession treaties to the European Union to adopt the common currency, and so there is no need for any referendums. Despite the urging of President Milos Zeman, who seeks deeper ties with Russia but is nevertheless calling for politicians to work to integrate the country monetarily with the neighboring eurozone—officials agreed that the fate of the national currency will be left for a future government.

Eroding power base.

• Prime Minister Renzi Bruised In Italy’s Regional Elections (Politico)

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s party suffered a blow in Sunday’s regional and local elections, casting his political strength into doubt as he takes on major electoral and economic reforms.The center-left Democratic party won in five of the seven regions up for grabs, but the opposition made noteworthy gains in key areas. The outcome was not the triumph that Renzi saw during last year’s European elections.Renzi’s candidates won in central Italy, Tuscany, Marche, and Umbria, as well as in the south, in Puglia and in Campania, a region so far governed by the center right. The euroskeptic Northern League prevailed, with a wide margin, in its stronghold in Veneto. In the key Liguria region, long governed by the left, a candidate of Silvio Berlusconi’s party has won.

The anti-establishment and anti-euro 5Star movement, bolstered by disappointment with mainstream parties and corruption scandals, also made gains. So far, the movement has performed well in general elections but not in local ballots. On Saturday, Renzi downplayed the vote, saying it would not be a a judgment on his tenure. “Regional elections have a local meaning, there will no consequence for the government,” Renzi said in a public meeting in Trento. After Renzi’s party dominated last year’s elections for the European Parliament, pundits dubbed him Italy’s strong man. The fragility of that reputation came into focus in the elections. His power in Brussels is also at stake. A poor showing could slow down the pace of the changes to Italy’s moribund economy that the European Commission is seeking.

“Renzi has enjoyed a honeymoon … that is now over,” said before the elections pollster Nando Pagnoncelli, who said that trust in him had dropped in polls to 40% from 60% in September. Only one Italian out of two has gone to vote. Turnout, at 52.2% is much lower than 58.6% at the European elections. “Those disillusioned voters, who once used to vote for the center right and then chose Renzi [at the European elections], are not returning to vote for the right, they will simply stay home,” he said. The vote followed a series of tough parliamentary battles over Renzi’s reform agenda. With a staggering debt at 132% of the GDP, the second highest ratio after Greece, Brussels and the European Central Bank have pushed for a major economic overhaul.

Note the press playing up the suggestion it’s now a pan-European effort.

• Over 5,000 Mediterranean Migrants Rescued Since Friday (Reuters)

The corpses of 17 migrants were brought ashore in Sicily aboard an Italian naval vessel on Sunday along with 454 survivors as efforts intensified to rescue people fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. More than 5,000 migrants trying to reach Europe have been saved from boats in distress in the Mediterranean since Friday and operations are in progress to rescue 500 more, European Union authorities said on Sunday. In some of the most intense Mediterranean traffic of the year, migrants who left Libya in 25 boats were picked up by ships from Italy, Britain, Malta and Belgium, assisted by planes from Iceland and Finland, the EU’s border control agency Frontex said.

Naval and merchant vessels involved in rescue operations also came from countries including Germany, Ireland and Denmark. The 17 corpses found on one of the boats arrived in the Sicilian port of Augusta aboard the Italian navy corvette Fenice. Italian prosecutors are investigating how they died. Frontex is coordinating an EU rescue mission in the Mediterranean known as Triton, which was stepped up after around 800 migrants drowned off Libya in April in the Mediterranean’s most deadly shipwreck in living memory. “This is the biggest wave of migrants we have seen in 2015,” Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri said in a written statement. “The new vessels that joined operation Triton this week have already saved hundreds of people.”

Italy has so far borne the brunt of Mediterranean rescue operations. Most of the migrants depart from the coast of Libya, which has descended into anarchy since Western powers backed a 2011 revolt that ousted Muammar Gaddafi. Calm seas are increasingly favoring departures as warm spring weather sets in. The migrants saved over the weekend are all being disembarked at nine ports on the Italian islands of Lampedusa, Sicily and Sardinia and on its southern mainland regions of Calabria and Puglia. The latest wave of more than 5,000 arrivals will take the total of those reaching Italy by boat across the Mediterranean this year to more than 40,000, according to estimates by the United Nations refugee agency.

Mario Draghi’s Slippery Downward Slope

May 242015

May 24, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:12 am Finance Tagged with: Draghi, economy, EU, Greece, neoliberal, pensions, political, reforms, union, wages 3 Responses »

Harris&Ewing F.W. Grand store, Washington, DC 1925

Mario Draghi made another huge faux pas Thursday, but it looks like the entire world press has become immune to them, because it happens all the time, because they don’t realize what it means, and because they have a message if not a mission to sell. But still, none of these things makes it alright. Nor does Draghi’s denying it was a faux pas to begin with.

And while that’s very worrisome, ‘the public’ appear to be as numbed and dumbed down to this as the media themselves are -largely due to ’cause and effect’, no doubt-. We saw an account of a North Korean defector yesterday lamenting that her country doesn’t have a functioning press, and we thought: get in line.

It’s one thing for the Bank of England to research the effects of a Brexit. It’s even inevitable that a central bank should do this, but both the process and the outcome would always have to remain under wraps. Why it was ‘accidentally’ emailed to the Guardian is hard to gauge, but it’s not a big news event that such a study takes place. The contents may yet turn out to be, but that doesn’t look all that likely.

The reason the study should remain secret is, of course, that a Brexit is a political decision, and a country’s central bank can not be party to such decisions.

It’s therefore quite another thing for ECB head Mario Draghi to speak in public about reforms inside the eurozone. Draghi can perhaps vent his opinion behind closed doors, for instance in talks with politicians in European nations, but any and all eurozone reforms remain exclusively political decisions, even if they are economic reforms, and therefore Draghi must stay away from the topic, certainly in public. Far away.

There has to be a very clear line between central banks and governments. The latter should never be able to influence the former, because it would risk making economic policy serve only short term interests (until the next election). Likewise the former should stay out of the latter’s decisions, because that would tend to make political processes skewed disproportionally towards finance and the economy, at the potential cost of other interests in a society.

This may sound idealistic and out of sync with the present day reality, but if it does, that does not bode well. It’s dangerous to play fast and loose with the founding principles of individual countries, and perhaps even more with those of unions of sovereign nations.

Obviously, in the same vein it’s fully out of line for German FinMin Schäuble to express his opinion on whether or not Greece should hold a referendum on euro membership, or any referendum for that matter. Ye olde Wolfgang is tasked with Germany’s financial politics, not Greece’s, and being a minister for one of 28 EU members doesn’t give him the liberty to express such opinions. Because all EU nations are sovereign nations, and no foreign politicians have any say in other nations’ domestic politics.

It really is that simple, no matter how much of this brinkmanship has already passed under the bridge. Even Angela Merkel, though she’s Germany’s political leader, must refrain from comments on internal Greek political affairs. She must also, if members of her cabinet make comments like Schäuble’s, tell them to never do that again, or else. It’s simply the way the EU was constructed. There is no grey area there.

The way the eurozone is treating Greece has already shown that it’s highly improbable the union can and will last forever. Too many -sovereign- boundaries have been crossed. Draghi’s and Schäuble’s comments will speed up the process of disintegration. They will achieve the exact opposite of what they try to accomplish. The European Union will show itself to be a union of fairweather friends. In Greece, this is already being revealed.

The eurozone, or European monetary union, has now had as many years of economic turmoil as it’s had years of prosperity. And it’ll be all downhill from here on in, precisely because certain people think they can afford to meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations. The euro was launched on January 2002, and was in trouble as soon as the US was, even if this was not acknowledged right away. Since 2008, Europe has swung from crisis to crisis, and there’s no end in sight.

At the central bankers’ undoubtedly ultra luxurious love fest in Sintra, Portugal, where all protagonists largely agree with one another, Draghi on Friday held a speech. And right from the start, he started pushing reforms, and showing why he really shouldn’t. Because what he suggests is not politically -or economically- neutral, it’s driven by ideology.

He can’t claim that it’s all just economics. When you talk about opening markets, facilitating reallocation etc., you’re expressing a political opinion about how a society can and should be structured, not merely an economy.

Structural Reforms, Inflation And Monetary Policy (Mario Draghi)

Our strong focus on structural reforms is not because they have been ignored in recent years. On the contrary, a great deal has been achieved and we have praised progress where it has taken place, including here in Portugal. Rather, if we talk often about structural reforms it is because we know that our ability to bring about a lasting return of stability and prosperity does not rely only on cyclical policies – including monetary policy – but also on structural policies. The two are heavily interdependent.

So what I would like to do today in opening our annual discussions in Sintra is, first, to explain what we mean by structural reforms and why the central bank has a pressing and legitimate interest in their implementation. And second, to underline why being in the early phases of a cyclical recovery is not a reason to postpone structural reforms; it is in fact an opportunity to accelerate them.

Structural reforms are, in my view, best defined as policies that permanently and positively alter the supply-side of the economy. This means that they have two key effects. First, they lift the path of potential output, either by raising the inputs to production – the supply and quality of labour and the amount of capital per worker – or by ensuring that those inputs are used more efficiently, i.e. by raising total factor productivity (TFP).

And second, they make economies more resilient to economic shocks by facilitating price and wage flexibility and the swift reallocation of resources within and across sectors. These two effects are complementary. An economy that rebounds faster after a shock is an economy that grows more over time, as it suffers from lower hysteresis effects. And the same structural reforms will often increase both short-term flexibility and long-term growth.

And earlier in the -long- speech he said: “Our strong focus on structural reforms is not because they have been ignored in recent years. On the contrary, a great deal has been achieved and we have praised progress where it has taken place, including here in Portugal.

So Draghi states that reforms have already been successful. Wherever things seem to go right, he will claim that’s due to ‘his’ reforms. Wherever they don’t, that’s due to not enough reforms. His is a goalseeked view of the world.

He claims that the structural reforms he advocates will lead to more resilience and growth. But since these reforms are for the most part a simple rehash of longer running centralization efforts, we need only look at the latter’s effects on society to gauge the potential consequences of what Draghi suggests. And what we then find is that the entire package has led to growth almost exclusively for large corporations and financial institutions. And even that growth is now elusive.

Neither reforms nor stimulus have done much, if anything, to alleviate the misery in Greece or Spain or Italy, and Portugal is not doing much better, as the rise of the Socialist Party makes clear. The reforms that Draghi touts for Lisbon consist mainly of cuts to wages and pensions. How that is progress, or how it has made the Portuguese economy ‘more resilient’, is anybody’s guess.

Resilience cannot mean that a system makes it easier to force you to leave your home to find work, but that is exactly what Draghi advocates. Instead, resilience must mean that it is easier for you to find properly rewarded work right where you are, preferably producing your own society’s basic necessities. That is what would make your society more capable of withstanding economic shocks.

Still, it’s the direct opposite of what Draghi has in mind. Draghi states that [structural reforms] “.. make economies more resilient to economic shocks by facilitating price and wage flexibility and the swift reallocation of resources within and across sectors.”

That obviously and simply means that, if it pleases the economic elites who own a society’s assets, your wages can more easily be lowered, prices for basic necessities can be raised, and you yourself can be ‘swiftly reallocated’ far from where you live, and into industries you may not want to work in that don’t do anything to lift your society.

Whether such kinds of changes to your society’s framework are desirable is manifestly a political theme, and an ideological one. They may make it easier for corporations to raise their bottom line, but they come at a substantial cost for everyone else.

Draghi tries to push a neoliberal agenda even further, and that’s a decidedly political agenda, not an economic one.

There was a panel discussion on Saturday in which Draghi defended his forays into politics, and he was called on them:

Draghi and Fischer Reject Claim Central Banks Are Too Politicised

The ECB president on Saturday said his calls were appropriate in a monetary union where growth prospects had been badly damaged by governments’ resistance to economic reforms. Mr Draghi said it was the central bank’s responsibility to comment if governments’ inaction on structural reforms was creating divergence in growth and unemployment within the eurozone, which undermined the existence of the currency area. “In a monetary union you can’t afford to have large and increasing structural divergences,” the ECB president said. “They tend to become explosive.”

He even claims it’s his responsibility to make political remarks….

Mr Draghi’s defence of the central bank came after Paul De Grauwe, an academic at the London School of Economics, challenged his calls for structural reforms earlier in the week. Mr De Grauwe said central banks’ push for governments to take steps that removed people’s job protection would expose monetary policy makers to criticism over their independence to set interest rates.

The ECB president [..] said central banks had been wrong to keep quiet on the deregulation of the financial sector. “We all wish central bankers had spoken out more when regulation was dismantled before the crisis,” Mr Draghi said. A lack of structural reform was having much more of an impact on poor European growth than in the US, he added.

De Grauwe is half right in his criticism, but only half. It’s not just about the independence to set interest rates, it’s about independence, period. A central bank cannot promote a political ideology disguised as economic measures. It’s bad enough if political parties do this, or corporations, but for central banks it’s an absolute no-go area.

Pressure towards a closer economic and monetary union in Europe is doomed to fail because it cannot be done without a closer political union at the same time. They’re all the same thing. They’re all about giving up sovereignty, about giving away the power to decide about your own country, society, economy, your own life. And Greeks don’t want the same things as Germans, nor do Italians want to become Dutch.

Because of Greece, many EU nations are now increasingly waking up to what a ‘close monetary union’ would mean, namely that Germany would be increasingly calling the shots all over Europe. No matter how many technocrats Brussels manages to sneak into member countries, there’s no way all of them would agree, and it would have to be a unanimous decision.

Draghi’s remarks therefore precipitate the disintegration of Europe, and it would be good if more people would recognize and acknowledge that. Europe are a bunch of fairweather friends, and if everyone is not very careful, they’re not going to part ways in a peaceful manner. The danger that this would lead to the exact opposite of what the EU was meant to achieve, is clear and present.

Debt Rattle May 24 2015

May 242015

May 24, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:27 am Finance Tagged with: banana republic, bikers, capitalism, Draghi, globalization, Grexit, ISIS, Spain, Syriza 1 Response »

Harris&Ewing Underwood Typewriter Co., Washington, DC 1919

• Borders Closing And Banks In Retreat; Is Globalisation Dead? (Guardian)

• Capitalism Is Killing America’s Morals, Our Future (Paul B. Farrell)

• America Has Become a “Banana Republic Run by Wall Street Criminals” (MM)

• Tsipras Reiterates Red Lines But Faces Revolt Within Syriza (Kathimerini)

• Europe Said to Weigh Contingency Plans in Greece Impasse (Bloomberg)

• Neither Grexit Nor A Dual Currency Will Solve Greece’s Problems (Matthes)

• Hotel Contracts With A ‘Greek Default Clause’ (Kathimerini)

• The Migrant Crisis on Greece’s Islands (New Yorker)

• Spain’s New Political Forces Seek To Make History (DW)

• Podemos Changing Spain’s Political Map (Telesur)

• Eurozone Countries Should Unite For Economic Reforms: Mario Draghi (Reuters)

• Structural Reforms, Inflation And Monetary Policy (Mario Draghi)

• Draghi and Fischer Reject Claim Central Banks Are Too Politicised (FT)

• The Other One Per Cent (Economist)

• Secret Pentagon Report Reveals West Saw ISIS As Strategic Asset (Nafeez Ahmed)

• Germany Won’t Comment on Reported ‘Deep Freeze’ With US Intelligence (Reuters)

• Leaked Report Profiles Military, Police Members Of US Biker Gangs (Intercept)

Globalization is a times of plenty phenomenon.

• Borders Closing And Banks In Retreat; Is Globalisation Dead? (Guardian)

Globalisation is under attack. It was meant to be the unstoppable economic force bringing prosperity to rich and poor alike, but that was before the financial crisis ripped up the rulebook. For the past four years, international trade flows have increased more slowly than global GDP – “an outcome unprecedented in postwar history”, as analyst Michael Pearce of Capital Economics put it in a recent note. Crisis-scarred global banks are retreating from risky cross-border lending, and multinationals are casting a sceptical eye over foreign opportunities as geopolitical tensions simmer. Populist politicians in a string of countries, not least the UK, are playing on public fears about migrant workers undermining their pay.

Global trade flows are still expanding: but they have never regained the breakneck pace of the 1990s and early 2000s. In the innocent days before the Great Recession, the dismantling of trade barriers between nation states often seemed inevitable. Yet more than 13 years after the Doha round of multilateral trade talks kicked off, with the aim of binding developing countries more closely into the international system, the idea of a global trade deal remains locked in the deep freeze. Some analysts are starting to ask: has globalisation come to a halt? The lesson many governments and companies learned from the turmoil that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers was that there are risks to being too unthinkingly exposed to the ebbs and flows of the international system.

“There’s quite a fundamental shift going on here,” says Professor Simon Evenett, an expert on trade at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland. “You can’t say it’s across the board, but there are some sectors where globalisation is in substantial retreat.” He points to steel, for example, where his recent research shows that trade flows have never returned to pre-2007 levels. “I think the direction of travel is depressing,” he says.

“..the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole of life.”

• Capitalism Is Killing America’s Morals, Our Future (Paul B. Farrell)

Yes, capitalism is working … for the Forbes Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,826 in 2015. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, 67 billionaires already own half the world’s assets; by 2100 we’ll have 11 trillionaires, while American worker income has stagnated for a generation. But for the vast majority of the world, capitalism is a failure. Over a billion live on less than two dollars a day. In his “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” economist Thomas Piketty warns the inequality gap is toxic, dangerous. As global population explodes from 7 billion to 10 billion by 2050, food production will deteriorate. Pope Francis adds, “Inequality is the root of social ills,” fueling more hunger, revolutions, wars.

For years we’ve been asking: Why does the capitalist brain blindly drive down this irrational path of self-destruction? We found someone who brilliantly explains why free market capitalism is hell-bent on destroying itself and the world along with it: Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, author of the new best seller, “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets,” and his earlier classic, “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” For more than three decades Sandel’s been teaching us why capitalism is undermining human morality … and why we keep denying this insanity. Why do we bargain away our moral soul? His classes number over a thousand. You can even take his course online free. He even summarized capitalism’s takeover of America’s conscience in “What Isn’t for Sale?” in the Atlantic. Listen:

“Without being fully aware of the shift, Americans have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society … where almost everything is up for sale … a way of life where market values seep into almost every sphere of life and sometimes crowd out or corrode important values, nonmarket values.” His course should be required for Wall Street insiders, corporate CEOs and all 95 million Main Street investors. Here’s a short synopsis:

“The years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 were a heady time of market faith and deregulation — an era of market triumphalism,” says Sandel. “The era began in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher proclaimed their conviction that markets, not government, held the key to prosperity and freedom.” And in the 1990s with the “market-friendly liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who moderated but consolidated the faith that markets are the primary means for achieving the public good.”

So today, “almost everything can be bought and sold.” Today “markets, and market values, have come to govern our lives as never before. We did not arrive at this condition through any deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us,” says Sandel. Over the years, “market values were coming to play a greater and greater role in social life. Economics was becoming an imperial domain. Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole of life.”

“..big banks have now paid more than $60 billion in fines over the past two years.”

• America Has Become a “Banana Republic Run by Wall Street Criminals” (MM)

Wall Street criminals just won’t stop misbehaving. The latest crime was exposed Wednesday. Five of the biggest names in global finance agreed to pay billions to settle lawsuits alleging they illegally gamed the $5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS, and RBSpleaded guilty and settled for fines totaling roughly $5.7 billion. A sixth bank, Bank of America, will pay $210 million after being fined by the Fed. With this week’s settlements, big banks have now paid more than $60 billion in fines over the past two years.

“America has become a banana republic run by Wall Street criminals,” Money Morning Capital Wave Strategist Shah Gilani said on Wednesday. Of course, history dictates the fines will have no actual effect on business practices. “We all know the big banks are above the law,” Gilani said. “They are convicted, they admit their guilt (sometimes), and no one goes to jail – they just pay more fines.” Not including this week’s, just look at a few of the settlements too-big-to-fail banks have shelled out in the last five years alone:

In 2015, Deutsche Bank paid a $2.5 billion fine for manipulating benchmark interest rates.
In 2014, Credit Suisse paid $2.6 billion to the U.S. Justice Department for conspiring to aid tax evasion. It was the first financial institution in more than a decade to plead guilty to a crime.
In 2013, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and ten other banks paid $9.3 billion to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve for foreclosure abuses.
In 2013, JPMorgan paid $13 billion to the U.S. Justice Department for mortgage security fraud.
In 2012, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America, Citigroup, and Ally Financial paid $25 billion in penalties for foreclosure abuses.
In 2012, HSBC paid $1.9 billion to U.S. authorities for shoddy money laundering regulations. It was the third time since 2003 HSBC assured the government it would correct its policies.
In 2012, UBS paid $1.5 billion and admitted it manipulated interbank lending rates.
In 2011, Bank of America paid $8.5 billion to mortgage bond holders related to Countrywide.

Resistance will grow.

• Tsipras Reiterates Red Lines But Faces Revolt Within Syriza (Kathimerini)

After a busy week of talks with European leaders aimed at securing support for a deal for Greece, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faces challenges on the home front amid tensions with SYRIZA over the terms such an agreement would entail. In a speech to his party’s central committee on Saturday, Tsipras said Greece is “in the final stretch of negotiations” and is ready to accept a “viable agreement” with its creditors but not on “humiliating terms.” He ruled out submitting to irrational demands on value-added tax rates and further labor reform, and called on lenders to make “necessary concessions.” “We have made concessions but we also have red lines,” he said, claiming that some foreign officials were counting on the talks failing.

Although Tsipras reiterated his commitment to the party’s so-called red lines in negotiations, pressure from within SYRIZA not to capitulate to creditors has grown amid rumors that a deal is in the works. In particular, members of the radical Left Platform led by Energy Minister Panayiotis Lafazanis have refused to approve any deal that departs from the party’s pre-election promises. The faction has been working on a counter-proposal for alternative sources of funding. Tsipras and other front-line cabinet members, meanwhile, remain focused on a deal by early June when the country’s next debt repayment to its creditors is due.

But as negotiations continue to drag, sources suggest that the likeliest scenario is a two-stage deal despite Tsipras’s recent insistence on the need for a “comprehensive agreement.” The two-stage deal would comprise an initial agreement that would unlock a portion of rescue loans in exchange for some reforms, most likely tax increases, to keep the country solvent; the second part of the deal would tackle the thorny issues of pension and labor sector reform.

“The problem is that Alexis Tsipras is riding a scooter and Wolfgang Schaeuble is driving an armored BMW.”

• Europe Said to Weigh Contingency Plans in Greece Impasse (Bloomberg)

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble raised the possibility that Greece may need a parallel currency and European officials are making contingency plans for the Greek banking system as talks on unlocking aid remain stuck. Schaeuble mentioned the idea of parallel currencies at a recent meeting without endorsing it, according to two people who attended. The European Commission is looking at how to manage the possible failure of Greek financial firms and other events that may cause investor losses, two other people said. With Greece’s final €7.2 billion bailout installment on hold, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s latest attempt to bypass finance ministers and secure a political deal failed on Friday.

As Greece faces payment deadlines in the next two weeks, some European policy makers are preparing for the worst while upholding the goal of keeping Greece in the euro. “We need to have the strongest and most complete agreement possible now to secure and facilitate talks for the next deadlines,” French President Francois Hollande said Friday in Riga, Latvia, after he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Tsipras. Merkel said there’s “a whole lot to do.” Merkel and Hollande this week gave Tsipras until the end of May to reach a deal to free up aid in return for policy changes demanded by Greece’s creditor. As time runs short, his government has to pay monthly salaries and pensions by next Friday and repay about €300 million to the IMF a week later.

Negotiators from Greece and its creditors are continuing technical talks in the so-called Brussels Group “over the coming days in order to accelerate progress,” European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said in Brussels on Friday. While Merkel and Schaeuble say they want to keep Greece in the 19-nation currency union, the finance minister has also said he wouldn’t rule out a Greek exit. Germany is “ready to take this brinkmanship very far,” with Schaeuble in the role of “attack dog,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said by phone. “We’re in this game of chicken. The problem is that Alexis Tsipras is riding a scooter and Wolfgang Schaeuble is driving an armored BMW.”

No matter what happens, it won’t be easy. Not for Greece and not for Eruope.

• Neither Grexit Nor A Dual Currency Will Solve Greece’s Problems (Matthes)

A Grexit or the introduction of a dual currency is not a solution to Greece’s problems. On the contrary, it would be a worst-case scenario for Greece in the short term. Only in the medium to longer term, the resulting devaluation and improvement of price competitiveness would help businesses active in the export and import substitution sectors. For the euro area, a Grexit or dual currency would be a signal that the currency union is not made forever, even if the situation is much different from 2010-2012 as contagion effects to other euro periphery countries hardly exist today. The negative short-term impact from a Grexit or from a dual currency would push the Greek economy into a very deep crisis and lead to further impoverishment.

The Greek financial sector, which is already rather weak, would be severely affected, particularly by further withdrawals of euros from bank accounts in the course of bank runs (among other aspects). Capital controls can only partly stop this from happening. The problems of the financial sector would lead to a further drying up of credit supply and the danger of bank insolvencies. The risk of insolvency would go much beyond the banking sector and also include businesses and particularly the state. All private and public economic actors with sizeable debts in euros and under foreign law (debt which could not be converted to the new or dual currency) would suffer from higher debt counted in the dual or new currency. This is so because the dual or new currency would devaluate to a large degree versus the euro.

Imagine the balance sheet of a bank or of a company with significant euro debts under foreign law: These liabilities would remain in euro but significant parts of the assets would be converted to the dual or new currency, which then devaluates. This would cut a deep hole in the balance sheet and could well lead to insolvency. A government default is most likely, because foreign debts would remain to a large extent in euros but tax revenues would increasingly come from the new or dual currency. Insolvencies and the drying up of credit supply would lead to a significant rise in unemployment, costing even more people their job. A government default could mean that public wages and pensions cannot be paid for a certain period of time or only in the new weak currency. Moreover, the fiscal problems would further aggravate the state of the economy and of banks that hold government bonds.

Thank the troika.

• Hotel Contracts With A ‘Greek Default Clause’ (Kathimerini)

After the drachma clauses seen in tourism contracts, foreign tour operators are now forcing hoteliers in Greece to sign contracts with a Greek default clause. Foreign organizers of international conferences have been introducing default clauses to contracts forcing the non-payment of compensation in case the country defaults and they decide to cancel their events. That clause is reminiscent of insurance contracts which stop short of providing for compensation in case of natural disasters, acts of terrorism etc. Kathimerini understands that already one conference organizer, who is to hold an event in this country with the participation of foreign delegates next month, has imposed a “default clause” on the hotel enterprise in order to sign a contract, sparing him from having to pay compensation for canceling the event if Greece defaults.

In the next couple of months hoteliers will, as usual, also have to sign the bulk of their 2016 contracts with representatives of foreign tour operators. Some operators have already told Greek hoteliers that they require extra safety clauses in case the country drops out of the eurozone. Furthermore, the financial terms of contracts will depend on the planned value-added tax hikes on tourism. Hoteliers wonder on what terms they will be asked to sign the contracts, to what extent they can impose price hikes on tour operators and how they will retain their rates competitive in comparison with the hotel rates of other countries such as Turkey, Spain etc.

Representatives of tourism associations estimate that in the event more taxes are introduced, small and medium-sized hotel enterprises – which account for the majority of the country’s accommodation capacity – will see their negotiating position weakened against their foreign clients. The possibility of a VAT hike in Greece has also generated interest in the country’s rivals. A Lesvos hotelier reported that Turkish peers keep asking about any news on a VAT increase on Greek tourism for 2016, saying that a significant price increase on the Greek tourism package would signify a direct advantage for the neighboring country’s tourism market.

A comprehensive EU approach? Not going to happen.

• The Migrant Crisis on Greece’s Islands (New Yorker)

Greece, like Italy and Malta, has long been an entry point into the European Union for refugees and economic migrants making the journey by sea. This year, the Greek government expects a massive wave of migrants on the Aegean islands and Crete, fuelled by the protracted war in Syria. The Eastern Mediterranean route is not as deadly for migrants: thirty-one people are known to have drowned in the Aegean Sea this year, compared with an estimated eighteen hundred in the Central Mediterranean, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration. But the number of people arriving in Greece this year rivals the number of those coming to Italy: The I.O.M. says that at least 30,400 migrants have arrived in Greece as of May 12th, compared with thirty-four hundred in all of 2014.

At least 35,100 have arrived this year in Italy. Southern European countries have often felt poorly served by the Dublin Regulation, which dictates that the E.U. nations where migrants first arrive are ultimately responsible for them. Camino Mortera-Martinez and Rem Korteweg of the Centre for European Reform say that a deep divide between Northern and Southern E.U. states has resulted. “Northern member states want an asylum policy that keeps migrants in the South but treats them humanely,” they wrote recently, “while Southern member-states want the North to share the burden by accepting more migrants. The Mediterranean refugee crisis shows that this system is unsustainable.”

What’s also unsustainable, according to Eugenio Ambrosi, who directs the I.O.M.’s regional office for the European Union, Norway, and Switzerland, is the fact that migration has become an electoral issue “easily manipulated by populists who know that fear wins votes.” E.U. politicians have dithered on drafting a common migration and asylum policy because they’re worried about how voters will react. “There’s this attitude of: if your neighbor’s house is on fire, you watch and hope somebody else takes care of them so you don’t have to feed them and give them a blanket,” he said.

Ciudadanos is taking votes away from Podemos.

• Spain’s New Political Forces Seek To Make History (DW)

Outside a municipal sports building in Alcala de Henares, a small city east of Madrid, crowds are gathering and clusters of balloons are bobbing in the breeze. Just ahead of local elections across Spain, supporters of the new party, Ciudadanos, or “Citizens,” are in high spirits, believing that its phenomenal rise in recent months will soon make it one of the country’s most prominent political forces. Inside, a few minutes later, the party’s 35-year-old leader, Albert Rivera, bounds onto the stage to deliver a powerful message to his electoral rivals. “Some don’t understand what is happening in Spain – we’re not just facing an election day, we’re facing a new era,” he says.

“Whoever can’t understand that isn’t capable of leading the change. Spain is not doing well, it’s only doing well for a few.” This promise by a generation of young Spanish politicians to deliver a “new era” has already altered the country’s political landscape. But on Sunday, when elections are held for control of town and city halls across Spain and for 13 of its 17 regional parliaments, the political map is expected to be drastically redrawn. For the last three-and-a-half decades, the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the Socialists have dominated Spanish politics in a rigid two-party system. But the recent economic crisis and a torrent of corruption scandals have threatened to break that duopoly for the first time in Spain’s democratic period.

Ciudadanos and another new party with a young leadership, Podemos, or “We Can” in Spanish, are the beneficiaries of Spaniards’ disenchantment with the status quo and national polls show them in a four-way virtual tie with the PP and the Socialists. “This election represents a revolution because we’re going to go from having just two parties which are capable of governing, to having a political map on which there are four parties, all of which are capable of governing,” says Jose Ignacio Torreblanca, a political scientist who recently published a book about Podemos.

Elections today.

• Podemos Changing Spain’s Political Map (Telesur)

Pablo Iglesias, leader of the new left-wing party Podemos, says his movement has already “contributed to changing the Spanish political map. We can say that we have made irreversible changes. Nothing will ever be the same again.” Iglesias describes Podemos as a response to a “regime crisis,” in Spain in the aftermath of the global economic crisis and deep austerity politics and that Podemos was born out of “enormous frustration with the economic and political elites, He explained that the rise of Latin American left governments over the past decade represented a “fundamental reference” to the party, but one that cannot be easily reproduced.

While in the beginning, Podemos leaders believed that “a ‘Latin-Americanization’ of Southern Europe” was occurring, reality soon showed that European states were “very strong” meaning “the possibility of transformation |was| very limited.” In Iglesias’ opinion, this difficulty in creating such change explains why the party’s number two, Juan Carlos Monedero, recently resigned from the leadership. But he stressed the important role that social movement have in creating change, explaining that “these social movements allow |the party leaders| to go further, politically, in |their| demands,” referring to the movements against evictions in Spain, for example, or the movements defending education and public health. He added that criticism was a positive pattern inside the party, yet stressing that his leadership was backed by a great consensus.

Regarding differences with the situation in Greece, where the leftist Syriza now forms the government, Iglesias highlighted that because the economic crisis hit Greece much harder than in Spain, “the weakness of the state and the forces in power in Greece were greater,” making it easier for Syriza to make gains. He believes that the political and media establishment feared even more the rise of Podemos than Syriza because of Spain’s greater economic weight.

See below for link to the text of Draghi’s address.

• Eurozone Countries Should Unite For Economic Reforms: Mario Draghi (Reuters)

ECB President Mario Draghi has urged euro zone countries to unite in the task of reforming the bloc’s economies, saying sharing sovereignty was an opportunity and not a threat. Draghi is pushing governments not to waste the time ECB money printing has bought them. Saturday’s appeal to indebted countries to clean up their finances came the day after he warned growth would remain low in the face of unemployment and low investment. In a message read to attendees at a conference in Rome, he said countries should act quickly on recommendations the central bank has made to complete economic and monetary union, many of which have not been carried out.

“The current situation in the euro area demonstrates that this delay could be dangerous,” Draghi said, according to a text of the address released by the ECB, while acknowledging progress had been made, for example with banking union. But private risks need to be shared within the euro zone, with financial integration improving access to credit for companies and leading to a complete capital markets union, Draghi said. Draghi called for stricter and more transparent adherence to existing budgetary rules to help close the gaps among member states in employment, growth and productivity, but said this alone would not be enough.

Countries should observe common standards when implementing structural reforms but also take a country-specific approach, as part of a process of “convergence in the capacity of our economies to resist shocks and grow together”. Thirdly, Draghi said the euro zone should ask whether it had done enough to safeguard the possibility of using budgetary policy to counter the economic cycle, concluding: “I think not.” Many European countries realised only after the debt crisis exploded that their sovereign right to choose their own economic policy would be limited in the monetary union, Draghi said. But working to ensure long-term stability meant sharing control, Draghi said. “What can appear to be a threat is actually an opportunity,” he said.

Full speech with graphs etc.

• Structural Reforms, Inflation And Monetary Policy (Mario Draghi)

Structural and cyclical policies – including monetary policy – are heavily interdependent. Structural reforms increase both potential output and the resilience of the economy to shocks. This makes structural reforms relevant for any central bank, but especially in a monetary union. For members of monetary union resilience is crucial to avoid that shocks lead to consistently higher unemployment, and over time, permanent economic divergence. It therefore has direct implications for price stability, and is no less relevant for the integrity of the euro area. This is why the ECB has frequently called for stronger common governance of structural reforms that would make resilience part of our common DNA.

Structural reforms are equally important for their effect on growth. Potential growth is today estimated to be below 1% in the euro area and is projected to remain well below pre-crisis growth rates. This would mean that a significant share of the economic losses in the crisis would become permanent, with structural unemployment staying above 10% and youth unemployment elevated. It would also make it harder to work through the debt overhang still present in some countries. Finally, low potential growth can have a direct impact on the tools available to monetary policy, as it increases the likelihood that the central bank runs into the lower bound and has to resort recurrently to unconventional policies to meet its mandate.

But the euro area’s weak long-term performance also provides an opportunity. Since many economies are distant from the frontier of best practice, the gains from structural reforms are easier to achieve and the potential magnitude of those gains is greater. There is a large untapped potential in the euro area for substantially higher output, employment and welfare. And the fact that monetary policy is today at the lower bound, and the recovery still fragile, is not, as some argue, a reason for reforms to be delayed.

This is because the short-term costs and benefits of reforms depend critically on how they are implemented. If structural reforms are credible, their positive effects can be felt quickly even in a weak demand environment. The same is true if the type of reforms is carefully chosen. And our accommodative monetary policy means that the benefits of reforms will materialise faster, creating the ideal conditions for them to succeed. It is the combination of these demand and supply policies that will deliver lasting stability and prosperity.

Independence is not a matter of interpretation, gentlemen.

• Draghi and Fischer Reject Claim Central Banks Are Too Politicised (FT)

Two of the world’s most senior central bankers have hit back at charges that they have become too politicised, saying their calls for governments to take more aggressive steps to steer their economies towards a full recovery were necessary. Mario Draghi, the president of the ECB, and Stanley Fischer, the US Federal Reserve’s vice-chair, also disputed the idea that unelected technocrats should refrain from commenting on governments’ economic policies. The remarks, at the ECB’s annual conference in Sintra, came after Mr Draghi on Thursday called on lawmakers in the eurozone to implement politically unpopular structural reforms, or face years of weak economic growth. The ECB president on Saturday said his calls were appropriate in a monetary union where growth prospects had been badly damaged by governments’ resistance to economic reforms.

Mr Draghi said it was the central bank’s responsibility to comment if governments’ inaction on structural reforms was creating divergence in growth and unemployment within the eurozone, which undermined the existence of the currency area. “In a monetary union you can’t afford to have large and increasing structural divergences,” the ECB president said. “They tend to become explosive.” Mr Draghi’s defence of the central bank came after Paul De Grauwe, an academic at the London School of Economics, challenged his calls for structural reforms earlier in the week. Mr De Grauwe said central banks’ push for governments to take steps that removed people’s job protection would expose monetary policy makers to criticism over their independence to set interest rates.

The ECB president said central banks had a long tradition of commenting on governments’ economic policies, and that they had been right to speak out against wage indexation in the 1970s and fiscal excesses in earlier decades. He said central banks had been wrong to keep quiet on the deregulation of the financial sector. “We all wish central bankers had spoken out more when regulation was dismantled before the crisis,” Mr Draghi said. A lack of structural reform was having much more of an impact on poor European growth than in the US, he added. Mr Fischer said central bankers should think about structural reforms “in the context of what’s the expected growth rate in the economy”. The Fed vice-chair said it was appropriate for monetary policy makers to comment on spending in infrastructure and education because of the impact it had on US growth.

“There is general agreement that US infrastructure could do with a lot of investment. You just have to go on trains in the US or Europe to figure that out,” Mr Fischer told the audience of top academics and policy makers in Sintra on Saturday. He acknowledged there were limits on what was appropriate, saying he would “never talk about whether the defence budget was appropriate”. The passing of the Dodd-Frank Act was a “very massive change in the structure of the financial sector” and was “very important for financial stability going ahead”. Haruhiko Kuroda, the governor of the Bank of Japan who joined Mr Draghi and Mr Fischer on the panel, said he expected inflation to reach 2% around the first half of the 2016 fiscal year.

Waht makes India’s expats so successful? Provided, of course, that you see income levels as the measure of success.

• The Other One Per Cent (Economist)

Part of the secret of China’s success in the past four decades or so has been the clever use of its diaspora. Chinese manufacturers in Hong Kong who had long supplied American partners moved to the mainland and set up factories. Chinese nationals who succeeded abroad brought home trusted contacts, networks, experience, standards, technology and capital. India could do with more of that. Over 27m people of Indian origin, including some temporary migrants, live overseas, many of them in the Gulf. They remit $70 billion a year to their home country, more than any other group of expats. That adds up to 3.5% of India’s GDP, outstripping foreign direct investment. The biggest potential lies with the diaspora in the West. Mr Modi seems to be aware of that.

He has been courting it on visits to America, Australia, Germany and Canada, holding big rallies. Indians abroad heavily backed him in last year’s election, sending millions of dollars as well as people to help. Even in remote corners of Uttar Pradesh, your correspondent bumped into jovial volunteers with American accents. Indians in America are the most promising. They are increasingly prominent in tech companies, on Wall Street and in government, especially in the state department. Around 1% of America’s population, over 3.3m people, are “Asian Indians”. Perhaps 150,000 more arrive each year, and 90% of them stay permanently. Devesh Kapur, who has studied them, talks of a “flood”. He says over half of all Indian-born people in America arrived there after 2000. On the usual measures of success they outstrip all other minorities, including Jewish-Americans.

They are educated and rich. In 2012 some 42% held first or higher degrees; average family income was over $100,000, roughly double that of white Americans (see chart). Over two-thirds of them hold high-status jobs. They have done so well that many migrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh like to call themselves Indian, hoping that some of the stardust will rub off on them. The stereotype of Indians as keeping shops or running motels in their adopted country is thus outdated. An IT professional from Andhra Pradesh would be far more typical. Since the turn of the century America has slurped in highly skilled graduates as fast as India can produce them. America’s H-1B employment visa for skilled professionals tells the story. In a book under review by a publisher, provisionally entitled “The Other One Per Cent”, Mr Kapur and his co-authors note that between 1997 and 2013 half of those visas went to Indians. Since 2009 the share has been more than two-thirds.

And now there’s proof. What will happen with it?

• Secret Pentagon Report Reveals West Saw ISIS As Strategic Asset (Nafeez Ahmed)

A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad. The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of the strategy, but described this outcome as a strategic opportunity to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

The revelations contradict the official line of Western government on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home. Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012. The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community. So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria. Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said: “Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it’s unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies. Noting that “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the document states that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.” The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,’ (ISI) which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,’ “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”

Digging a deeper hole. Germans want to know.

• Germany Won’t Comment on Reported ‘Deep Freeze’ With US Intelligence (Reuters)

The German government declined to comment on a report that U.S. intelligence agencies were reviewing their cooperation with German counterparts and had dropped joint projects due to concerns secret information was being leaked by lawmakers. Bild newspaper reported on Saturday that U.S. spy chief James Clapper had ordered the review because secret documents related to the BND’s cooperation with the United States were being leaked to media from a German parliamentary committee. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Berlin said it does not comment on intelligence matters.

Allegations the BND intelligence agency helped the National Security Agency (NSA) spy on European companies and officials has been major news in Germany for weeks. It has strained Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition and damaged her popularity. “The German government puts great faith in the intelligence cooperation with the United States to protect our citizens,” a government spokesman said when asked about the Bild report. “The government doesn’t comment on the details of that cooperation in public but rather in parliament committees.” The newspaper said it had seen documents in which Clapper, director of national intelligence, expressed concern that information on the cooperation from Merkel’s chancellery to the parliamentary committee was leaked and harmed U.S. interests.

Clapper said Germany could no longer be trusted with secret documents, according to Bild, and as long as that is the case U.S. intelligence agencies should examine where to limit or cancel cooperation with Germany. Bild quoted a U.S. official saying the leaks were worse than those attributed to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. “What the German government is now doing is more dangerous than what Snowden did,” the U.S. official was quoted saying.

Lovely.

• Leaked Report Profiles Military, Police Members Of US Biker Gangs (Intercept)

Nuclear power plant technicians, senior military officers, FBI contractors and an employee of “a highly-secretive Department of Defense agency” with a Top Secret clearance. Those are just a few of the more than 100 people with sensitive military and government connections that law enforcement is tracking because they are linked to “outlaw motorcycle gangs.” A year before the deadly Texas shootout that killed nine people on May 17, a lengthy report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives detailed the involvement of U.S. military personnel and government employees in outlaw motorcycle gangs, or OMGs.

The report lays out, in almost obsessive detail, the extent to which OMG members are represented in nearly every part of the military, and in federal and local government, from police and fire departments to state utility agencies. Specific examples from the report include dozens of Defense Department contractors with Secret or Top Secret clearances; multiple FBI contractors; radiological technicians with security clearances; U.S. Department of Homeland Security employees; Army, Navy and Air Force active-duty personnel, including from the special operations force community; and police officers. “The OMG community continues to spread its tentacles throughout all facets of government,” the report says.

The relationship between OMGs and law enforcement has come under scrutiny after it became known that law enforcement were on site in Waco bracing for conflict. The 40-page report, “OMGs and the Military 2014,” issued by ATF’s Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information in July of last year, warned of the escalating violence of these gangs. “Their insatiable appetite for dominance has led to shootings, assaults and malicious attacks across the globe. OMGs continue to maim and murder over territory,” the report said. “As tensions escalate, brazen shootings are occurring in broad daylight.”

The ATF report is based on intelligence gathered by dozens of law enforcement and military intelligence agencies, and identifies about 100 alleged associates of the country’s most violent outlaw motorcycle gangs and support clubs who have worked in sensitive government or military positions. Those gangs “continue to court active-duty military personnel and government workers, both civilians and contractors, for their knowledge, reliable income, tactical skills and dedication to a cause,” according to the report. “Through our extensive analysis, it has been revealed that a large number of support clubs are utilizing active-duty military personnel and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contractors and employees to spread their tentacles across the United States.”

Debt Rattle May 15 2015

May 152015

May 15, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:04 am Finance Tagged with: bubbles, China, Draghi, EU, fear, Fraud, goldfish, Greece, NSA, reforms, risk, Syriza, TPP 1 Response »

G. G. Bain Police machine gun, New York 1918

• Every Speculative Bubble Rests On Some Kind Of A Fairy Tale (G&M)

• Banks Seek Waivers Ahead Of Forex Guilty Pleas (Reuters)

• How China’s Banks Hide Trillions In Credit Risk – Full Frontal (Zero Hedge)

• Max Keiser: ‘Britain Is The Epicentre Of Financial Fraud’ (Newsweek)

• EU Prevents Greece From Implementing Reforms: Varoufakis (EFE)

• Varoufakis Refuses Any Bailout That Would Send Greece In ‘Death Spiral’ (Guar.)

• Greece To Privatize Port, Airports In Concession To Creditors (Bloomberg)

• Varoufakis Says Debt Swap Fills Draghi’s ‘Soul With Fear’ (Reuters)

• Greek Government Defends Itself Over Central Bank Tensions (Reuters)

• Syriza Highlights ‘Red Lines’ In Negotiations, Calls On People (Kathimerini)

• Syriza and Greece: Dancing with Austerity (Village.ie)

• Greece Signs EBRD Deal Worth €500 Million A Year (Reuters)

• You Can’t Read The TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can (Intercept)

• Secrets, Betrayals and Merkel’s Risky Silence in the NSA Scandal (Spiegel)

• Flash Crash Patsy Complained Over 100 Times About Real Market Manipulators (ZH)

• Monsanto’s Syngenta Gambit Hinges On Sale Of Seed Businesses (Reuters)

• A Third Of Europe’s Birds Is Under Threat (Guardian)

• Your Attention Span Is Now Less Than That Of A Goldfish (OC)

“Every speculative bubble rests on some kind of a fairy tale.. And now it is the faith in the central-planning capabilities of global central bankers. When the loss of confidence in the Fed, the ECB etc. begins, the stampede out of stocks and bonds will start.”

• Every Speculative Bubble Rests On Some Kind Of A Fairy Tale (G&M)

Government bonds regarded as among the safest in the developed world have become subject to violent price swings typically associated with more speculative assets. Yields on German 10-year bunds, the benchmark for the euro zone, shot up more than 20% at one point Tuesday, in a selloff described by Goldman Sachs analysts as “vicious.” As recently as last month, the same debt reached a record-low yield of 0.05%. At the other end of the confidence scale, Greek bonds strengthened slightly, reflecting renewed optimism that the embattled leftist government could cobble together a deal with euro-zone finance ministers that would get the bailout cash flowing again into its nearly empty coffers. But deal or no deal, the chances of a Greek default remain high. And despite the efforts of European authorities to contain any fallout and safeguard the euro, a spillover to other battered members of the euro club can’t be ruled out.

“There are a lot of rotten assets out there, and ultimately you have to have a reckoning,” warned Alex Jurshevski at Recovery Partners, who advises governments and corporations on debt restructuring. Although most analysts doubt this would trigger a seismic global financial shock, the risk of contagion is more than trivial, as underscored by the current sovereign-bond rout – with a loss in value of about $450-billion across global markets in just three weeks. “There’s a lot of risk in any of the markets that have been subjected to artificial downward pressure on interest rates,” Mr. Jurshevski said. Worries about sovereign debt have been around since European nations first latched on to this instrument as a relatively low-cost way of meeting the high costs of waging wars and undertaking other expensive projects.

Within four years after the newly minted Bank of England issued such bonds in 1694, government debt ballooned to £16-million from £1.25-million. By the middle of last year, government-related debt around the world totalled $58-trillion (U.S.), a 76% increase since the end of 2007, according to a report by McKinsey Global Institute aptly titled “Debt and (not much) deleveraging.” The ratio of all debt to GDP jumped 17 %age points to a whopping 286%. Since the Great Recession, debt has been expanding faster than the economy in every developed nation on the planet, led by a huge expansion of public-sector borrowing.

“Every speculative bubble rests on some kind of a fairy tale, a story the bubble participants believe in and use as rationalization to buy extremely overvalued stocks or bonds or real estate,” Mr. Vogt argued. “And now it is the faith in the central-planning capabilities of global central bankers. When the loss of confidence in the Fed, the ECB etc. begins, the stampede out of stocks and bonds will start. I think we are very close to this pivotal moment in financial history.”

Commit to crimes and demand BAU in the same breath.

• Banks Seek Waivers Ahead Of Forex Guilty Pleas (Reuters)

Banks want assurances from U.S. regulators that they will not be barred from certain businesses before agreeing to plead guilty to criminal charges over the manipulation of foreign exchange rates, causing a delay in multibillion-dollar settlements, people familiar with the matter said. In an unprecedented move, the parent companies or main banking units of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, RBS, Barclays and UBS are likely to plead guilty to rigging foreign exchange rates to benefit their transactions. The banks are also scrambling to line up exemptions or waivers from the Securities and Exchanges Commission and other federal regulators because criminal pleas trigger consequences such as removing the ability to manage retirement plans or raise capital easily.

In the past, waivers have generally been granted without a hitch. However, the practice has become controversial in the past year, particularly at the SEC, where Democratic Commissioner Kara Stein has criticized the agency for rubber stamping requests and being too soft on repeat offenders. Negotiating some of the waivers among the SEC’s five commissioners could prove challenging because many of these banks have broken criminal or civil laws in the past that triggered the need for waivers. Many of the banks want an SEC waiver to continue operating as “well-known seasoned issuers” so they can sell stocks and debt efficiently, people familiar with the matter said.

Such a designation allows public companies to bypass SEC approval and raise capital “off the shelf” – a process that is speedier and more convenient. Several of the people said another waiver being sought by some banks is the ability to retain a safe harbor that shields them from class action lawsuits when they make forward-looking statements. The banks involved are also seeking waivers that will allow them to continue operating in the mutual fund business, sources said. At least some of the waivers at issue in the forex probe will need to be put to a vote by the SEC’s five commissioners. No date has been set yet..

“..loan loss reserves aren’t even sufficient to cover NPLs + special mention loans, let alone defaults on a portion of the 38% of credit risk carried off the books..”

• How China’s Banks Hide Trillions In Credit Risk – Full Frontal (Zero Hedge)

There are several takeaways here. First – and most obvious – is the fact that accurately assessing credit risk in Chna is extraordinarily difficult. What we do know, is that between forced roll-overs, the practice of carrying channel loans as “investments” and “receivables”, inconsistent application of loan classification norms, and the dramatic increase in off balance sheet financing, the ‘real’ ratio of non-performing loans to total loans is likey far higher than the headline number, meaning that as economic growth grinds consistently lower, the country’s lenders could find themselves in deep trouble especially considering the fact that loan loss reserves aren’t even sufficient to cover NPLs + special mention loans, let alone defaults on a portion of the 38% of credit risk carried off the books.

The irony though is that while China clearly has a debt problem (282% of GDP), it’s also embarking on a concerted effort to slash policy rates in an effort to drive down real rates and stimulate the flagging economy, meaning the country is caught between the fallout from a shadow banking boom and the need to keep conditions loose because said boom has now gone bust, dragging credit growth down with it. In other words, the country is trying to deleverage and re-leverage at the same time. A picture perfect example of this is the PBoC’s effort to facilitate a multi-trillion yuan refi program for China’s heavily-indebted local governments. The idea is to swap existing high yield loans (accumulated via shadow banking conduits as localities sought to skirt borrowing limits) for traditional muni bonds that will carry far lower interest rates.

So while the program is designed to help local governments deleverage by cutting hundreds of billions from debt servicing costs, the CNY1 trillion in new LGB issuance (the pilot program is capped at 1 trillion yuan) represents a 150% increase in supply over 2014. Those bonds will be pledged as collateral to the PBoC for cheap cash which, if the central bank has its way, will be lent out to the real economy. So again, deleveraging and re-leveraging at the same time. This is just one of many ‘rock-hard place’ dynamics confronting the country as it marks a difficult transition from a centrally planned economy based on credit and investment to a consumption-driven model characterized by the liberalization of interest and exchange rates.

‘If you see me walking the streets of your town, then you’re probably screwed’.

• Max Keiser: ‘Britain Is The Epicentre Of Financial Fraud’ (Newsweek)

A general election, Benjamin Disraeli once observed, “inflames the passions of every class of the community. Even the poor,” he added, “begin to hope.” In 2015, Max Keiser argues, the power of global markets has rendered election fever something of an anachronism: “Tony Blair personified the shift away from democracy, towards control by bankers.” In modern politics, the prime minister “is really taking orders from finance”. “What if Miliband had won?” “There’s an impending scheme called TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a proposed EU-US agreement) whereby all complaints – against US companies fracking in Britain, say – would go to a global tribunal, moderated by corporations. They don’t care who the prime minister is. “Why should we?” David Cameron’s role, “is being eroded to the point of insignificance”.

Keiser, 55, is a New York University graduate and former high-achieving Wall Street trader whose mischievous wit and renegade instincts have made him one of the most widely viewed broadcasters on the planet. His flagship show, Keiser Report, is carried by Russian state-funded channel RT; for that alone, some fellow-Americans consider him a traitor. But Keiser connects with a predominantly youthful audience otherwise indifferent to economics. “Rage against kleptocrats is building incrementally,” says Keiser, a tireless scourge of JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers and HSBC. “All over the world, people have had enough.” Untroubled by controversy, Keiser conducted the 2011 interview with Roseanne Barr during which she explained that a fitting reward for “banksters” would be to bring back the guillotine.

He once advised Cameron to “go back to Eton and get some of that back-stall shower pleasure”. When we first met, three years ago, just after Keiser moved to London with co-presenter and wife Stacy Herbert, he told me that the modern voter was worse off than a medieval serf. “Back then,” he said, “at least the process of theft was transparent. The barons whacked you over the head, then took all your money. The mode of larceny has changed, that’s all.” What he calls “the Thatcher-Reagan market model” has, he says, “been consigned to the dustbin. There’s no growth. There’s quantitative easing, which causes deflation. The global economy is collapsing.”

The EU, as Keiser likes to describe it, “poses as an elite club; actually it’s a leper colony where everyone’s comparing who has the most fingers left”. “Could France, say, go bankrupt?” “Absolutely. The forces killing Greece are active in France, Italy and Spain.” The EU, he says, “could be viewed as The Fourth Reich. Germany is a superpower. The Greek crisis is great for them – it keeps the euro low and German exports cheap. When countries like France go broke, EU federalisation will proceed through Berlin.”

“So far, none of the many planned reforms have been implemented because the partners first wanted a broad and comprehensive agreement..”

• EU Prevents Greece From Implementing Reforms: Varoufakis (EFE)

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Thursday that its European partners have prevented the Greek government from legislating many necessary reforms, and stressed that he would only sign an agreement that aims at economic sustainability, Efe news agency reported. So far, none of the many planned reforms have been implemented because the partners first wanted a broad and comprehensive agreement, and believed that any legislation would constitute a unilateral act, Varoufakis argued at a conference organised in the Greek capital by The Economist weekly.

The minister said that from the beginning, creditors rejected proposals to negotiate and regulate in parallel, an action that, in his view, would have helped to create confidence between Greece and its partners. Varufakis stressed that Greece was determined to reform everything in the country, noting that if Greece did not reform, it would sink. However, he stressed that he would not sign any agreement inconsistent with macroeconomics or unsustainable, and accepting conditions that cannot be met, such as had been down in the past. The error of the past, he explained, was that every negotiation looked only for what to do to make the next bailout payment instead of seeking solutions to pursue economic recovery.

Oh boy: “[Draghi] received a rapturous welcome from Christine Lagarde, who introduced him as “maestro” – the nickname once given to Alan Greenspan. “Those who know you understand that you are a man of outstanding insight, fierce determination, and above all, courage.”

• Varoufakis Refuses Any Bailout That Would Send Greece In ‘Death Spiral’ (Guar.)

Greece’s embattled finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, stepped up his war of words with eurozone policymakers on Thursday, saying he wished his country still had the drachma, and would not sign up to any bailout plan that would send his country into a “death spiral”. With Greece facing a severe cash crisis as it struggles to secure a rescue deal from its creditors, Varoufakis – who has been officially sidelined from the debt negotiations – told a conference in Athens that he would reject any agreement in which “the numbers do not add up”. Greek GDP figures, published on Wednesday, revealed that the economy has already returned to recession. “I wish we had the drachma, I wish we had never entered this monetary union,” Varoufakis said.

“And I think that deep down all member states with the eurozone would agree with that now. Because it was very badly constructed. But once you are in, you don’t get out without a catastrophe”. He also warned that a mooted proposal for a bond swap, to ease Athens’ cash-crunch, was likely to be rejected, because it struck “fear into the soul” of European Central Bank president Mario Draghi. Despite his comments Greece on Thursday offered a concession to its international lenders by pushing ahead with the sale of its biggest port, Piraeus. Greece has asked three firms to submit bids for a majority stake in the port, a senior privatisation official told Reuters, unblocking a major sale of a public asset as creditors demand economic reforms from Athens.

Draghi, who was in Washington on Thursday to deliver a lecture on monetary policy, pointedly failed to mention the ongoing Greek crisis. He received a rapturous welcome from Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who introduced him as “maestro” – the nickname once given to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. “Those who know you understand that you are a man of outstanding insight, fierce determination, and above all, courage. You can call a spade a spade without putting any of your cards on the table,” she said.

“It’s “definite” that Greece won’t proceed with selling other state assets on a list that had been agreed on by the previous government..”

• Greece To Privatize Port, Airports In Concession To Creditors (Bloomberg)

Greece will continue with efforts to privatize the country’s largest port and regional airports as it seeks ways to attract investment for other state assets, Economy Minister George Stathakis said, in a government concession in talks with its creditors. The privatization process that is already underway for the Piraeus Port Authority, operator of Greece’s largest harbor, and for 14 regional airports will continue, Stathakis said today in an interview in Tbilisi, Georgia. “We’re trying to revise some elements of these privatizations in order to improve them and I think we’ll get a sensible agreement for both.” A sale of the Piraeus Port would be a reversal on the part of Greece’s Syriza party-led government, which had earlier pledged to block such moves.

As part of ongoing negotiations to unlock aid to Europe’s most-indebted nation, Greek’s European creditors have asked for more specific policy proposals in areas including labor market deregulation, a pension-system overhaul, sales tax reform and privatization of state-held assets. Still, Stathakis said the government doesn’t plan to sell other assets at the moment.The Piraeus Port sale “is part of the bailout negotiations,” and the fact that the government “agrees to privatize the port is a compromise to creditors,” government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis told reporters in Athens Thursday. A venture led by Fraport won the right in November 2014 to use, operate and manage the 14 regional airports after it offered €1.2 billion for 40 years and promised to pay an annual, guaranteed leasing fee of €22.9 million.

Fraport also pledged to make €330 million in investments over the next four years. Greece is talking to Fraport and a decision should be reached “very soon.” It’s “definite” that Greece won’t proceed with selling other state assets on a list that had been agreed on by the previous government such as water companies, the post office or Public Power Corp, Stathakis said. “We’re trying to work on a different model than privatizing to attract capital and investment such as for the country’s railways and other ports” and Greece is looking at “alternative options to 100% privatization.” The sale of land at Hellenikon, site of Athens’s old airport that is Europe’s largest unused tract of urban real estate, “is an issue under discussion,” Stathakis said. A venture led-by Lamda Development last year agreed to buy the property for €915 million while also committing to spend €1.2 billion on infrastructure at the site.

“..such a swap of our own new bonds with these bonds … would feed Mr. Weidmann with excuses to create problems with the ECB’s QE.”

• Varoufakis Says Debt Swap Fills Draghi’s ‘Soul With Fear’ (Reuters)

Repayment of what Greece owes to the ECB should be pushed into the future, but it is not an option because it fills ECB chief Mario Draghi’s “soul with fear”, Greece’s finance minister said on Thursday. Yanis Varoufakis said Draghi, president of the ECB, cannot risk irritating Germany with such a debt swap because of Berlin’s objection to his bond-buying program. Varoufakis first raised the idea of swapping Greek debt for growth-linked or perpetual bonds when his leftist government came to power earlier this year, But Athens has since dropped the proposal after it got a cool reception from eurozone partners.

The outspoken minister, who has been sidelined in talks with EU and IMF lenders, brought it up again on Thursday, saying €27 billion of bonds owed to the ECB after €6.7 billion worth are repaid in July and August should be pushed back. “What must be done (is that) these €27 billion of bonds that are still held by the ECB should be taken from there and sent overnight to the distant future,” he told parliament. “How could this be done? Through a swap. The idea of a swap between the Greek government and the ECB fills Mr. Draghi’s soul with fear. Because you know that Mr. Draghi is in a big struggle against the Bundesbank, which is fighting against QE. Mr. Weidmann in particular is opposing it.”

Varoufakis was referring to the ECB’s quantitative easing (QE) or bond-buying plan and Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann’s unabashed criticism of it. Varoufakis said the bond-buying plan is “everything for Mr. Draghi” but that “allowing such a swap of our own new bonds with these bonds … would feed Mr. Weidmann with excuses to create problems with the ECB’s QE.” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government stormed to power in January promising it would end austerity and demand a debt writeoff from lenders to make the country’s debt manageable. It has spoken little about debt relief in recent months as it tries to focus on reaching a deal with lenders on a cash-for-reforms deal, which has proved difficult amid a deadlock on pension and labor issues.

I have the impression Syriza is being very polite on this issue.

• Greek Government Defends Itself Over Central Bank Tensions (Reuters)

Greece’s leftist government on Thursday sought to deflect criticism over tensions with the Bank of Greece, saying it respected the bank’s independence but was free to castigate the governor for actions he took as finance minister. Governor Yannis Stournaras’s relations with the government have come under scrutiny in recent days after a newspaper accused him of undermining Greece’s talks with creditors and government officials openly criticized him on other issues. “The Greek government hasn’t opened any issue with Mr. Stournaras. If issues have surfaced, it wasn’t due to the government’s initiative,” government spokesman Gavriil Sakellaridis told reporters. “The issue of the central bank’s independence, which is fully respected by the Greek government, is above all an issue for the central bank to defend.” [..]

Stournaras was appointed central bank governor last June. Before that he was finance minister in the conservative-led government, where he spearheaded Greece’s return to the bond markets in April 2014 after a four-year exile. But he also drew criticism from anti-bailout groups for implementing harsh spending cuts demanded by the EU and IMF. Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis this week was quoted as saying Stournaras’s role in winding down ATEbank – a small lender that gave loans to farmers – in 2012 was a “scandal.” “The criticism by Mr. Lafazanis towards Mr. Stournaras refers to the period that he was finance minister,” Sakellaridis said. “Obviously, today he is a central banker but there can be and should be political criticism over the period that he was a finance minister.”

Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis this week also questioned why Stournaras – who suggested Greece tap an IMF holding account to repay €750 million to the fund this week and avoid default – had not mentioned the funds earlier. The latest tensions flared when the Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper reported over the weekend the Bank of Greece in an e-mail to journalists leaked economic data including deposit outflows during Tsipras’s first 100 days in power. Hours later, officials at Tsipras’s office called on the central bank to deny the report, saying the report, if true, “constitutes a blow to the central bank’s independence.” The Bank of Greece has denied that either Stournaras’s office or the bank’s press office sent such an e-mail.

“Now is the time for the people to join the battle..”

• Syriza Highlights ‘Red Lines’ In Negotiations, Calls On People (Kathimerini)

Even as negotiations with Greece’s creditors enter a critical phase, the political secretariat of SYRIZA has indicated that the party will not back down from its so-called red lines, reaffirming pre-election promises to protect pensioners and workers. In a statement issued late on Thursday after a stormy session of senior party cadres, the secretariat said, “the red lines of the government are also red lines of the Greek people, expressing the interests of workers, the self-employed, pensioners, farmers and young people.” Underlining the need for the debt-racked country to return to a path of growth and social justice, the statement referred to “the persistence of creditors on enforcing the memorandum program of the Samaras government” whom it accused of exercising pressure through politics and by restricting liquidity.

The fixation on austerity was “paving the way for the far-right,” it added. The secretariat stressed that the demands of creditors “cannot be accepted, adding that SYRIZA MPs and officials would continue efforts to inform the Greek people and to invite them to join “a mobilization toward the victory of democracy and dignity.” “Now is the time for the people to join the battle,” it said. The statement followed a feverish session during which Deputy Prime Minister Yiannis Dragasakis is said to have come under fire by many SYRIZA officials for making concessions to creditors. Senior SYRIZA MP and Parliament Speaker Zoe Constantopoulou was said to be among those who claimed the government has ceded too much ground from its pre-election pledges.

Excellent longish essay. “We come with arguments, they reject them, then they say, ‘you’re wasting time’. What does that mean? It’s just saying, agree with us. You’re wasting time between getting elected and doing what we say”.

• Syriza and Greece: Dancing with Austerity (Village.ie)

Dimitrios Tzanakopoulos is Alexis Tsipras’ Chief of Staff. A serious Marxist theorist with an utterly coherent anti-capitalist worldview, he is at the very heart of the new government, directing the affairs of the Prime Minister’s office. He remains “optimistic that there will be a deal” with the partners. “Europe needs to ask if austerity is the future. If not, there must be a solution to these social catastrophes. SYRIZA has promised to find one and this is what we will do”. In many ways the government’s line in negotiations mirrors his Althusserian politics. It views instability as the most important threat for the ruling class and capital accumulation. The election of SYRIZA brought such instability, inserting an unpredictable and politically divergent player into decision-making in Europe.

So, the logic goes, the number one goal of European elites will be to overthrow the government. Not by violent means but by a soft coup, which they are currently attempting to execute by combination of economic strangulation and political humiliation. This instability thesis is a profound challenge to the dominant narrative of capitalism today, which sees it as a system based on risk and reward. But actually it has a long history as a critique, with even moderate figures like Keynes noting instability’s effects on the “animal spirits” of the economy. The prevalence of the word “confidence” in contemporary discourse evidences the degree to which economic and financial players value security. Therefore if they cannot overthrow SYRIZA, and if no capitulation is forthcoming, the team around Alexis Tsipras believe that European elites and the IMF will compromise.

This is because the third option, the last on the table, brings about an explosion of instability: the threat of Grexit from the eurozone. This opinion is shared by Loudovikos Kotsonopoulos, party intellectual and senior advisor in the Economy Ministry. “My prediction is that there will be a compromise. European elites fear a geopolitical realignment. It is very difficult for the European Union to suffer a defeat of such magnitude as a departure of one of its members. Until now the only direction was countries coming into the EU. If this ceased to be the only option it would have significant ramifications. I’m not sure that they can manage such a defeat, and neither are they. But they know as well that we are in trouble if we exit the euro. So it is tense. What are the sides going to give? And how can this be presented as a victory for both?”.

Dimitris Ioannou, writer for party publication Enthemata, is more sceptical about a compromise. “We come with arguments, they reject them, then they say, ‘you’re wasting time’. What does that mean? It’s just saying, agree with us. You’re wasting time between getting elected and doing what we say”.

Peanuts, but nice peanuts.

• Greece Signs EBRD Deal Worth €500 Million A Year (Reuters)

Greece signed an investment deal worth up to €500 million a year with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on Thursday, gaining a rare financial endorsement from the region for its attempts to remain solvent.The EBRD and Greece formally signed the five-year agreement at the development bank’s annual meeting in Georgia. It was approved by the bank’s shareholders in March.“It could help the country’s economic recovery significantly,” Greece’s Economy Ministry said in a statement.The ministry added it should boost the funding options of Greek businesses, especially the small and medium-sized ones that have been hit the hardest by the country’s economic crisis.

The EBRD’s decision to start lending in Greece comes after years of debate at the bank about whether a member of the world’s most advanced monetary union fits with the bank’s role of helping countries make the transition to market economies.The head of the bank, Suma Chakrabarti, has said he hopes to have the first Greek projects in place in coming months but admits Athens leaving the euro would complicate things.New EBRD forecasts on Thursday predicted Greece’s economy would stagnate this year and the bank’s staff warned if it left the euro, the situation would be far worse both for itself and the countries around it.

Congress can’t even read it unhindered. But GE, Apple, Nike and Walmart can.

• You Can’t Read The TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can (Intercept)

[..] who can read the text of the TPP? Not you, it’s classified. Even members of Congress can only look at it one section at a time in the Capitol’s basement, without most of their staff or the ability to keep notes. But there’s an exception: if you’re part of one of 28 U.S. government-appointed trade advisory committees providing advice to the U.S. negotiators. The committees with the most access to what’s going on in the negotiations are 16 “Industry Trade Advisory Committees,” whose members include AT&T, General Electric, Apple, Dow Chemical, Nike, Walmart and the American Petroleum Institute. The TPP is an international trade agreement currently being negotiated between the US and 11 other countries, including Japan, Australia, Chile, Singapore and Malaysia.

Among other things, it could could strengthen copyright laws, limit efforts at food safety reform and allow domestic policies to be contested by corporations in an international court. Its impact is expected to be sweeping, yet venues for public input hardly exist. Industry Trade Advisory Committees, or ITACs, are cousins to Federal Advisory Committees like the National Petroleum Council that I wrote about recently. However, ITACs are functionally exempt from many of the transparency rules that generally govern Federal Advisory Committees, and their communications are largely shielded from FOIA in order to protect “third party commercial and/or financial information from disclosure.” And even if for some reason they wanted to tell someone what they’re doing, members must sign non-disclosure agreements so they can’t “compromise” government negotiating goals. Finally, they also escape requirements to balance their industry members with representatives from public interest groups.

Angela needs to be careful.

• Secrets, Betrayals and Merkel’s Risky Silence in the NSA Scandal (Spiegel)

The world of politics abounds with tales of secrets and betrayals, of collective silence and the indiscretion of individuals. Tales of trust and mistrust. The shadowy world of espionage is no different — its secrets and betrayals legendary. But Sigmar Gabriel’s treachery stands out nonetheless. The German vice chancellor recently announced that Angela Merkel had twice assured him that the NSA and Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), had never spied on German companies. In fact, in 2008 the Americans began reneging on agreements and going too far – much too far. They spied on aviation giant Airbus, among others. In August 2013, Angela Merkel had her then Chief of Staff Ronald Pofalla announce that the NSA was doing “nothing that damaged German interests.”

In fact, the Chancellery knew better. But Merkel refrained from taking action, opting instead to navigate her way through the situation by saying nothing. Nearly two years ago, after the information leaked by Edward Snowden first surfaced, she said she didn’t really know what it was all about. The message she’s been conveying ever since is that it’s all terribly technical and not all that important, really. The chancellor’s strategy had the desired effect. The public saw her as a victim. The general election in 2013 should have been dominated by the NSA spying scandal, but Merkel emerged unscathed, triumphant. Newspapers like the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung naively wrote that secret services just happen to spy — and, after all, we need intelligence, so what is one to do?

But the intelligence services and the US had overreached. Merkel could have told them exactly how far was too far. She could have backed their activities and at the same time made sure they didn’t get out of hand. In other words, she could have taken charge. When Merkel assumed office in 2005, she took an oath vowing to protect the German people from harm. It’s her job to protect German companies and the public when US secret services act as though Germany is not a sovereign nation. But people in power often fail to notice when the very quality that brought about their rise to the top turns into a weakness, a danger and even their ultimate undoing.

Merkel tends to lead by stealth. She doesn’t care for rhetoric and confrontation and she avoids quick decisions. These might not be bad qualities, but they don’t suit a head of government. Many of her predecessors loved nothing more than decisiveness and debate. It was why they sought power in the first place. But Merkel seems to worry that she will make enemies with plain speaking, so she chooses to remain close-lipped in crises such as this one.

“As for Sarao’s complaints going anywhere else: fear not, they will – just as soon as the market crashes.”

• Flash Crash Patsy Complained Over 100 Times About Real Market Manipulators (ZH)

Several weeks ago, when the CFTC and DOJ’s laughable attempt to scapegoat the May 2010 flash crash on the actions of a live-in-his-parents-basement UK trader, we explained “Why Sarao Is The Flash Crash Patsy: He Threatened To Expose The “Mass Manipulation Of High Frequency Nerds.” It now turns out that he not only threatened to expose the real market manipulators, but he acctually did it. More than 100 times.

Navinder Singh Sarao, the trader arrested last month on U.S. charges he manipulated futures prices and contributed to the May 2010 “flash crash,” leveled claims of similar misconduct against other traders before his arrest. Mr. Sarao complained to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he traded futures contracts, more than 100 times over the past several years about traders he believed were engaging in manipulative conduct, people familiar with the matter said. His last complaint came just weeks before he was arrested on Justice Department charges, one of the people said.

Previously released documents have shown Mr. Sarao urging exchanges to target high-frequency trading practices he viewed as manipulative, but the frequency and extent of his complaints weren’t known. His complaints underscore the extent to which Mr. Sarao viewed his own trading as a legitimate counter to other high-speed traders. Mr. Sarao appears to have filed an unusually large volume of complaints. “That would be considered a high number,” said Ray Cahnman, a longtime futures trader and chairman of the proprietary trading firm Transmarket. “Most people would break down before they get to 100 because they realize the complaints aren’t going anywhere,” he said.

Sarao’s complaints got him somewhere: straight to prison. And now we know why. As for Sarao’s complaints going anywhere else: fear not, they will – just as soon as the market crashes. Because not only will the next market crash be epic, it will be blamed entirely on the same HFTs that for the past 7 years worked in tandem with the central banks – the source of all capital misallocation decisions – in the creation of the biggest asset bubble of all time.

You may know Syngenta under any one of these names: Imperial Chemical Industries, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Geigy, Sandoz, Ciba.

• Monsanto’s Syngenta Gambit Hinges On Sale Of Seed Businesses (Reuters)

U.S. seeds giant Monsanto is trying to line up buyers for assets worth up to $8 billion to appease competition authorities before making a fresh takeover approach for Swiss Syngenta, possibly within three weeks, industry sources said. Monsanto is expected to tap German chemicals group BASF, an existing joint venture partner, as it seeks a buyer for the U.S. seeds business of Syngenta, which can’t be part of its proposed takeover, sources said. The St. Louis-based group is after Syngenta for its industry-leading crop chemicals, driven by the idea that seeds and pesticides will be better sold and developed together.

Monsanto produces glyphosate, or Roundup, the world’s most widely used broad-spectrum herbicide, and has engineered a range of proprietary crops that resist it. Syngenta closely integrated its seeds and crop chemicals operations in 2011 and Monsanto is expected to unravel some of the main strategic decisions that shaped the group over the last four years – selling off seeds and merging Syngenta’s crop chemicals with Monsanto’s seeds. Global antitrust authorities are expected to demand remedies to reshape the balance of power in the crop protection industry before any combination is allowed.

Syngenta’s management will not want to be seen backing a deal that is then shot down by antitrust watchdogs, two industry sources said. Monsanto commands about a quarter of the $40 billion global seeds market while Syngenta’s own seeds business has a global market share of 8%. The Swiss group’s seeds business could be worth between $6 billion and more than $8 billion, according to analysts. It will have to be sold because authorities are expected to block Monsanto from entrenching its dominance of the U.S. soy and corn seeds market.

“Of 804 natural habitats assessed by the European Environment Agency for the report, 77% were deemed to be in a poor condition..”

• A Third Of Europe’s Birds Under Threat (Guardian)

One in three European birds is endangered, according to a leaked version of the most comprehensive study of Europe’s wildlife and natural habitats ever produced. The EU State of Nature report, seen by the Guardian, paints a picture of dramatic decline among once common avian species, and also warns that ecosystems are struggling to cope with the impact of human activity. Turtle dove populations have plunged by 90% or more since 1980 and could soon be placed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) ‘red list’ of threatened species. Numbers of skylark and ortolan bunting, a songbird illegally hunted and eaten whole in France, have fallen by around half.

Of 804 natural habitats assessed by the European Environment Agency for the report, 77% were deemed to be in a poor condition, with almost a third having deteriorated since a study in 2006. Just 4% were found to be improving. The wide-ranging technical survey made use of data compiled by 27 EU countries between 2007-2012, and will be released by the European Commission later this year. “The report clearly shows that Europe’s wildlife and natural habitats are in crisis,” said Andreas Baumueller, the head of WWF Europe’s natural resources unit. “Our habitats are slowly dying and our natural capital – reflected by species such as birds and butterflies – is being put under enormous pressure from unsustainable agriculture and land use policies.”

The study finds that intensive farming and changes to natural terrain pose the greatest threat to Europe’s flora and fauna, even though biodiversity loss costs the EU an estimated €450bn per year, or 3% of GDP. Agriculture accounts for two-thirds of EU land use. The destruction or conversion of grasslands, heathlands and scrub to grow more crops – often using pesticides – has decimated many bird populations. Monoculture farming, changes in grazing regimes, and the removal of natural vegetation and landscape have added to the pressure. The report also lists changes to waterways, fragmentation of habitats and human activities such as hunting, trapping, poisoning and poaching as specific threats to birdlife.

Ha!

• Your Attention Span Is Now Less Than That Of A Goldfish (OC)

People now have shorter attention spans than goldfish — and our always-on portable devices may be to blame, a new study suggests. The study from Microsoft draws on surveys of more than 2,000 Canadians who played games online in order to determine the impact that pocket-sized devices and the increased availability of digital media and information are having on everyday life. Researchers also did in-lab monitoring, using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to monitor brain activity of 112 people. Among the findings of the 54-page study was that, thanks to our desire to always be connected, people can multi-task like never before. However, our attention spans have fallen from an average of 12 seconds in the year 2000 to just eight seconds today.

A goldfish is believed to have a nine-second attention span on average, the study says. “Canadians with more digital lifestyles (those who consume more media, are multi-screeners, social media enthusiasts, or earlier adopters of technology) struggle to focus in environments where prolonged attention is needed,” reads the study. “While digital lifestyles decrease sustained attention overall, it’s only true in the long-term. Early adopters and heavy social media users front load their attention and have more intermittent bursts of high attention. They’re better at identifying what they want/don’t want to engage with and need less to process and commit things to memory.”

Microsoft’s data is supported by similar findings released by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information and the National Library of Medicine in the U.S. Among the most concerning findings of the study is our declining ability to sustain our focus during repetitive activities: 44% of respondents said they had to concentrate really hard to stay focused on tasks, while 37% said they were unable to make the best use of their time, forcing them to work late evenings and or weekends.

Debt Rattle April 19 2015

Apr 192015

April 19, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:38 am Finance Tagged with: Australia, Bernanke, China, college, Draghi, drought, Finland, Greece, IMF, migrants, pope, Russia 3 Responses »

DPC Peanut stand, New York 1900

• At Global Economic Gathering, US Primacy Is Seen as Ebbing (NY Times)

• IMF Credibility Faces Tipping Point Over Greece (USA Today)

• ‘Bernanke To Go Down As One Of The Most Vilified People Of The Century’ (CNBC)

• Markets Face New Threat As US Fed Ponders Interest Rate Rise (Guardian)

• Most Americans Think College Is Out of Reach (Bloomberg)

• Record Drop In House Prices Suggests China Is Already In A Recession (Zero Hedge)

• Germany FinMin Schaeuble Worried About China’s Debt And Shadow Banking (BIA)

• Europe Ready For Grexit Contagion As Athens Gets Closer To Russian Cash (AEP)

• ECB’s Draghi Says Urgent That Greece Strikes Deal With Creditors (Bloomberg)

• Draghi Warns Of Uncharted Waters If Greece Crisis Deteriorates (FT)

• Greece Wants EU/IMF Deal But Impasse Could Bring Referendum (Reuters)

• Moscow Denies Planning Multibillion Credit To Greece (RT)

• Finns Set to Topple Government as Vote Focuses on Economic Pain (Bloomberg)

• How Sleepy Finland Could Tear The Euro Apart (Telegraph)

• Australia, The Latest Country With Negative Interest Rates (Simon Black)

• California’s New Drought Rules Would Require Cuts of Up to 36% (Bloomberg)

• Pope Francis Urges EU To Do More To Help Italy With Flood Of Migrants (CT)

• Australia Government In Secret Bid To Hand Back Asylum Seekers To Vietnam (SMH)

• Air-Pocalypse: Breathing Poison In The World’s Most Polluted City (BBC)

But wait, didn’t Obama say the US has to set the rules for the entire world?

• At Global Economic Gathering, US Primacy Is Seen as Ebbing (NY Times)

As world leaders converge [in Washington] for their semiannual trek to the capital of what is still the world’s most powerful economy, concern is rising in many quarters that the United States is retreating from global economic leadership just when it is needed most. The spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank have filled Washington with motorcades and traffic jams and loaded the schedules of President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. But they have also highlighted what some in Washington and around the world see as a United States government so bitterly divided that it is on the verge of ceding the global economic stage it built at the end of World War II and has largely directed ever since. “It’s almost handing over legitimacy to the rising powers,” Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser to the government of India, said of the United States.

“People can’t be too public about these things, but I would argue this is the single most important issue of these spring meetings.” Other officials attending the meetings this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity, agreed that the role of the United States around the world was at the top of their concerns. Washington’s retreat is not so much by intent, Mr. Subramanian said, but a result of dysfunction and a lack of resources to project economic power the way it once did. Because of tight budgets and competing financial demands, the United States is less able to maintain its economic power, and because of political infighting, it has been unable to formally share it either.

Experts say that is giving rise to a more chaotic global shift, especially toward China, which even Obama administration officials worry is extending its economic influence in Asia and elsewhere without following the higher standards for environmental protection, worker rights and business transparency that have become the norms among Western institutions. President Obama, while trying to hold the stage, clearly recognizes the challenge. Pitching his efforts to secure a major trade accord with 11 other Pacific nations, he told reporters on Friday: “The fastest-growing markets, the most populous markets, are going to be in Asia, and if we do not help to shape the rules so that our businesses and our workers can compete in those markets, then China will set up the rules that advantage Chinese workers and Chinese businesses.”

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Lew, while conceding the growing unease, hotly contested the notion of any diminution of the American position. “There is always a lot of noise in Washington; I’m not going to pretend this is an exception,” he said. “But the United States’ voice is heard quite clearly in gatherings like this.”

All managing directors are eventually arrested.

• IMF Credibility Faces Tipping Point Over Greece (USA Today)

It was perhaps inevitable that the Greek crisis would hijack the spring meeting of International Monetary Fund this week, but the damage to the international lending agency could grow much worse as the situation in Europe becomes increasingly acute. The standoff between a new Greek government seeking debt relief after five years of grinding recession and authorities at the IMF and European Union, who were unbending in their demands to follow through on further austerity measures to get more bailout money, dominated discussions at the meeting that brings economic policymakers from around the world.

The Greek imbroglio overshadowed other messages from IMF officials this week regarding new sources of financial instability in the world, the need to stimulate economies to more vigorous growth and even discussion about other financial and geopolitical hot spots, such as Ukraine. But the unwillingness of IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and her staff to countenance any relief for Greece stands to make the agency an accessory to the potential turmoil that could spread well beyond Greece as the chances for a reasonable, agreed solution to the crisis grow slim. A debacle in Greece would further tarnish the reputation of an agency that has already seen its credibility and influence diminished.

It was perhaps a fitting sideshow to the drama in Washington that a former IMF managing director, Rodrigo Rato, was briefly detained Thursday in Spain as part of a money-laundering investigation and may be charged in the case, even as he is being investigated for other infractions. Rato led the IMF from 2004 to 2007, and was succeeded by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a political heavyweight who aspired to the presidency of France but who had to leave the IMF post under a cloud of scandal in 2011 over charges of sexual assault against a New York hotel maid. Lagarde, then French finance minister, was parachuted in to take his place, though she herself is involved in a long-running judicial probe over an arbitration process she approved that awarded half a billion dollars to a businessman with ties to her center-right political party.

The legal travails of a succession of IMF leaders have diminished its ability to take the moral high ground in forcing lenders to implement the difficult policy measures that are the conditions for its loans. But that is not the only problem. The neoliberal economic principles enshrined in the IMF economic prescription — which generally call for a reduction in government spending and higher taxes even in the midst of recession — are part of a so-called “Washington consensus” that is finding very little consensus in other parts of the world.

Former IMF economist Peter Doyle, a 20-year veteran who left the agency in anger in 2012 saying he was “ashamed” he had ever worked there, this week urged his fellow economists “to turn on the IMF in public.” Citing several leading economists by name, Doyle noted they had expressed support of the Greek position sotto voce. He called upon these economists to “shout, together, right now,” to be on the record against the IMF stance before the “Euro-tinder box” explodes.

Along with Monti, Draghi, Kuroda and Yellen.

• ‘Bernanke To Go Down As One Of The Most Vilified People Of The Century’ (CNBC)

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke is heading down a well-beaten path: shuffling through the revolving door between Washington’s policy circles and Wall Street’s big money institutions. In a move announced on Thursday, he’s going from his former position at the Federal Reserve to Wall Street as a senior adviser at Citadel. The latter is what has “Fast Money” trader Guy Adami—and a number of other Street watchers—outraged. The $25 billion hedge fund, Citadel, in a statement said, “Dr. Bernanke will consult with Citadel teams on developments in monetary policy, financial markets and the global economy.” Adding a note from its founder and CEO Ken Griffin, “He has extraordinary knowledge of the global economy and his insights on monetary policy and the capital markets will be extremely valuable to our team and to our investors.”

Adami, however, said this week on Thursday’s Fast Money of Bernanke’s new role: “It’s wrong. It’s wrong on so many levels.” Bernanke “was a hero for a month, [and now] he’s going to go down as one of the most vilified people of the 21st century. Mark my words,” the trader added. In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and a columnist for the New York Times, Bernanke said he understood the concerns about going from Washington to Wall Street. He said he decided in Citadel because the hedge fund “is not regulated by the Federal Reserve and I won’t be doing lobbying of any sort.” He also said banks had approached him about jobs but he declined because “wanted to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest” by working for an institution the Fed does regulate.

Bernanke is not the first and likely won’t be the last federal worker to jump to Wall Street. In 2008 after handing over the reins to Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan joined hedge fund Paulson & Co. as an adviser. And just last month, Ex-Fed Governor Jeremy Stein joined hedge fund Blue Mountain Capital Management. “He shouldn’t have been allowed to leave the Fed, number one,” Adami stated. “He should have saw [quantitative easing] through, in my opinion, and for him to go to a place that can take advantage of the information that he has privy to, it’s just wrong.” Indeed, Wall Street observers were broadly critical of Bernanke’s move into the world of big money hedge funds. The Washington Post said this week that the former Fed chief “deserves a seven figure sinecure” based on hisHerculean efforts to save the world economy from another Great Depression.

There are no markets left, only casinos.

• Markets Face New Threat As US Fed Ponders Interest Rate Rise (Guardian)

The moment US central bank chief Janet Yellen presses the button will be a massive economic event. The prospect that higher interest rates in the world’s largest economy could come this year has already sent the dollar surging against the pound and euro. It has also fuelled fears of a meltdown in countries that have borrowed heavily in the US currency. Borrowing is inherently risky, all the more so when the interest rate can change at short notice. Higher costs for those that have borrowed in dollars could cripple companies in Brazil and Turkey that were enticed by cheap credit to fund a new factory or office building, or just to pay the wages. At the IMF’s spring meeting last week, chief economist Olivier Blanchard dismissed these concerns, arguing that companies may have hedged their position, while investors and finance ministers were well prepared.

But a succession of market shocks in the last two years has convinced many in the financial community that a bigger crash is coming. There have been violent movements in currencies, bonds and commodity prices, especially crude oil and metals. A rise in US interest rates could add to this already volatile situation and drag stock markets towards another sudden crash. The IMF discussed the context in which another financial crash could occur in its latest financial stability report. It highlighted how any shock can send investors fleeing; with only sellers in the market, the price keeps plunging until someone believes it has gone far enough and starts buying. The nervous state of markets these days means there is generally either a surplus of buyers or a surplus of sellers; only rarely have we seen periods of calm with roughly equal numbers.

Last January, for instance, the Swiss franc soared an unprecedented 30% after the central bank conceded that tracking the ailing euro was no longer possible. The previous year, markets had been rocked by the first hint from the US that it would end the era of ultra-cheap credit. It happened after former Fed boss Ben Bernanke let slip that he might stop pumping funds into the US economy through quantitative easing. The “taper tantrum” – referring to the premature “tapering” of QE – sent shock waves through world markets and forced a clarification from the Fed to steady the ship. The IMF’s financial stability report discussed the potential for Taper Tantrum II. The scenario was worse, yet the warning was described by Larry Fink, boss of BlackRock, the world’s biggest private investment fund, as too optimistic.

He is concerned about the European insurance industry, which must pay returns on pensions and other products at a time when the European Central Bank has been driving interest rates in much short-term government debt below zero; in other words, rather than earning interest on government bonds, insurers are paying to park their money in such assets. How could they survive for long under this regime, he asked. The IMF posed the same question, but again expected everything to work out for the best, somehow.

Young people can’t afford a home, can’t afford an education. What a sad country it has become. And there‘s much worse to come yet.

• Most Americans Think College Is Out of Reach (Bloomberg)

Most Americans believe people who want to go to college can get in somewhere—they just don’t think they’d be able to afford it, according to a new Gallup-Lumina Foundation poll. While 61% of adults believe education beyond high school is available to anyone who needs it, only 21% agree that it’s affordable, according to the poll results, released on Thursday. Some racial groups were much more optimistic than others. 51% of Hispanic adults said higher education is still affordable, Gallup found. Just 19% of black adults and 17% of white adults agreed. The results, based on a survey of 1,533 adults who were contacted from November through December 2014, show there’s a sizable gap between the share of Americans who believe people can merely access college and those who believe people can still afford it.

“If a bachelor’s degree is one important way for today’s young adults to achieve the American dream, affordability in particular could jeopardize that dream,” the report said. Tuition at public colleges has risen more than 250% over the last 30 years, the two organizations noted. At the same time, financial aid hasn’t kept up. Students have been leaving school with record amounts of debt: In a separate study, Gallup and Purdue University found more than a third of students who graduated college from 2000 to 2014 were saddled with more than $25,000 in loans. Even if Americans believe anyone, in theory, could find their way to a college classroom, they’re not optimistic anyone could pay to stay there.

And still many keep claiming China will be just fine.

• Record Drop In House Prices Suggests China Is Already In A Recession (Zero Hedge)

Another month, and another confirmation that China’s hard landing is if not here, then likely mere months away. Overnight, the NBS reported that in March, Chinese house prices dropped in 69 of 70 cities compared to a year ago. According to Goldman’s seasonal adjustments, in March home prices dropped another 0.5% from February, the same as the prior month’s decline, suggesting that the February 28 rate cut hasn’t done much to boost housing spirits. However, it is the annual data that truly stands out, because with a drop of 6.1% this was the biggest drop in Chinese house prices in history.

To be sure, the PBOC is now scrambling to halt what, unless it is stopped, will become a full-blown hard landing in months, if it isn’t already. As a result, as shown in the chart below it has recently engaged in several easing steps, with many more to come according to the sell-side consensus. So far these have failed to stimulate the overall economy, which continues to be pressured by a deflation-importing world, but have certainly lead to a massive surge in the Chinese stock market. Incidentally, the ongoing collapse in Chinese home prices is precisely why the PBOC and the Politburo have both done everything in their power to substitute the burst housing bubble with another: that of stocks, by pushing everyone to invest as much as possible in the stock market, leading to the biggest and fastest liquidity and margin debt-driven bubble in history.

Unfortunately for China, as we have shown before, all Chinese attempts to do what every self-respecting Keynesian would do, i.e., replace one bubble with another, are doomed to fail for the simple reason that unlike in the US, where the bulk of assets are in financial form, in China 75% of all household wealth is in real estate. [..]

And this is where things get scarier, because if one compares the history of the Chinese and US housing bubbles, one observes that it was when US housing had dropped by about 6% following their all time highs in November 2005, that the US entered a recession. This is precisely where China is now: a 6.1% drop following the all time high peak in January of 2014. If the last US recession is any indication, the Chinese economy is now contracting! So much for hopes of 7% GDP growth this year. The good news, if any, is that Chinese home prices have another 12% to drop before China, which may or may not be in a recession, suffer the US equivalent of the Lehman bankruptcy.

All you need to know: “..debt has nearly quadrupled since 2007”.

• Germany FinMin Schaeuble Worried About China’s Debt And Shadow Banking (BIA)

Should we concerned about growing debt levels around the world? Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, certainly seems to thinks so, stating overnight that debt levels in the global economy continue to give cause for concern. Singling out China in particular, Schaeuble noted that debt has nearly quadrupled since 2007, adding that its growth appears to be built on debt, driven by a real estate boom and shadow banks. Certainly, according to McKinsey’s research, total outstanding debt in China increased from $US7.4 trillion in 2007 to $US28.2 trillion in 2014. That figure, expressed as a percentage of GDP, equates to 282% of total output, higher than the likes of other G20 nations such as the US, Canada, Germany, South Korea and Australia. With China slowing and expectations for further monetary and fiscal easing growing by the day, the concerns raised by Schaeuble may well amplify from here.

“There will not be the slightest privatisation in the country, particularly of strategic sectors of the economy.”

• Europe Ready For Grexit Contagion As Athens Gets Closer To Russian Cash (AEP)

The ECB has warned that a rupture of monetary union and Greek exit from the euro could have dramatic consequences, but insisted that it has enough powerful weapons to avert contagion. Mario Draghi, the ECB’s president, said it would be far better for everybody if Greece recovers within EMU but made it clear that the currency bloc is no longer vulnerable to the immediate chain-reaction seen in earlier phases of the debt crisis. This sends an implicit message to the radical-Left Syriza government that it cannot hope to secure better terms from EMU creditors by threatening to unleash mayhem. “We have enough instruments at this point of time, the OMT (bond-buying plan), QE, and so on, which though designed for other purposes could certainly be used in a crisis if needed,” said Mr Draghi, speaking after a series of tense meetings at the IMF.

“We are better equipped than we were in 2012, 2011.” In effect, the ECB now has the license to act as a full lender-of-last-resort and mop up the bond markets of Portugal, Spain, or Italy, preventing yields from rising. Yet Syriza appears to be countering such pressure with its own foreign policy gambits as events move with electrifying speed in Athens. Greek sources have told The Telegraph that Syriza may sign a deal with Russia for Gazprom’s “Turkish Stream” pipeline project as soon as next week, unlocking as much as €3bn to €5bn in advance funding. This confirms a report in Germany’s Spiegel magazine, initially denied by both the Russian and Greek governments. It is understood that the deal is being managed by Panagiotis Lafazanis, Greece’s energy minister and head of Syriza’s militant Left Platform, a figure with long-standing ties to Moscow.

Mr Lafazanis warned defiantly on Saturday that Syriza would not “betray the people’s mandate” even if this means a full-blown clash with the creditor powers. “There can’t be a deal with neo-liberal, neo-colonial powers that rule the EU and the IMF unless Greece really threatens their deep economic and geo-strategic interests. We still do not know our own strength,” he told Greek television. Mr Tsipras visited the Kremlin last month insisting he would pursue an independent foreign policy “Several of the so-called partners and certainly some in the IMF want to denigrate and humiliate our government, blackmailing us to implement measures against the working classes,” added Mr Lafazanis. “There will not be the slightest privatisation in the country, particularly of strategic sectors of the economy.”

Draghi’s way out of his league.

• ECB’s Draghi Says Urgent That Greece Strikes Deal With Creditors (Bloomberg)

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said it is urgent that Greece strikes a deal with creditors, although its banks continue to meet the requirements for Emergency Liquidity Assistance. “ELA will continue to be given to the banks if they’re judged to be solvent and if they have adequate collateral which is the case now,” Draghi told reporters on Saturday at the International Monetary Fund’s meetings in Washington. The Frankfurt-based ECB decides on Greece’s financial lifeline on a weekly basis. The funding has so far helped defer a financial meltdown as euro-area governments hold back bailout money, complaining that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras must do more to revamp his country’s economy.

Draghi said “much more work is needed now and it’s urgent” if Greece and its creditors are to strike a deal to release aid. He said any package of policies should produce “growth, fairness, fiscal sustainability and financial stability.” “We all want Greece to succeed,” he said. “The answer is in the hands of the Greek government.” While Europe is better equipped to deal with any fallout in financial markets if Greek negotiations fail than it was when it first fell into crisis, Draghi said the region is still in “uncharted waters.” Draghi said the euro zone economy is strengthening after the ECB began a €1.1 trillion bond-buying program last month. Still, he warned an extended period of low interest rates could prove “fertile ground” for instability in financial markets. “We should be alert to these risks,” Draghi said, adding the risk was not currently a reason to tighten monetary policy.

And here he admits he doesn’t have a clue.

• Draghi Warns Of Uncharted Waters If Greece Crisis Deteriorates (FT)

Mario Draghi said the euro area was better equipped than it had been in the past to deal with a new Greek crisis but warned of uncharted waters if the situation were to deteriorate badly. The ECB president called for the resumption of detailed discussions aimed at resolving the country’s debt woes and urged the Greek authorities to bring forward proposals that ensured fairness, growth, fiscal stability, financial stability. Asked about the risks of contagion from a new flare-up in Greece, he said: we have enough instruments at this point in time … which although they have been designed for other purposes would certainly be used at a crisis time if needed. The two tools he referred to were the ECB’s so-called outright monetary transactions, which have never been used, and Quantitative Easing, which the ECB launched in January.

He added: we are better equipped than we were in 2012, 2011 and 2010. However Mr Draghi added: Having said that, we are certainly entering into uncharted waters if the crisis were to precipitate, and it is very premature to make any speculation about it. The ECB president was speaking following meetings in Washington that have been overshadowed by renewed fears about the risk of a Greek debt default and possible exit from the euro. US Treasury secretary Jack Lew warned on Friday that a full-blown crisis in Greece would cast a new shadow of uncertainty over the European and global economies, as he put pressure on Athens to come forward urgently with detailed reforms to its economy. Mr Lew said that while financial exposures to Greece had changed significantly since the turmoil of 2012, it was impossible to know how markets would respond to a default.

“In the back of our minds these are possibilities of finding a way out, if there is a dead end.”

• Greece Wants EU/IMF Deal But Impasse Could Bring Referendum (Reuters)

Greece aims for a deal with its creditors over a reforms package but will not retreat from its red lines, the country’s deputy prime minister told the Sunday newspaper To Vima, not ruling out a referendum or early polls if talks reach an impasse. Athens is stuck in negotiations with its euro zone partners and the International Monetary Fund over economic reforms required by the lenders to unlock remaining bailout aid. Ongoing talks are not expected to produce a deal for the approval of euro zone finance ministers at their next meeting in Riga on April 24 as progress is painfully slow. “Our objective is a viable solution inside the euro,” Yanis Dragasakis told the paper. “We will not back off from the red lines we have set.”

Asked whether the government had thought of calling a referendum or even going to the polls if talks become deadlocked, Dragasakis said this could be a possibility, although the government’s goal was to reach an agreement. “In the back of our minds these are possibilities of finding a way out, if there is a dead end. The aim is (to reach) an agreement.” Greece is quickly running out of cash and in the next few weeks may face a choice of either paying salaries and pensions or paying back loans from the International Monetary Fund. Shut out of bond markets, Athens could get more loans from both the IMF and euro zone governments, but it would first have to implement reforms, agreed with the creditors, to make its finances sustainable and its economy more competitive. The leftist-led government does not want to implement measures including cuts in pensions as it won elections in late January on pledges to end austerity.

A credit is not the same as an advance payment.

• Moscow Denies Planning Multibillion Credit To Greece (RT)

Russia denied media reports that it is going to give Greece a loan of up to $5 billion as advance payment for future transit profits from a future gas pipeline. The sum was mooted by the German magazine Spiegel. Greece is expected to shortly join a joint Russian-Turkish pipeline project that will pump Russian gas to Europe via Turkey. The magazine cited a senior source in the Greek government as saying that the country would get from $3 billion to $5 billion in credit as part of the deal. It was reportedly agreed during Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ visit to Moscow last week. But on Saturday, the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no such loan is planned.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin said himself during the media conference that nobody asked for our help. Naturally energy cooperation was discussed. Naturally, the parties of the high level talks agreed to work out all details of these issues at an expert level. Russia didn’t offer financial help because it was not asked,” the spokesman told the Russian radio station Business FM. Earlier Greek and Russian officials said an energy deal that would have Greece join the Turkish stream project would be inked in a matter of days, but no exact date or particular terms were given. If Russia did loan money to Greece, it would help it deal with a looming national default. The new Greek government is in difficult negotiations with Germany and the IMF to secure further loans to help its economy.

Anti-euro gets a foot in the door.

• Finns Set to Topple Government as Vote Focuses on Economic Pain (Bloomberg)

Finns look set to vote out a government marred by political infighting and elect a party led by a self-made millionaire promising a business-driven recovery. After three years of economic decline, Finland’s next government will need to fix chronic budget deficits, a debt load that’s set to breach European Union limits, rising unemployment and economic growth that’s about half the average of the euro zone. Juha Sipila, who leads the opposition Center Party, has promised business-friendly policies he says will create 200,000 private-sector jobs. His party is polling about 6% ahead of the next-biggest groups, according to newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. If he wins Sunday’s vote, Sipila will probably try to form a majority coalition that’s likely to include the euro-skeptic The Finns party.

“Putting together a new, workable government that can turn around Finland’s public finances is the most important economic policy step,” Anssi Rantala, chief economist at Aktia Bank Oyj, said by phone. “The government has to take seriously the gigantic deficits we have in state and municipal budgets, and it has to change the way it implements austerity: most has been through tax increases.” Austerity isn’t what splits Finland’s political parties. All major groups have pledged some combination of belt-tightening and growth policies. The Finance Ministry estimates €6 billion euros of austerity measures are needed by 2019 to prevent debt reaching 70% of gross domestic product. It also says there’s no scope to raise taxes without stifling economic growth.

Lovely prospect.

• How Sleepy Finland Could Tear The Euro Apart (Telegraph)

Finland is the unlikely stage for the latest turn in Greece’s interminable eurozone drama this weekend. With events having decamped temporarily to Washington DC, Athens will be keeping half an eye on developments in Helsinki, where the Nordic state of just 5.4m people heads for the polls on Sunday. In the five years since Greece’s financial woes were revealed to the world, it has been sleepy Finland which has emerged as the most trenchant critic of EU largesse to the indebted Mediterranean. The outcome of the country’s general election could now determine Greece’s future in the monetary union. In a leaked memo seen last month, it was revealed that the Finns had already drawn up contingency plans for a Greek exit from the euro.

Although ostensibly a sensible measure for any finance ministry to contemplate, the document confirmed the Finns’ position as the most uncompromising of the EU’s creditor nations. The reputation is well-deserved. At the height of Greece’s bail-out drama in 2011, Helsinki negotiated an unprecedented bilateral agreement with Athens, receiving €1bn in collateral in return for supporting a rescue deal. A year later, the Finns were prime candidates to become the first dissenters to voluntarily break the sanctity of the monetary union. “We have to be prepared,” the country’s then foreign minister told the Telegraph three years ago. Greece’s current impasse is also partly a result of Finnish obstinacy.

Helsinki was one of the main obstacles to securing a long-term extension to Greece’s bail-out programme under the previous Athens government late last year. The eventual compromise of a three-month, rather than six-month reprieve, has seen the new Leftist regime scramble desperately for cash since February. With the situation in Athens deteriorating by the day, both Finland’s prime minsiter and central bank governor have eschewed high-minded rhetoric about European unity, to insist creditors should be ready to pull the plug on Greece. But unlike its fellow creditor giant Germany, Finland is more economic laggard than European powerhouse. Having been mired in a three-year recession, the country heads to the polls with economic output still 5pc below its pre-crisis levels.

Finland has suffered an economic downturn of almost Greek proportions. The boon from falling oil prices and launch of eurozone QE will still only see the economy expand at a paltry 0.8pc this year, worse only to Italy and Cyprus. Stagnating growth saw Finland stripped of its much coveted Triple-A sovereign debt rating last year. The IMF now recommends a cocktail of structural reforms and fiscal consolidation that would make officials in Athens bristle. “There is no sympathy for Greece any more, especially because our own economy is struggling,” says Jan von Gerich, strategist at Nordea bank in Helsinki.

“Everyone believed that it would all work out OK. Then one day it didn’t.”

• Australia, The Latest Country With Negative Interest Rates (Simon Black)

Let’s talk about idiots. Somewhere out there, some absurdly well-paid banker just placed his investors’ capital in yet another financial instrument which is guaranteed to lose money: Australian government debt. 47 investors participated in the Australian government’s $200 million bond tender; the participants typically bid the amount they’re willing to pay, and the highest bids win the auction. In this case, and for the first time in Australia, every single one of the 47 bidders offered a price so high that it implies a negative interest rate. Even the lowest bid in the auction, for example, implied a net loss… or an effective yield of NEGATIVE 0.015%. The highest price implied a yield of negative 0.085%. What’s really bizarre is that this particular issue was for ‘inflation-linked’ bonds.

Which means that if the government’s official monkey math shows that inflation is falling, the yield could actually become even MORE NEGATIVE. Insane? Of course. But here’s the thing. These bankers aren’t investing their own money. It’s not like some guy is taking his million dollar bonus and saying, “Hey I think I’ll go buy some government debt that guarantees I’ll lose money.” No. He buys a Maserati. Then he picks up this garbage debt with his customers’ money. Not only is this idiotic, it’s borderline criminal. At a minimum it’s seriously unethical. Banks and other money managers have a solemn obligation… a fiduciary responsibility that comes with the sacred charge of safeguarding other people’s money. Just like the golden rule, this obligation is very simple: take care for other people’s money even more than you care for their own.

But that went out the window a long time ago. Back in the 1500s, Renaissance-era merchant bankers risked their own capital alongside their customers, doing meaningful deals that financed exploration and the expansion of world trade. Now it’s all about commissions, obtuse regulations, and following the latest banking fad. This is officially now the latest banking fad—buying government bonds at negative yields. You’ll remember a few years ago when the latest banking fad was handing out no-money-down mortgages to dead people and unemployed bus drivers… or buying “AAA-rated” bonds which pooled these subprime loans together. That didn’t exactly work out so well. Neither will this. In fact there are plenty of similarities between today’s negative interest rates and the early 2000s housing bubble.

Back then, banks were essentially paying people to borrow money. They offered the least creditworthy borrowers absurd amounts of money which sometimes even exceeded the purchase price of the home they were buying. 102% loans were not uncommon back then, which financed the entire purchase along with the extra closing costs. We even saw 105% loans which allowed a little bit extra to make home improvements. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s criminally stupid to pay someone to borrow money. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening now. Instead of people, though, it’s governments who are effectively being paid to borrow. We all remember last time how much this impacted the global financial system. Everyone believed that it would all work out OK. Then one day it didn’t. Lehman Brothers went bust, and the entire banking system started to collapse.

High time to pack up and go.

• California’s New Drought Rules Would Require Cuts of Up to 36% (Bloomberg)

California issued proposed rules calling for mandatory reductions in water use by municipal agencies as a historic drought drags into a fourth year. The state’s 411 urban water suppliers would have to cut use by as much as 36%, with those that conserved less facing tougher restrictions and a daily penalty of as much as $500 for not complying, the California State Water Resources Control Board said in the proposed rules released Saturday. The board will meet May 5 and 6 to finalize the rules, which would take effect by June 1. “Some of these communities have achieved remarkable results with residential water use now hovering around the statewide target for indoor water use, while others are using many times more,” the Sacramento-based agency said in its proposal.

The emergency rules would be in effect for 270 days. The regulations are based on an executive order Governor Jerry Brown, a 77-year-old Democrat, issued April 1 calling for a mandatory 25% reduction in water use compared with 2013 levels and requiring 50 million square feet of lawns to be replaced by drought-tolerant landscaping. California, the most-populous U.S. state, and its $43 billion agriculture industry are experiencing the worst of the arid conditions moving across the western U.S., with 67% of the state in an extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The agency this week released nearly 300 comment letters from the public, businesses, water agencies and cities on an initial proposal. The planned 35% reduction in water use for Beverly Hills would “place a significant burden on our small permanent customer base” of 42,157 residents, Mahdi Aluzri, interim city manager, said in the letter. Beverly Hills’ daytime population, including commuters who work in the city, shoppers and visitors, can rise to more than 250,000 water users, Aluzri said. California’s residents in February reduced water use by 2.8% below 2013 levels, the worst monthly performance since June, the water board said.

For this alone, the EU should be dismantled. “A new policy will be presented in May”. May? You should be out there on the water! Another boat with 650 people just capsized as I’m writing this.

• Pope Francis Urges EU To Do More To Help Italy With Flood Of Migrants (CT)

Pope Francis on Saturday joined Italy in pressing the European Union to do more to help the country cope with rapidly mounting numbers of desperate people rescued in the Mediterranean during journeys on smugglers’ boats to flee war, persecution or poverty. While hundreds of migrants took their first steps on land in Sicilian ports, dozens more were rescued at sea. Sicilian towns were running out of places to shelter the arrivals, including more than 10,000 this week. The Coast Guard said 74 migrants were saved from a sailboat shortly before it sank Saturday about 100 miles east of the coast of Calabria in southern Italy. A Coast Guard plane and a Dutch aircraft, part of an EU patrol mission, spotted the boat. Passengers included 10 children and three pregnant women.

With his wide popularity and deep concern for social issues, the pope’s moral authority gives Italy a boost in its lobbying for Brussels and northern EU countries to do more. Since the start of 2014, nearly 200,000 people have been rescued at sea by Italy. “I express my gratitude for the commitment that Italy is making to welcome the many migrants who, risking their life, ask to be taken in,” said Francis, flanked by Italian President Sergio Mattarella. “It’s evident that the proportions of the phenomenon require much broader involvement.” “We must never tire of appealing for a more extensive commitment on the European and international level,” Francis said.

Italy says it will continue rescuing migrants but demands that the European Union increase assistance to shelter and rescue them. Since most of the migrants want to reach family or other members of their community in northern Europe, Italian governments have pushed for those countries to do more, particularly by taking in the migrants while their requests for asylum or refugee status are examined. “For some time, Italy has called on the EU for decisive intervention to stop this continuous loss of human life in the Mediterranean, the cradle of our civilization,” Mattarella said. The EU’s commissioner for migration, Dmitris Avramopoulos, says a new policy will be presented in May. Meanwhile, he has also called for member states to help.

But it can get worse, believe it or not. The Abbott government quite literally has no shame. They send people back to countries they’re fleeing.

• Australia Government In Secret Bid To Hand Back Asylum Seekers To Vietnam (SMH)

Vietnamese Australians and human rights activists have blasted the Abbott Government over a secret Navy-led mission to return a group of asylum seekers back to the Communist government of Vietnam. In a new milestone for the Coalition’s hard-line border policy, an Australian Navy ship was entering Vietnamese waters on Friday after what is believed to be a week-long journey to prevent boats reaching Australia. HMAS Choules was close to the the southern port city of Vung Tau, south of Ho Chi Minh City, Defence sources confirmed to Fairfax Media. The vessel was expected to hand over detainees to the Communist government some time after arriving late Friday or in the early hours of Saturday.

The vessel is carrying asylum seekers intercepted by customs and navy vessels earlier this month, north of Australia, the West Australian newspaper reported on Friday. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s office said no comment would be made on “operational matters” but human rights activists lashed the Coalition for another on-water action cloaked in secrecy. Daniel Webb, director of the Human Rights Law Centre, said: “Australia should never return a refugee to persecution. All governments – whatever their policy position – should respect democracy and should respect the rule of law. Continually operating behind a veil of secrecy is a deliberate subversion of both. “If the government truly believed its actions were humane, justified and legal, it wouldn’t go to such extraordinary lengths to hide them from view.” [..]

The Vietnamese community, many of whom arrived in Australia by boat after the fall of Saigon in 1975 as the Communist regime of Hanoi took control of the country, expressed horror at asylum seekers being handed back. Thang Ha, president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, NSW Chapter, said the government should be aware it could be “throwing people back into hell”. He said returnees would likely be left alone initially but would be followed by party operatives and eventually harassed and likely jailed. “Human rights activists, democracy activists, Christians, Buddhists, artists and singers, they have all been harassed. Some people have been hunted down, their family members have been harassed. Some have been thrown in jail and never heard from again,” he said. “They are throwing them back into hell.”

Yes, we are a smart animal.

• Air-Pocalypse: Breathing Poison In The World’s Most Polluted City (BBC)

Saharan dust, traffic fumes and smog from Europe may be clogging up London’s air at present – and causing alarm in the newspapers – but in the world’s most polluted city London’s air would be considered unusually refreshing. That city is Delhi, the Indian capital, where air quality reports now make essential reading for anxious residents. In London last week, the most dangerous particles – PM 2.5 – hit a high of 57; that’s nearly six times recommended limits. Here in Delhi, we can only dream of such clean air. Our reading for these minute, carcinogenic particles, which penetrate the lungs, entering straight into the blood stream – is a staggering 215 – 21 times recommended limits. And that’s better than it’s been all winter. Until a few weeks ago, PM 2.5 levels rarely dipped below 300, which some here have described as an “air-pocalypse”.

Like the rest of the world, those of us in Delhi believed for years that Beijing was the world’s most polluted city. But last May, the World Health Organization announced that our own air is nearly twice as toxic. The result, we’re told, is permanent lung damage, and 1.3 million deaths annually. That makes air pollution, after heart disease, India’s second biggest killer. And yet, it’s only in the past two months as India’s newspapers and television stations have begun to report the situation in detail that we’ve been gripped, like many others, with a sense of acute panic. It’s a little bit like being told you’re living next to an active volcano that might erupt at any moment. At first, we simply shut all our doors and windows and sealed up numerous gaps. No more seductively cool Delhi breezes could be allowed in.

We began checking the air quality index obsessively. Then, we rushed out to buy pollution masks, riding around in our car looking like highway robbers. But our three-year-old wouldn’t allow one anywhere near her face. Our son only wore his for a day, and only because I told him he looked like Spider-Man. Despite our alarm, many Delhi-ites reacted with disdain. “It’s just dust from the desert,” some insisted. “Nothing a little homeopathy can’t solve,” others said. But we weren’t convinced. When we heard that certain potted plants improve indoor air quality, we rushed to the nursery to snap up areca palms, and a rather ugly, spiky plant with the unappealing moniker, mother-in-law’s tongue. But on arrival, the bemused proprietor informed us that the American embassy had already purchased every last one. In any case, we calculated that to make a difference, we needed a minimum of 50 plants. “We could get rid of the sofa to make room for them,” my husband offered.

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