Troika Archives - Page 5 of 6 - The Automatic Earth

Americans are concerned about wasting food — yet they just can’t seem to stop throwing it out. Some 76% of households say they throw away leftovers at least once a month, while 53% throw them away every week, according to a survey released Wednesday of 1,000 consumers by market research firm TNS Global on behalf of the American Chemistry Council. (The latter is a trade organization for the U.S. plastics industry and so has a vested interest in people using its products to preserve food.) Despite throwing out food, 70% of people say they are bothered by the amount of food wasted in the U.S. Respondents estimated wasting $640 in household food each year — but U.S. government figures estimate people waste closer to $900.

Previous reports suggest even more people throw out unwanted or expired food. Over 90% of Americans may be prematurely tossing food because they misinterpret expiration dates, according to a separate 2013 study released by Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, a nonprofit environmental action group. Phrases like “sell by,” “use by,” and “best before” are poorly regulated and often misinterpreted, the report found: “It is time for a well-intended but wildly ineffective food date labeling system to get a makeover.”

Faulty expiration-date rules are confusing at best and, according to another report released this month by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the desire to only eat the freshest food and food safety concerns are the two main reasons for throwing it out. “Sell by” dates are actually for stores to know how much shelf life products have. They are not meant to indicate the food is bad. “Best before” and “use by” dates are for consumers, but they are manufacturers’ estimates as to when food reaches its peak. For most food, manufacturers are free to determine the shelf life for their own products.

A different angle from mine, but the same conclusion.

• Europe, A Big Phony (Costas Iordanidis)

On September 11, 2001, the US was the target of an unprecedented terrorist attack. But the country quickly regained its composure. The Americans reacted in the way they felt was the most appropriate, as a unified country ready to defend its vital interests. On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the US went bankrupt, but the United States bounced back, some way or another, proving itself to be a country with a sovereign currency and strong leadership. Later, cities in California defaulted one after the other, similarly to other US states which had also gone bankrupt in the past. The issue of exiting the dollar was never raised.

Of course the US is a unified country, with a single, sovereign currency, the most powerful and advanced war machine ever to exist in the history of mankind, while the European Union is a big phony. The bloc’s biggest achievement, the euro, was never a sovereign currency in any country, not even in Germany, although it was developed based on the latter’s fears and old ghosts. Greece went bankrupt in 2010 and the country which accounts for just 2% of the eurozone’s GDP created major panic. Europe’s gigantic bureaucracy was deemed insufficient to devise a plan for dealing with the problem. And so Germany called for the IMF to intervene.

Europe looks down on Alexis Tsipras’s government, and not unjustly, for its obsessions, amateurism and hard to justify delays – it was the same, although to a lesser extent, with previous Greek governments. But what is emerging from Brussels right now is positively morbid. How can a eurozone country and government leaders publicly state that proposals submitted by the Greek administration form a “basis” for discussion and have the IMF take it all back a few days later. Tsipras may well be leading a group of unruly and at times rude associates, but the eurozone leadership’s image is not far from that of a group which changes its mind depending on the whims of one of the three institutions. By the way, Antonis Samaras’s government was brought down because of the IMF’s obsessions.

In any case, this is where things stand right now. Wednesday night saw yet another impasse. Even if we assume that the negotiations are successfully completed on Thursday, the damage done to the notion of the euro is very serious. One way or another, the wall put up by Russia excludes any EU economic expansion to the east. Meanwhile, Germany’s dangerous expansion is being averted for the third time – only this time due to the euro. We Greeks, but also our partners, should stop pretending. The current dynamic lies outside Europe.

Nuclear.

• Greek Problems Mask The Rising Risks In Italy And France (Satyajit Das)

According to John Maynard Keynes “the expected never happens; it is the unexpected always”. Obsessed with the problems of Greece and the European periphery, financial markets are ignoring the rising risks of the core, especially Italy and France. Italy and France face mounting problems of high debt, slow growth, unemployment, poor public finances, lack of competitiveness and an inability to undertake necessary adjustments. Reductions in energy prices combined with low borrowing costs and a weaker euro, engineered by the ECB, cannot hide deep-seated and unresolved problems forever. Italian total real economy debt (government, household and business) is about 259% of gross domestic product, up 55% since 2007. France’s equivalent debt is about 280% of GDP, up 66% since 2007.

This ignores unfunded pension and healthcare obligations as well as contingent commitments to eurozone bailouts. Italy is running a budget deficit of 2.9%. Government debt is around €2.1tn, or 132% of GDP. French public debt is just above €2tn, or 95% of GDP. The current budget deficit is 4.2% of GDP. France’s budget has not been balanced in any single year since 1974. Italy’s economy has shrunk about 10% since 2007, as the country endured a triple-dip recession. Italy’s unemployment is more than 12%, with youth unemployment about 44%. French GDP growth is anaemic, with unemployment above 10% and youth unemployment of more than 25% Trade performance is lacklustre. Italy’s current account surplus of 1.9% reflects deterioration of the domestic economy rather than export prowess.

France’s current account deficit is about 0.9% of GDP, reflecting a declining share of the global export market. Italy and France’s problems are structural, rather than attributable to the eurozone debt crisis. High wages, inflexible labour markets, generous welfare benefits, large public sectors and restrictive trade practices are major issues. In the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, Italy and France ranked 49th and 23rd respectively, well behind Germany (fourth) and Britain (10th). In World Bank studies, Italy and France rank 56th and 31st in terms of ease of doing business. Transparency International ranks Italy 69 out of 175 countries in perceived levels of public corruption, comparable to Romania, Greece and Bulgaria.

The lack of competitiveness is exacerbated by the single currency. Italy and France faced a 15-25% overvalued currency until the recent decline in the euro. Denied the historically preferred option of devaluation of the lira or franc to improve international competitiveness, both countries have relied increasingly in recent times on debt-funded public spending to maintain economic activity and living standards.

Cameron’s a side show in Europe, can’t get any attention.

• Britain Would Not Survive A Vote For Brexit (FT)

Promising a referendum on Britain’s place in Europe was always a rash gamble — a tactical swerve blind to the strategic consequences. The stakes have risen. The rest of Europe does not want to see the Brits depart, but the EU would muddle on. For the UK, the choice has become existential. If Britain leaves Europe, Scotland will leave Britain. The union of the United Kingdom would not long survive Brexit. The referendum was offered to appease troublesome eurosceptics in David Cameron’s Conservative party. Some hope. There are signs the prime minister has begun to appreciate what is at stake. Never mind talk that he may be remembered as the leader who split his own party, or as the architect of Britain’s retreat from its own continent.

History will be even less kind if it records that a device to quell a Tory rebellion about Europe led to the unravelling of England’s union with Scotland. Mr Cameron’s government has lowered its sights accordingly. When Philip Hammond toured European capitals before the May election 25 of his 27 counterparts told the British foreign secretary that they would not rewrite the basic texts of the EU to accommodate British exceptionalism. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is particularly insistent that the Union’s organising “acquis” is sacrosanct. So the prime minister’s pre-election promise of “full-on treaty change” has made way for a more modest set of demands.

Mr Cameron has struck an emollient pose in his own post-election journey around EU chancelleries. What has emerged is a careful choreography for the negotiating process. As he explained it to Ms Merkel, the plan is to avoid undue acrimony and, for the most part, to keep the nitty gritty of negotiations low key and under wraps. The prime minister will stick to generalities at this week’s Brussels summit. His favourite refrain speaks of a “reformed Europe”, whatever that means. He wants an opt-out from the (never defined) treaty aspiration of ever closer union of the peoples of Europe, safeguards for the City of London against eurozone caucusing, and a motherhood-and-apple-pie declaration that Europe is about competition rather than regulation. Finally, he is asking for leeway to restrict in-work benefits paid to workers from the rest of the EU.

And nobody should.

• Greece: A Deal Nobody Believes In (Paul Mason)

The deal Greece wants in Brussels has three parts: budget, debt and public investment. In the flurry of last-minute negotiations, conducted under threat of a bank run and capital controls, the media has been obsessed with the first. The Greek newspaper Kathimerini carried the full Greek proposal on the budget for 2015-17, designed by Syriza’s negotiators to achieve the surplus target the IMF/ECB and EU have imposed. It is, as one of the ministers presenting it told me, “terrible”. To avoid cutting services and pensions further, Syriza is preparing to hit businesses, consumers and employees with a mixture of tax and higher contributions to their pensions. It will also raise the retirement age to 67 over the next 10 years, and severely limit incentives to early retirement.

The proposal meets the top line targets of the lenders but last night they were still haggling over the precise structure of VAT, pensions and “product market reform” – which is the codeword for the IMF’s obsession with Greek pharmacies and bakeries. While the proposal has caused outrage among the Greek conservatives who were only last week calling for a deal, and outrage among Syriza’s left-wing voters, and the 5,000 communist-led pensioners who staged a march last night, the real problem is bigger. Everything we’ve seen so far suggests it will not work. The lenders, as one senior participant in the talks put it to me, “do not do macroeconomics”. The models used in the EU’s negotiations assume that if you whack an €8bn tax rise on to an economy in recession it will at the very least only shrink by €8bn, and may even grow.

But the experience of Greek austerity – and this tax package is simply left austerity – shows you have to consider the “multiplier effects”. The IMF has already said its own model on this was flawed, and that the macroeconomic effect of cutting one euro could be not 50 cents but more like €1.50. The reason the IMF and EU are trying to tinker with stuff like VAT and bakeries is because they suspect that a switch from harsh spending cuts to harsh, redistributive tax rises will have the same overall impact: the economy will shrink and the debt will get larger. But a redistributive programme is all Syriza can sell to the people who voted for it. When they drew up this proposal the Greeks did so in the knowledge that it would need tens of billions of debt relief and tens of billions of structural funding from the EU to cushion the blow.

But the lenders are resisting. When it comes to debt, as one participant described it to me, the lenders are “each at war with the other”. The IMF wants debt write-offs; the ECB wants no debt write-offs. The proposal being discussed is to swap €27bn of debt Greece owes to the ECB into a programme called the ESM, where redemptions are decades away and interest rates low. It would mean paying the ECB out of a fund owned by national governments. I understand that, without some clear indication that debt relief is on the agenda, the Greeks cannot sign. Likewise, they are determined there should be an agreement to release structural funds for development projects from the European Commission.

Red lines vs red ink.

• Troika’s Red Ink Tells Its Own Story (Guardian)

The red ink told its own story. Greece’s creditors looked at the plan submitted by Alexis Tsipras to end his country’s debt crisis and found it wanting. Like a teacher dealing with an obtuse pupil, the message in the revised document sent back to the Greeks was simple: this is a shoddy piece of work. Do it again. Without question, this makes life tough for the Greek prime minister, who thought the concessions offered on Monday were as much as he could deliver politically. Tsipras bridled at the demands from the troika to cross all his red lines and that means the crisis is back on again.

Athens should not have been entirely surprised by the response given that the IMF – one third of the troika – thinks a repair job on the public finances should be structured so that 80% of the improvement comes through spending cuts and 20% from tax increases. The plan put forward by Tsipras was skewed in the other direction. Of the €7.9bn (£5.6bn) that the Greek government said the plan would raise, 92% came from tax increases. In the unlikely event that the extra revenues were collected in full, the IMF believes the one-off levy on bigger businesses coupled with the increases in corporation tax would hinder growth. It thinks the Greek plan will only add up if there are immediate cuts in pensions and higher VAT on restaurants and medical supplies.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist, explained its reasoning earlier this month. Greece’s creditors, he said, were prepared to accept that the state of the economy meant it was now impossible to meet the target of running a 3% primary budget surplus (revenues minus spending, excluding debt interest payments) in 2015, and that a lower 1% goal would now be acceptable to creditors. “We believe that even the lower new target cannot be credibly achieved without a comprehensive reform of the VAT – involving a widening of its base – and a further adjustment of pensions”, Blanchard said in a blogpost.

“There cannot be a deal without a substantial reference and specific steps on the issue of debt..”

• Greek Syriza Official Says Lenders’ Proposals ‘Blackmail’ (Reuters)

A senior official of Greece’s ruling Syriza party attacked the latest proposals from international lenders as “blackmail” on Thursday, highlighting the deep divisions between Athens and its creditors as wrangling continued over a bailout deal. “The lenders’ demand to bring annihilating measures back to the table shows that the blackmail against Greece is reaching a climax,” Nikos Filis, the ruling Syriza party’s parliamentary spokesman told Mega TV. He said the Greek side was maintaining its insistence on debt relief as part of any accord, in comments that were echoed by Labour Minister Panos Skourletis. “There cannot be a deal without a substantial reference and specific steps on the issue of debt,” Skourletis said in an interview with state broadcaster ERT.

“Speculation the EU was seeking political alternatives to Mr Tsipras’s Leftist Syriza government were heightened after leader of Greece’s centrist opposition party, To Potami also met with Brussels officials on Wednesday.”

• Last-Ditch Greek Rescue Hopes; Tsipras Faces Austerity Ultimatum (Telegraph)

Greece’s eurozone future was thrown into fresh turmoil on Wednesday night as talks broke down after creditor powers demanded further austerity measures to release the funds the country needs to avoid a debt default. Dashing tentative hopes that an agreement could be struck at European Union leaders summit on Thursday, a meeting of finance ministers was suspended after only an hour as Prime Minister Tsipras was summoned for further late night talks with his bail-out chiefs. Earlier in the day, Greece’s three lending institutions rejected Athens’ €8bn reform plans, despite widely hailing it as a positive step forward only days ago. Greece now faces an imminent debt default and expiration of its bail-out June 30.

In a five-page set of counter proposals, creditors instead demanded Athens’ Leftist government carry out more spending cuts, abolish exemptions on VAT and implement a root and branch overhaul of its pensions system. The breakdown came after Athens seemed to renege on its previous commitments to end tax privileges for its islands and phase out supplementary pensions for the poorest. But the government was quick to reject the new demands, attacking them as “absurd” and sure to bring “Armageddon” to the beleaguered economy . Having been hauled back to Brussels on Wednesday morning, a wounded Mr Tsipras released an ambiguous statement suggesting ulterior motives behind lenders’ fresh demands.

“The repeated rejection of equivalent measures by certain institutions never occurred before — neither in Ireland nor in Portugal,” he said. “This curious stance may conceal one of two possibilities: either they don’t want an agreement or they are serving specific interest groups in Greece.” Mr Tsipras spent Wednesday holed up in more than seven hours of talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, and ECB chief Mario Draghi, as the sides sought to thrash out their differences.

[..] Speculation the EU was seeking political alternatives to Mr Tsipras’s Leftist Syriza government were heightened after leader of Greece’s centrist opposition party, To Potami also met with Brussels officials on Wednesday. After a meeting with EU economics chief Pierre Moscovici, party leader Stavros Theodorakis said the country should “cut down on expenditures and excessive spending in the public sector, so that we can save money without imposing further taxes”. To Potami holds 17 seats in the Greek parliament, a margin which could be crucial in any vote to pass a deal through should it emerge from the fractious round of talks.

The troika keeps leaking to the press, and nobody protests that.

• Greece Debt Crisis Talks End In Renewed Deadlock (Guardian)

Gruelling negotiations between Greece and its creditors broke up without agreement on Wednesday evening as lenders warned the country that it must accept more austerity if it is to avoid defaulting on its debts. A third meeting of eurozone finance ministers in less than a week was called to a halt amid fresh deadlock over an agreement on greater spending cuts in Athens in exchange for rescue funds. The finance ministers will reassemble on Thursday in a bid to achieve an elusive breakthrough, as Greece strives to meet next Tuesday’s deadline for a €1.6bn payment to the IMF. A deal could not be reached at the finance minister’s gathering despite six hours of talks earlier in the day between Alexis Tsipras, the Greek PM, and the heads of the IMF, ECB and EC. Tsipras met the creditors again on Wednesday night.

The meeting ended in the early hours of Thursday with Greece “remaining firm on its position” according to a Greek government official. Tsipras was dressed down at the creditors’ meeting on Wednesday morning, despite having presented new budget proposals on Monday that were generally welcomed as constructive. However, by the time he met the creditors on Wednesday he was being asked to toughen his plans. Tsipras sounded bitter and wounded after the creditors, led by Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund, raised a host of problems with the 11-page policy document he had tabled. A revised version of the Greek proposals, littered with corrections entered in red type by the creditors, was soon leaked to the media.

“The repeated rejection of equivalent measures by certain institutions never occurred before, neither in [bailout countries] Ireland nor Portugal,” said Tsipras. “This odd stance seems to indicate that either there is no interest in an agreement or that special interests are being backed.” Both sides are in a race to cut a deal before five years of bailouts worth €240bn (£171bn) lapse next Tuesday, the same day that Greece must repay the IMF. The Tuesday deadline is doubly pressing because the ECB, which is keeping the Greek banking system on life support, has indicated that it will not support banks if the bailout programme expires without a new agreement in place. Without ECB’s support Greek banks are expected to buckle, which would force the Tsipras government to impose capital controls and threaten the country’s exit from the eurozone.

“This strange position maybe hides two things: either they do not want an agreement or they are serving specific interests in Greece,” Tsipras said.”

• Greece Rejects Creditors’ Counter-Proposals (AFP)

Greece rejected Wednesday “counter proposals” from creditors that were issued in response to Athens’ latest budgetary plan, in light of the IMF’s position, a government source said. Questioned about whether “this counter proposal” – containing even bigger VAT tax hikes and public spending cutbacks – had been rejected by the radical left Greek government, the source replied: “Yes.” Creditors are calling for early retirement to be abolished and an increase in the retirement age from 62 to 67 by 2022, and not 2025, according to plans published on a leftist website and confirmed by the source. They are sticking to a demand for a rate of 23% for VAT, or value-added tax, for restaurants, instead of 13% at the moment. Athens is fearful over the impact on its valuable tourism sector.

Creditors also propose to increase the level of corporation tax to 28%, instead of the Greek plan to raise it to 29% from 2016 onwards. The current level is 26%. And they want defence expenditure to be slashed by 400 million euros instead of the proposed 200 million euros. Creditors also seek the removal of special VAT rates for residents of the Aegean islands. Earlier Wednesday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras launched a scathing attack on the IMF for rejecting Greek reform proposals before arriving in Brussels, denting hopes of a final deal. The leftist leader hit out at the “strange position” of the creditors just minutes before going into an eleventh-hour meeting with key lenders including IMF chief Christine Lagarde and the European Union.

“This strange position maybe hides two things: either they do not want an agreement or they are serving specific interests in Greece,” Tsipras said. “The repeated rejection of equivalent measures by certain institutions never occurred before – neither in Ireland nor Portugal,” he tweeted, referring to previous bailouts in those two countries. The EU-IMF creditors were due to present Tsipras with their own “common position” in response to the last-ditch list of reform proposals submitted by Athens on Sunday, sources said. The Greek plans aimed to raise some VAT rates and hike business taxes, increase employee and employer pension contributions, and narrow the country’s budgetary gap.

The worst kind of journalism. Greek brinkmanship is the first sign. But not mentioning that the ECB itself went public about capital controls risk, and then provided ELA, is quite another yet. It’s an ugly game.

• How Draghi Shifted ECB Crisis Tactic Amid Greek Brinkmanship (Bloomberg)

Mario Draghi can’t afford to play by the same crisis rules as the European Central Bank did in the past. With Ireland in 2010 and Cyprus in 2013, a threat to withhold aid for lenders forced each country to agree to international bailouts. This time, Greece’s appetite for brinkmanship has so far left the ECB president dependent on Europe’s politicians to deliver the ultimatums, while policy makers have reluctantly kept Greek banks afloat. Through weekly, and now almost daily, doses of liquidity, ECB support for those institutions has given Greece’s government room to negotiate a bailout with creditors until the eleventh hour without imposing capital controls. That’s riled sticklers for rules on the ECB Governing Council, but such pliancy is a price Draghi may have paid to keep the euro intact.

“What strikes me is the patience which the ECB has found in all of this,” said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London. “This was too much of a political decision for the ECB. Ireland didn’t look like falling out of the euro, and Cyprus was much more marginal. So sometimes you discover a flexibility that you weren’t aware of before.” So-called Emergency Liquidity Assistance for banks has been part of the ECB’s toolkit since its foundation. It was intended to allow authorities to tide over solvent lenders who could neither raise funding in markets nor had collateral for regular ECB tenders. The measure was never meant to save whole countries. That’s what it’s now doing.

While Greece didn’t ask for an increase in assistance on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter, it has needed fresh approval for a higher ELA limit four times in the past week. Via the Greek central bank, the ECB is replacing money withdrawn by depositors fearful that the government can’t agree a deal with its creditors, allowing lenders to rack up an overdraft of almost €90 billion since February. ELA cash loaned against state-guaranteed bank bonds and government debt at its 2012 peak amounted to almost 63% of Greek GDP, far more than the equivalent measure in Ireland or Cyprus. Now, Draghi says total liquidity support to Greece amounts to €118 billion euros, or about 66% of GDP, the highest level of any country in the euro.

They smell power.

• To Potami Leader Warns Tsipras Over Bailout Reshuffle (FT)

Alexis Tsipras will need to reshuffle his governing coalition if he suffers significant defections over a new bailout agreement, the head of Greece’s largest pro-EU protest party has warned. Stavros Theodorakis, leader of centre-left To Potami, said he discussed the possibility of such a reshuffle with Mr Tsipras during meetings last week, and predicted there would be “a lot of objections” from the prime minister’s far-left Syriza party when the measures are put to a vote. “That is something that will be discussed, and Tsipras will face, after passing the agreement through parliament, after he sees which members of his party — or members of his government — did not vote for the agreement,” Mr Theodorakis said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“We do not want to wound the prime minister when he’s in the middle of these hard negotiations,” he added. “But I can say Syriza has a choice: either Syriza will change or it will be beaten.” Mr Theodorakis, a charismatic former television journalist, created To Potami — The River — from scratch ahead of January’s national elections and rode a wave of mainstream protests to secure 17 seats in parliament, the third largest in the 300-seat chamber. Because of his populist credentials, Mr Theodorakis was seen as a natural coalition partner for Mr Tsipras shortly after the election. But because of its overtly pro-EU stance, To Potami was bypassed by Mr Tsipras for the right-wing nationalist Independent Greeks party, which — like Syriza — vowed to reject Greece’s international bailout.

Talked about him yesterday. A tool.

• Martin Schulz, The Man Who Would Be Caliph (Neurope)

There is a French cartoon character, Iznogood, a vizier whose only goal in life is to become Caliph in place of the Caliph… telling everybody he wants to be “Caliph in place of the Caliph”. He is shaken by fits of anger when he realises his goal remains distant. In his comic-book hubris, Iznogood, with his goatee and permanent bad mood, never puts forth his qualities (if any) for the coveted job. He only stomps the ground in irritation and shouts: “I want to be Caliph. I’ve been here long enough”. Martin Schulz has been around for more than 20 years. He first entered the European Parliament in 1994, as a German Socialist MEP, never to leave it again. He has been speaker of the Parliament since 2012, but last year he missed the Caliphate: the presidency of the Commission.

The Commission job is the most prestigious in the EU institutions. The President of the Commission is (almost) the equivalent of a chief of state. One had only to see how Jose Manuel Barroso was blushing and beaming, satisfaction oozing from his pores, whenever he was called “Mr President”. So, Schulz wanted to become Caliph after Caliph Barroso. What were his qualifications for running the Commission and becoming Caliph? Well, first of all, again, he’s been around long enough. He also carries the aura of a martyr: a decade ago, Berlusconi, angered by Schulz’s criticism of him, suggested in a plenary that he, Schulz, would be perfect in the role of a Nazi camp guard, as an extra in a movie. Astonishment: what? Was Schulz already here 10 years ago? Of course he was…

How about his studies? Martin Schulz is a rare case for someone in his position. No studies. Schulz never finished school. He doesn’t even have his Abitur, that German diploma that is as hard to obtain as the one marking the baccalaureate in France. In his youth, he dreamed of becoming a football player, but, as he told the German tabloid Bild, he became an alcoholic instead. He was saved from alcohol by his brother and became a bookseller, and even had his own bookshop for a decade before entering the SPD, the German Social Democrat party. In order to ensure that he might get the presidency of the Commission, he fought hard to have the capitals accept the principle of consulting with the major political groups in the EU Parliament when they nominate the Commission President.

Sinn’s a tool AND a douche.

• IMF Must Help Europe With ‘Aggressive’ Athens: Sinn (CNBC)

Greece’s far-left government have proved “aggressive” in lengthy cash-for-reforms talks, the head of an influential German think tank told CNBC, adding that all of Athens’ bailout supervisors must share the strain of negotiating. “You have seen what kind of wording Greece used during the crisis to really change the mood in Europe and I think it’s fair to say they have been aggressive,” the president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Hans Werner-Sinn, told CNBC on Wednesday. He added: “It is easier for the Europeans if the IMF (International Monetary Fund) shares in the burden of absorbing this attitude, rather than everything being imposed on the other European countries – this is a recipe for hassle and strife.”

Greece is engulfed in debt to both the ECB and the IMF and needs urgent aid to save it from defaulting on a €1.6 billion debt at the end of the month. However, it has fought against creditors’ demands for further economic, social and political cuts and reforms. “The IMF is skeptical about the Greek proposals as I understand. They say the Greeks promised to increase their taxes, but they have not been very good in raising taxes in the past. So it’s more credible if they promise to cut wages or government employees or pensions and that is the issue about they are discussing,” Sinn told CNBC.

In addition to his role at Ifo, Sinn is an adviser to the Germany economy ministry and a professor of economics and public finance at the University of Munich. He is due to retire from Ifo in March 2016. The veteran economist has previously advocated the benefits for Greece of leaving the euro zone and he reiterated this view on Tuesday. “A ‘Grexit’ is a rescue strategy for Greece because the Greek people will, with the drachma (the Greek currency prior to the adoption of the euro) devaluation, then have more demand for their own products. The imported products will become more expensive and they will go to their farmers, for example,” Sinn told CNBC.

Someone’s going to spin this into a recovery.

• US Credit Card Debt Grew At 11.5% In April, Fastest In Years (Forbes)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Forbes launched Secrets From An Ex-Banker: How To Crush Credit Card Debt, our latest eBook. Written by a former banker, this book reveals tips and tricks to get you out of credit card debt within three years.

Secrets From An Ex-Banker: An eBook From Forbes If running from the collection agencies isn’t your exercise of choice, read this book for tips and tricks on how to crush credit card debt. We are a nation addicted to credit card debt. Americans have amassed $857 billion of it. As we begin to forget the 2008 financial crisis, banks have once again started aggressively marketing credit cards. I receive mail every week promising me bonus points, extra cash back and a lifetime of plastic-induced happiness. The marketing is working. In April, credit card debt grew at 11.5%, its fastest pace in years.

Credit cards can be remarkably useful and lucrative spending tools, when used responsibly. If you pay your balance in full and on time every month, you are receiving an interest free loan, often with some airline miles on top. However, over 40% of Americans are not able to pay their balance in full. Instead, they are borrowing money at interest rates that are usually well above 15%. That means the typical family is paying over $1,500 of interest every year. In a world where middle class families feel increasingly squeezed, this is too much money to be lost to interest.

Why do credit cards have this power over us? Why does the average household have more than $10,000 of credit card debt at interest rates well above 15%? And how can we break the cycle and get out of debt? Today I am publishing a Forbes eBook, “Secrets from An Ex-Banker: How To Crush Credit Card Debt.” This book uses my nearly 15 years of insider experience as a credit card executive to help you become debt-free forever. I helped introduce credit cards to the Russian market with Citibank. I ran the UK consumer credit card franchise of Barclays. But now I am focused on using my knowledge of how the industry works to help people avoid the tricks, traps and pitfalls of credit card debt.

And there ain’t none left.

• Three Words Count in Bonds: Liquidity, Liquidity, Liquidity (Bloomberg)

There are three things that matter in the bond market these days: liquidity, liquidity and liquidity. How – or whether – investors can trade without having prices move against them has become a major worry as bonds globally tanked in the past few months. As a result, liquidity, or the lack of it, is skewing markets in new and surprising ways. Spain, for instance, must pay more to borrow money than Italy for 30 years, even though Spain is considered safer by credit raters. Why? The Italian bond market is twice as big as the Spanish one — and, therefore, more liquid. The same thing is happening around the world. Bonds in smaller, less-traded markets like Finland, Singapore and Canada are starting to fall out of favor.

And with the Federal Reserve preparing to raise U.S. interest rates, investors want to know they can sell in a hurry if debt markets turn volatile. “Liquidity is our number-one criteria in country selection,” said Olivier de Larouziere at Natixis Asset Management. Concern liquidity is drying up has intensified as the global bond rout that erupted in April erased more than a half a trillion dollars from sovereign debt and triggered swings some have likened to a once-in-a-generation event. Aberdeen Asset Management Plc has already said it arranged $500 million in credit lines to fund potential withdrawals. In the U.S., regulators will meet with Wall Street firms to discuss how they can prevent post-crisis regulations and central bank policies from sparking a meltdown when the next selloff occurs.

Some investors aren’t waiting to find out. In Spain, where a slump in repurchase agreements and trading of bills sent government-debt turnover in April to lows not seen since at least 2012, they’re starting to demand a bigger premium to own the securities, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Yields on 10-year Spanish bonds reached 2.54 percent on June 16, and rose to the highest versus Italian securities since the end of 2013. Spain’s 30-year bonds are also yielding more than comparable Italian debt. For much of the past year, the relationship was reversed as investors preferred Spain. Part of the shift has to do with the rising cost of trading as liquidity dries up. The difference in yields for buyers and sellers of Spain’s 10-year notes — known as the bid-ask spread — is almost double that in Italy, the data show.

Strong contender for weirdest story of the year.

• Toyota’s Drug Problem, and Japan’s (Pesek)

Toyota has a drug problem. The company and CEO Akio Toyoda are dealing with the fallout from a bizarre case surrounding his newly promoted head of global public relations, Julie Hamp. It all started on June 18, when Hamp, an American who moved to Japan earlier this year, was arrested for allegedly having a controlled drug sent to her from Michigan. The powerful painkiller oxycodone is a relatively common prescription drug in the U.S., but is designated as a narcotic in Japan, where users need permission to import it. Japanese authorities could have chosen to confiscate the 57 pills sent to Hamp and schooled her on local regulations. Instead, they decided to make an example of her in ways that could damage corporate Japan’s efforts to attract foreign talent and diversify its boardrooms.

The day after Hamp’s arrest, Toyoda called a press conference to defend the company’s highest-ranking female executive ever. He launched into a spirited defense, declaring that Hamp hasn’t intentionally broken any laws. Those words came back to haunt Toyoda this week, on Tuesday, when police raided the company’s Toyota City headquarters and its Tokyo and Nagoya offices. The coordinated raids smacked of retribution by the police for Toyoda’s standing by a foreigner over local authorities. What’s even more troubling is that the police made the case public at all. Hamp was forced to do a perp walk on live television. (It led the news on national broadcaster NHK.)

But it’s safe to say the police wouldn’t even have told the media if a male Japanese Toyota executive were allegedly involved in similar lawbreaking. (Japanese law enforcement has never even attempted to arrest officials at Tokyo Electric Power Company for negligent oversight of nuclear reactors at Fukushima, or managers at Takata for selling the company’s faulty airbags.)

Meanwhile, the thrust of the media coverage about Hamp’s ordeal has been cringeworthy. Rather than treat it as an unfortunate aberration, the media have used it as an excuse to pillory companies for trying to attract foreign executives to Japan in the first place. Toyoda’s June 19 press conference was a case in point, filled with insinuating questions: What medical condition does Hamp have that requires pain medication? Why does Hamp live alone? (The answer to that one is that her family hasn’t yet arrived from the U.S.) What is Toyota’s basis for trusting this woman so much? Might this be a harbinger of future problems as diversity efforts increase?

Interesting take.

• How WikiLeaks Could Help Precipitate The Fall Of The Saudi Empire (RT)

Whistleblower group WikiLeaks has released a flurry of official documents lifting the lid on Saudi Arabia’s covert diplomatic apparatus. Not just another scandal, these revelations could bring Saudi Arabia to its knees. While WikiLeaks has seldom shied away from controversy it might just have outdone itself this June as it exposed Saudi Arabia’s grand media scheme to the public, shining a light onto state officials’ unscrupulous dealings as they worked and plotted to silence the truth and manipulate realities to suit their goals. And though many among the public will not be surprised at learning that one of the world’s most violent and repressive governments has actively worked to control the world’s media narrative by applying political and financial pressure upon international news organizations and foreign governments to both forward its agenda and shield its institutions from any political or judicial fallouts.

The sheer depth and breadth of this grand deception will certainly send a few heads spinning. Aided by Al Akhbar, a prominent Lebanese-based newspaper which has remained stubbornly independent despite aggravated pressures, WikiLeaks released last Friday 60,000 classified documents out of a reported half a million leaked diplomatic cables from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Speaking on the content disclosed by WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesman for the group said “We are seeing how the oil money is being used to increase (the) influence of Saudi Arabia which is substantial of course – this is an ally of the US and the UK. And since this spring it has been waging war in neighboring Yemen.”

While most allies of the kingdom, Britain and the US at the head of the line, have attempted to play down the revelations, arguing the veracity of the leaked documents while redirecting the public’s attention onto other, less sensitive matters, it is pretty evident the kingdom is fast losing its cool. For a country which almost solely relies on control to exist, losing only just a nugget of power can be daunting; especially when the very fabric of the state stands to be obliterated by the very truths which are now being unveiled.

Off to Greece, and an Update on our Athens Fund

Jun 252015

June 25, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:38 am Finance Tagged with: Athens, Beppe Grillo, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, regime change, Slovakia, Troika 1 Response »

NPC KKK parade on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC 1925

Today I fly to Athens, and boy, does time seem to fly along with me. I’ll be arriving in Athens apparently just in time for a big demo in Syntagma square (got a mail minutes ago saying people are on their way there as early as 9 AM local time). Something tells me there’ll be quite a few more of those during my stay. And I don’t think there’s any guarantee of all of them being peaceful as time goes on.

The negotiations, if they still warrant that title, are going nowhere, and even if they would, they’d be going nowhere good. So during my -provisional- 3 week stay, I wouldn’t be surprised to see capital controls, closed banks, empty ATMs, and quite a bit more.

But I am lucky enough to have a strong contingent of Automatic Earth readers in the city, who’ve been kind enough to not only offer me accommodation, but to also introduce me to a plethora of organizations and individuals, so much so that I’m going to have to be careful about claiming the time it takes to do the daily Automatic Earth posts.

If there’s a day or two when I can’t do a Debt Rattle or essay, please know that it won’t be for a lack of trying, but for an overabundance of gracious yet impoverished Greeks. Hey, in times of hardship people remember how to be people again. Most Americans and Germans are long overdue for a taste of that.

There’s that Seneca quote I used somewhere before, which captures it to a T:

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

I’ve been feeling smothered here in Holland, and in Australia and New Zealand earlier this year, and in all the European countries save for Italy and the Czech Republic that we’ve visited over the past five years and change, smothered by the denial and techno-happy thinking that seems to be everywhere you go. People don’t seem to do wealth well. It blunts their senses: “prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right”.

Italy gets it. Maybe not in the major cities, but when we visited Beppe Grillo in late 2011, it was obvious that Italians saw the writing on the wall. Slovakia was in the eurozone and was just starting to receive all those big EU loans that are now haunting the PIIGS, who got them years earlier.

On the other hand, the Czech Republic, which had split from Bratislava only a few years before, but decided to keep the koruna, seemed fine, though with less new black top and fewer flashy government buildings. The big difference was that the euro had lifted prices in Slovakia much higher than those in Prague etc. Today, if you look behind the numbers, the Czech Republic is in a much better spot than Slovakia.

Anyway, different parts of Europe have had a different view of life for years. And of course Greece had been going down with a vengeance for a long time. I’m just trying to say that Europe is not one big happy entity with Greece as a black sheep.

But they’re all still, or seem to be, ganging up on Athens. That’s all just the effects of propaganda, and everyone should learn to see through that thin veil. But it’s so tempting, isn’t it, to think you’re superior to someone else, to ignore that you’re the same.

And that it’s beyond brainless to drive your brand new Beamer on the Autobahn at 200 miles an hour blabbing about them Greeks who deserve to be flogged for refusing to pay you back what they stole from you.

This cannot and will not ever be repaired. Europe is not a union. Which is fine, as long as no-one tries to make it one. The very moment anyone tries, you end up with where Greece is today.

Long story short, let’s talk about that Fund For Athens I innocently started recently. Last time I mentioned it, on June 19, it was already at an amazing $2217, much more than I ever could have dreamed.

Well, you guys are something else. Because the fund now stands at $5534.47. Can you believe it? I sure can’t. Seeing the amount go up has been, and hopefully will continue to be, very humbling, your generosity has made me feel small. Who am I to trigger this kind of kindness?

Please, please, keep the donations coming, and I’ll make sure, along with the TAE readers in Athens, that we get the money where it is needed most. Solid promise.

For the how and why, please refer to The Automatic Earth Moves To Athens and Update: Automatic Earth for Athens Fund.

I’m thinking the Greeks need all the help they can get, more than ever, more every single day. I find it deeply concerning to read just now that both ex-PM Samaras and To Potami leader Theodorakis were spotted talking to the troika yesterday. That reeks of regime change. Not surprising given the EU MO, but at the same time: not good.

Debt Rattle June 24 2015

Jun 242015

June 24, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:02 am Finance Tagged with: contagion, despair, ethanol, EU, Greece, misery, poverty, ruin, Troika, TTIP 3 Responses »

NPC KKK services, Capital Horse Show grounds, Arlington 1938

• 70 Million Americans Are Teetering On The Edge Of Financial Ruin (MarketWatch)

• Marine Le Pen: Just Call Me Madame Frexit (Bloomberg)

• The Delphi Declaration On Greece And Europe (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Berlin Insists Greek Parliament Approves All Reforms By Monday (FT)

• Europe Is Destroying Greece’s Economy For No Reason At All (WaPo)

• Greek Public Stops Paying Off Personal Debts As Uncertainty Grows (FT)

• A -Last- Shield Against Poverty, Pensions Are Greece’s Top Priority (AP)

• This Is A Deal That Heaps More Misery On Greeks (Guardian)

• Creditors’ Economic Plan For Greece Is Illiterate And Doomed To Fail (Guardian)

• Whatever Happens To Greece, It Will End In Contagion (MarketWatch)

• Tsipras: Angel Of Mercy Or Trusty Of Central Bankers’ Debt Prison? (Stockman)

• Debt Default Risk Not Just A Greece Story (FT)

• A Derivatives Bomb Exploded In The First Week Of June (IRD)

• Beware Bond-Liquidity Traps When Hunting Yield, Pimco Says (Bloomberg)

• TTIP Is A Corporatist Scam And Not A Real Free Trade Deal: Ukip (Independent)

• Will Seizure of Russian Assets Hasten Dollar Decline? (Ron Paul)

• Espionnage Élysée – NSA Spied On French Governments, Presidents (Wikileaks)

• Hollande Calls Emergency Meeting After U.S. Spying Reports (Bloomberg)

• World’s Big Economies Are About to Feel the Impact of China Slowdown (Bloomberg)

• Shell Fights To Prevent The Release Of Arctic Drilling Audit (Greenpeace)

• Russia Surpasses Saudi Arabia as China’s Biggest Oil Supplier (Bloomberg)

• Cellulosic Ethanol is Going Backwards (Robert Rapier)

Spell ‘recovery’.

• 70 Million Americans Are Teetering On The Edge Of Financial Ruin (MarketWatch)

In the past few years, the job market has vastly improved and home prices have rebounded — yet Americans are becoming even more irresponsible when it comes to saving for emergencies. According to a survey of 1,000 adults released by Bankrate.com on Tuesday, nearly one in three (29%) American adults (that’s roughly 70 million) have no emergency savings at all – the highest percentage since Bankrate began doing this survey five years ago. What’s more, only 22% of Americans have at least six months of emergency savings (that’s what advisers recommend) – the lowest level since Bankrate began doing the survey. These findings mirror others – all of which paint an abysmal picture of Americans’ ability to withstand an emergency. For example, a survey released in March by national nonprofit NeighborWorks America also found that roughly one third (34%) of Americans don’t have emergency savings.

Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, says these low savings reflect that households haven’t seen their incomes ramp up and thus “household budgets are tight.” Plus, he adds “people don’t pay themselves first – they wait until the end of the month to save what’s left over and then nothing is left over.” The problem with this lack of savings is that emergencies can and do happen, and when they do, you may be forced into an expensive solution like credit cards or personal loans – and in extreme cases having to declare bankruptcy. Indeed, half of Americans had experienced an unforeseen expense in the past year, according to a 2014 survey by American Express; of those, 44% had a health care-related unforeseen expense and 46% had one related to their car – both of which tend to be things you can’t avoid paying.

Thus, advisers recommend that most Americans have at least six months worth of income in their emergency fund — and more if they have children or other dependents. To build this up, “start an automatic transfer to a savings account and set a task to revisit and increase the amount in a month,” says Robert Schmansky, the founder and a financial adviser at Clear Financial Advisors. “See how much you can increase the amount until it becomes noticeable and then stop.” Scott Cole, the founder of Cole Financial Planning, says to put the money in an FDIC-insured, high-yield savings account. Schmansky says that you want this account to be separate from your checking account “to prevent frivolous withdrawals.” He adds that while it’s important to find a good rate, it’s “equally important” that the money is accessible and the bank has “a long history of paying higher than market rates” as “too many banks in the past that started out as high yield payers dropped those rates after some time.”

She’s going to blow up the whole thing. Unless someone else is first.

• Marine Le Pen: Just Call Me Madame Frexit (Bloomberg)

Marine Le Pen, a frontrunner in France’s 2017 presidential election, says a Greek exit from the euro is inevitable. And if it’s up to her, France won’t be far behind. “We’ve won a few months’ respite but the problem will come back,” Le Pen said of Greece in an interview at her National Front party headquarters in Nanterre, near Paris, on Tuesday. “Today we’re talking about Grexit, tomorrow it will be Brexit, and the day after tomorrow it will be Frexit.” Le Pen, 46, is leading first-round presidential election polls in France, ahead of President Francois Hollande, ex-leader Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Manuel Valls. She’s the only one of the four calling for France to exit the euro, banking on people’s exasperation with the Greek crisis and Britain’s proposed referendum on the European Union to win over voters.

“I’ll be Madame Frexit if the European Union doesn’t give us back our monetary, legislative, territorial and budget sovereignty,” Le Pen said. She’s calling for an orderly breakup of the common currency, with France and Germany sitting around the table to dismantle the 15-year-old monetary union. Since she took over from her father as head of the National Front in 2011, Marine Le Pen has done her best to push the anti-immigration party into the French political mainstream. She came third in the 2012 presidential race and currently has two members in the country’s National Assembly for the first time since 1997. The combination of tepid economic growth and high unemployment at home, together with hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern immigrants seeking jobs or asylum in Europe, has given Le Pen increased traction.

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed concern about the level of support Le Pen will receive in 2017 and how that power might weigh on French economic policy. “She knows perfectly well that if France leaves, there’s no more euro,” Le Pen said. Although Le Pen hasn’t given a full, detailed plan of how she would lead her country out of the euro, she says she doesn’t believe France would be shut out of the borrowing market or rejected by investors as a result.

Good to see that there are still some people awake.

• The Delphi Declaration On Greece And Europe (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Delphi Conference on the European/Russian crisis created by Washington issued a declaration repudiating the EU attack on the Greek nation. The Delphi Declaration asks the European peoples, especially the Germans, to do the right thing and object to the plunder of Greece by the One%. This appeal to good will is likely to fall on deaf ears even though the pillage of Greece will create a precedent that can then be applied to Italy, Spain, France, and even Germany.

THE DELPHI DECLARATION: European governments, European institutions and the IMF, acting in close alliance, if not under direct control of big international banks and other financial institutions, are now exercising a maximum of pressure, including open threats, blackmailing and a slander and terror communication campaign against the recently elected Greek government and against the Greek people. They are asking from the elected government of Greece to continue the “bail-out” program and the supposed “reforms” imposed on this country in May 2010, in theory to “help” and “save” it.

As a result of this program, Greece has experienced by far the biggest economic, social and political catastrophe in the history of Western Europe since 1945.It has lost 27% of its GDP, more than the material losses of France or Germany during the 1st World War. The living standards have fallen sharply, the social welfare system all but destroyed, Greeks have seen social rights won during one century of struggles taken back. Whole social strata were completely destroyed, more and more Greeks are falling from their balconies to end a life of misery and desperation, every talented person who can leaves from the country. Democracy, under the rule of a “Troika”, acting as collective economic assassin, a kind of Kafka’s “Court”, has been transformed into a sheer formality in the very same country where it was born!

Greeks are experiencing now the same feeling of insecurity about all basic conditions of its life, that French have experienced in 1940, Germans in 1945, Soviets in 1991. In the same time, the two problems which this program was supposed to address, the Greek sovereign debt and competitiveness of the Greek economy have, both, sharply deteriorated. Now, European institutions and governments are refusing even the most reasonable, elementary, minor concession to the Athens government, they refuse even the slightest face-saving formula, if it could be. They want a total surrender of SYRIZA, they want its humiliation, its destruction. By denying to the Greek people any peaceful and democratic way out of its social and national tragedy, they are pushing Greece into chaos, if not civil war.

By the way, even now, an undeclared social civil war of “low intensity” is waged inside this country, especially against the unprotected, the ill, the young and the very old, the weaker and the unlucky. Is this the Europe we want our children to live? We want to express our total, unconditional solidarity with the struggle of the Greek people for its dignity, its national and social salvation, for its liberation from the unacceptable neocolonial rule “Troika” is trying to impose on a European country. We denounce the illegal and unacceptable agreements successive Greek governments have been obliged, under threat and blackmail, to sign, in violation of all European treaties, of the Charter of UN and of the Greek constitution.

IMF has already said no.

• Berlin Insists Greek Parliament Approves All Reforms By Monday (FT)

Greece’s parliament will have only a few days to pass all the economic reforms Athens promises its creditors to unlock desperately need bailout aid, putting intense pressue on prime minister Alexis Tsipras to build domestic political support for controversial concessions. Berlin has insisted on full and immediate legislative approval of measures that may be agreed at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Wednesday even though officials now concede a deal may come too late for Athens to meet a €1.5bn debt repayment to the IMF due on June 30. People briefed on Berlin’s thinking said months of fraught negotiations since the radical anti-austerity government came to power have undermined trust in Greece’s ability to fuflill its promises.

German officials want Greek parliamentary approval before an extension of its bailout programme is presented to the Bundestag before it expires on Tuesday. Greek authorities have already begun preparations for a hasty and potentially rancorous parliamentary debate over the weekend amidst growing signs Mr Tsipras’ new reform plan – which would be presented to eurozone leaders on Thursday — faces fierce resistance at home. A handful of more radical members of Mr Tsipras’ governing Syriza party have already vowed to mutiny over the proposal, and thousands of Greek pensioners took to the streets of Athens on Tuesday evening to decry the plans. “We have nothing, no money, we cannot live like this anymore,” shouted Thomas Yanakakis, 63, with tears in his eyes. “Enough is enough. Everyone must take to the streets now to stop this.”

Well, unless you’re into SM.

• Europe Is Destroying Greece’s Economy For No Reason At All (WaPo)

The real question is why Europe is forcing Greece to do any more austerity at all. It’s already done so much that, before this latest showdown, it actually had a budget surplus before interest payments. And that’s all it should shoot for, really: the point at which it doesn’t need any more bailouts from Europe. Anything more than that, though, would just inflict unnecessary — and self-defeating! — harm to the economy. When interest rates are zero, like they are now, budget cuts of 3% of GDP would, by Paul Krugman’s calculation, make the economy shrink something like 7.5%. So even though you have less debt, your debt burden isn’t much better since you have less money to pay it back.

There’s only one reason to make Greece do more austerity, and it makes no sense at all. That’s to try to make it pay back what it owes. Indeed, one European official said that the entire point of this was that they “want to get our money back some day.” The problem, though, is everybody knows Greece will never do that. Its debt should have been written down in 2010, but it wasn’t because it was “bailed out” to the extent that it was given money to then give to French and German banks. The longer Europe pretends this new debt will be paid back, the longer Greece’s depression will go on. Now, it’s true that Europe has lowered the interest rates and extended the maturities on Greece’s debt so far out that, for now at least, it’s like a lot of it doesn’t exist.

But eventually it will, and at that point they’ll either need to extend-and-pretend some more or hope that Greece has returned to growth. Until then, Greece will be stuck in its economic Groundhog Day. It keeps trying to resist these pointless budget cuts that just keep it in a perpetual state of high unemployment, but then gives in at the last minute. On second thought, history is just repeating itself as tragedy over and over again.

What I hear from Athens is that this is not quite accurate, it’s what happened 3 years ago.

• Greek Public Stops Paying Off Personal Debts As Uncertainty Grows (FT)

Margarita sits cross-legged on a shiny parquet floor in a small Athens apartment, surrounded by piles of cardboard boxes. Within them are her family’s possessions. “I never expected to set up house in my late parents’ place,” the 42-year-old says. Her husband George, a banker made redundant three years ago, is overseeing workers installing security shutters in the two-bedroom, one-balcony space, while her 16-year-old daughter Christina brews coffee in a cramped kitchen. The Athenian family, who asked for their surname not to be used, moved to a downtown residential district from a villa in the northern suburbs to avoid defaulting on their mortgage. “We restructured it twice, thanks to my old colleagues at the bank but we still couldn’t keep up with the payments,” says George, now a struggling investment consultant.

“Things were looking pretty bleak but then we found a tenant so we could move out.” The family still owes a year’s worth of school fees at the private international school their daughter attended, which George admits is not a priority. He is no longer embarrassed by his inability to pay, he says, because so many other parents are in the same situation. Such strategic defaults have become a way of life among Greece’s formerly affluent middle-class. Many borrowed heavily as local banks competed to offer consumer loans at accessible interest rates after Greece joined the euro in 2001. When the crisis struck they resisted changes to their lifestyle, convinced that it was only a blip on a continuous upward path to income levels matching those of Italy and Spain.

But they have since been forced to make harsh adjustments. With their own savings depleted and the country’s immediate future so uncertain — will Greece default on its debts and leave the euro? — many have simply stopped making payments altogether, virtually freezing economic activity. Tax revenues for May, for example, fell €1bn short of the budget target, with so many Greek citizens balking at filing returns. That has put more pressure on the country’s leftwing government as it desperately scrapes up cash to pay wages and salaries and foreign creditors. The government, itself, has contributed to the chain of non-payment by freezing payments due to suppliers. That has had a knock-on effect, stifling the small businesses that dominate the economy and building up a mountain of arrears that will take months, if not years, to settle.

Business-to-business payments have almost been paused, one Athens businessman says. “They are just rolling over postdated cheques”. For Greek banks, mortgage loans left unserviced by strategic defaulters have become a particular headache, especially since the Syriza-led government says it is committed to protecting low-income homeowners from foreclosures on their properties “There’s a real issue of moral hazard… Around 70% of restructured mortgage loans aren’t being serviced because people think foreclosures will only be applied to big villa owners”, one banker said.

When you cut an economy by 25%, pensions automatically weigh heavier.

• A -Last- Shield Against Poverty, Pensions Are Greece’s Top Priority (AP)

Unlike most eurozone members, Greece’s welfare system is relatively weak, with effectively no social housing or rent assistance programs, while the jobless only receive benefits and state health coverage for up to one year. Families are left to provide the safety net. Pensioner Assimina Griva, who helps run a community center for the retired in a hillside suburb of Athens, illustrates what many Greeks live. With her monthly pension of €600 she gives financial assistance to her son, who was laid off from the steel industry and otherwise depends on his wife’s salary of €400. “I help my child, and I keep €100 for the whole month,” says Griva. The problem, experts agree, is that the system is speeding toward insolvency.

State spending on pensions has risen from 11.7% of GDP before the financial crisis to 16.2% as the economy shrank. The average in the European Union is about 12%. The burden on the state is set to grow dramatically as the number of pensioners — currently 2.6 million out of a total population of 11 million — is set to keep rising. Greece has the sixth oldest population in the world, according to United Nations data. Over 20% of Greeks are aged 65 and over, a share the EU statistics agency expects to jump to 33% in 2060. Added to that is the impact of the financial crisis. High unemployment, undeclared labor, and arrears from struggling businesses have hammered state revenues.

A 2012 write-down of Greece’s privately-held national debt saw pension funds’ reserves lose more than half their value, as they were required by law to buy government bonds. “The pension system in Greece is not sustainable. But how could it be?” Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said at a business conference in Berlin this month. “We want to reform it … (But) pensions have already been cut by 40%. Forty%! Is cutting further a reform? I don’t think it is a reform. Any butcher can take a clever and start chopping things down. We need surgery.”

At last, the world press shows some signs of working neurons.

• This Is A Deal That Heaps More Misery On Greeks (Guardian)

For Greece, the small concessions the creditors now seem prepared to make on pensions and tax increases on the poor will at least allow Alexis Tsipras to save face with his electorate and overcome the difficulty of getting the proposals through his parliament. But he will also have seen off the threat of capital controls being imposed to stop any further outflow of money from Greece and a humiliating take-it-or-leave-it message from the creditors should the ECB have pulled the plug and stopped providing emergency liquidity assistance to the beleaguered Greek banking system. Yet the reality is also that the extra austerity will now be tougher for Greece to bear and the cost of restoring the economy will be much greater.

Just as the rest of the eurozone is showing small signs of recovery the Greek economy has gone back into recession, with GDP falling by 0.4% in the last three months of 2014 and by 0.2% in the first three months of 2015. The signs are that the decline has continued, with unemployment rising again to 26%. Many companies have gone out of business as activity stalled during the uncertainty surrounding the negotiations and banks’ non-performing loans now account for some 35% of their total lending. As a result, the effort required to restore health to the economy will be much greater. It is hard to imagine it now, but strong tourist receipts last year brought the first rise in Greek GDP after a five-year decline in which the economy had slid by 25% under the IMF-inspired austerity programme.

The recent reversal has wiped out much of that progress. Years of austerity loom. More bailout money, but also more hardship and no – or very slow – growth. In itself that is not a recipe for social and political tranquillity. The creditor institutions, the old troika of the IMF, the ECB and the European commission, will be as visible as ever. So actually, not much advance on the status quo of the last few years. This gets us back to the perennial elephant in the room whenever Greece is discussed. The truth is, there won’t be sustainable growth again until the huge debt overhang (180% of GDP) is dealt with decisively. Greece would need to grow by at least 4% a year to service its current debt. If forced down that road, nothing can be seen ahead for the Greek people but continuous belt-tightening and misery.

“Einstein had a definition for this – insanity..”

• Creditors’ Economic Plan For Greece Is Illiterate And Doomed To Fail (Guardian)

One of the insights gleaned during the Great Depression was that it does not make a lot of sense for governments to try to balance budgets during a severe downturn, because tax increases and spending cuts reduce demand. That deepens the slump, leaving an even bigger hole in the public finances. In Greece, though, it as if the clock has been turned back to the pre-FDR days when Herbert Hoover was US president. Weak growth means that Athens continues to miss the deficit targets the troika sets for it. The troika responds by insisting on additional savings to put the budget back on track. Paul Krugman posted a chart last week based on IMF data that illustrates what happened to the underlying public finances of the eurozone members in 2014.

This measure of budgetary discipline looks at the primary budget surplus – the gap between revenues and spending excluding debt interest payments – adjusted for the state of the economic cycle. Measured in this way, Greece ran a surplus of more than 5% of GDP last year, comfortably higher than any other eurozone country. It is, however, not enough for the troika. In order to avoid a debt default and a run on its banks that would threaten its continued membership of the single currency, Greece has now had to table proposals that will suck an additional €8bn out of the economy in the next 18 months. Consumer spending will be hit by an increase in VAT and higher pension contributions, while investment will be dampened by a one-off levy and an increase in corporation tax.

Greece has a number of severe economic problems. It suffers from a lack of demand, and a five-year slump has pushed it into deflation. Falling prices have added to the real, inflation-adjusted burden of the government’s debt, which currently stands at 175% of GDP. A fresh dose of austerity will make all these problems worse. One way for Greece to get out of its mess would be for it to leave the euro, devalue its currency and renege on all or part of its debt. That is not an option if it stays in the single currency, which the public wants. Another way out would be for the creditors to cut Greece some slack. That would involve immediate debt relief and more realistic targets. The troika, though, will continue with policies that have failed before in the hope that they will succeed this time. Einstein had a definition for this – insanity.

“..the single currency’s most troublesome state will remain inside the euro as long as Greek nuisance value (GNV), both political and economic, is held to be lower inside the system (I) than it would be outside (O)..”

• Whatever Happens To Greece, It Will End In Contagion (MarketWatch)

Acres of column inches have been expended on Greece and the future. Here are eight succinct truths to guide observers through the next few days.

1. There will be no quick and easy end to the Greek affair. Unstable disequilibria can last a long time. For four centuries, Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire. Tonight’s unhappy meeting of eurozone leaders will not be the last time they gather to consider an intractable imbroglio.

2. Greece holds a lot of the cards. No doubt some kind of deal will be done to prevent — for the moment at least — full-scale ejection from the euro EURUSD, +0.3761% bloc.

As I wrote four months ago, the single currency’s most troublesome state will remain inside the euro as long as Greek nuisance value (GNV), both political and economic, is held to be lower inside the system (I) than it would be outside (O). For the time being, GNV-I is — just — less than GNV-O. All sorts of Greek maneuvering — whether talks with President Vladimir Putin or speculation about a Greek exit bringing down the euro “house of cards” — are useful ploys to stoke up European fears of GNV-O.

3. The funds that are now leaving Greek banks to the tune of €1 billion a day, whether being taken abroad or simply kept under the mattress, are all effectively liabilities of the European Central Bank, to be paid ultimately (if things go wrong) by European taxpayers. The ECB, as an unelected body run by technocrats, cannot by itself pull the plug on Greece and declare the banks insolvent. The Greek government has no great wish to bring in exchange controls (although soon it may be forced to) since withdrawn euros represent a negotiating tool against its creditors and a store of value that many Greeks can use to hedge against a return of the drachma.

4. The IMF is unlikely to get its money back on time. An internal IMF assessment two years ago ruled that the Fund’s exceptional loan to Greece in 2010 was made on far-too-optimistic assumptions about the country’s debt sustainability and ability to carry out adjustment, breaching the IMF’s own rules. U.S. taxpayers will lose money. So please forget any idea that Congress will agree on IMF governance and voting reforms any time in the next few years.

5. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will be a big loser. The pressure is on her to hold the euro area together and maintain Germany’s European credentials without damaging the pocketbooks of German taxpayers and turning the euro into an overt transfer union. This is an impossible task. Her biggest adversaries are likely to be within her own coalition with the Social Democratic Party, which, however unfairly, will publicly blame her for any unsavory outcome. Shaming Merkel over Greek debt may be unscrupulous, but if it delivers the SPD a chance of winning the 2017 election, then the party will seize it.

6. Karl Otto Pöhl, the former Bundesbank president who died in December, was right when he said, a few days after the May 2010 bailout, that it was decided to save (roughly in that order) rich Greeks, and French and German banks. The Bundesbank’s qualms over the ECB’s purchases of the bonds of Greece and other peripheral countries, publicly though impotently voiced at the time, were never likely to derail the action. But we will hear more of them now that taxpayers in Germany and other creditor countries start to weigh up the bill.

Behind the curtains.

• Tsipras: Angel Of Mercy Or Trusty Of Central Bankers’ Debt Prison? (Stockman)

Draghi and his posse of financial dimwits have created what amounts to a hideous financial scam – a disgrace to any notion of central banking which existed before 2008. Had he not announced he would massively monetize euro sovereign debt in July 2012, Greece would have been bankrupt long ago, and the peripheral borrowers like Italy, Spain and Portugal would have had their day of fiscal reckoning, too. The eurozone would have blown sky high, and the ECB would be no more. Likewise, were not the ECB now supplying $125 billion of funding to the Greek banking system—or actually more than its current level of fast vanishing deposits – the latter would have crashed and burned months ago, thereby triggering a crisis which would have eventually destroyed the euro.

Ironically, the angel of mercy now hovers in the form of Greece’s intrepid prime minister, Alexis Tsipras. Too be sure, his left-wing statist economics is a complete abomination that would cause the Greek people catastrophic suffering if were ever to be implemented. But he is absolutely correct on the matter of political self-governance: “We have no right to bury the European democracy in the land where it was born.” That’s the essence of the issue. If Greece’s democracy is to survive, it must be cut loose from the destructive regime of superstate dictation from Brussels and monetary falsification from Frankfurt. Ironically, going back to the Drachma would put Greece’s politicians right were they were before they were betrayed by the false monetary regime of eurozone central banking.

They would be forced to run a primary surplus because they would not be able to borrow on world markets after a massive default on the debt forced upon them by the eurozone, ECB and IMF. But the mix of taxing the rich, cutting the pensioners, catching the tax cheats, selling state assets, shrinking the bureaucracy and squeezing the crony capitalist leeches which feed on the Greek state would be up to them, not the inspectors and pompous bureaucrats from the IMF and European superstate. More importantly, faced with a honest bond market and real bond vigilantes, the Greek state would rediscover the requisites of sustainable fiscal governance. If they should ever again choose to run large fiscal deficits in the future, they would have to deal with an altogether different kind of committee. Namely, the pricing committee of their bond underwriters syndicate.

If the bond vigilantes needed a 15% yield to buy the state’s debt based on the facts and fiscal prospects at hand, there would not ensue months and years of can-kicking, phony restructuring plans and promises and endless PR maneuvers and leaks to the financial press. Greece’s politicians would be required to either hit the bid or cut the pension checks the very next day. Tsipras is now confronted with this kind of hard choice in an altogether different venue. If he sells out Greece one more time to the paymasters of his country’s crushing debt, it will be only a matter of time before another Greek prime minister will be forced to walk the same plank on which he now totters. By doing what’s right for Greek democracy, by contrast, he would prove to be an angel of mercy. There is no way that the euro and ECB could survive a Greexit, nor could worlwide Keynesian central banking survive the blow of their demise.

Emerging markets.

• Debt Default Risk Not Just A Greece Story (FT)

Gripped by the prospect of default in Greece? You may be looking in the wrong direction. The southern European nation may have the world’s highest debt burden, equal to 175% of its economy or gross domestic product, but according to credit rating agencies that does not make Greece the riskiest borrower for bond investors. That title is held by Ukraine, presently engaged in fighting a war with pro-Russian separatists as well as battling creditors over $15bn of debt the country says it cannot afford to service. The difference between Greece and Ukraine is reflected in the prices at which the sovereign debt of the two countries trades. Prices for Greek bonds have crashed over the past year as investors took fright at the political success of the anti-austerity Syriza party, yet they remain above 50 cents in the euro – considered a benchmark default level.

Ukraine’s equivalent bonds trade below 50 cents in the dollar, suggesting a far higher risk of a default. Indeed, this week, Ukraine was declared a “credit event”, triggering insurance payouts in the credit derivatives market. According to credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, default is all but certain. All told, 11 countries, including Greece, are currently at serious risk of defaulting according to global credit rating agency Moody’s. Around the world the euphoric credit boom in emerging markets driven by low interest rates in the US, Europe and Japan now appears vulnerable, piling on the pressure for borrowers. A weakening trend in EM sovereign credit that began in 2013 has continued this year thanks to the slowdown in Chinese economic growth, weakness in commodity prices and higher US dollar borrowing costs, according to UBS.

Interesting two-week old piece.

• A Derivatives Bomb Exploded In The First Week Of June (IRD)

(June 9): I believe the illogical movement in 10yr Treasury yields reflects the fact the Fed is losing control of its tight grip on the bond market and longer term interest rates. Note that German bunds have also experienced a similar spike up in interest rates and volatilty. In the context of my view that there was a derivatives accident somewhere in the global banking system in the last two weeks, it could well have been an OTC interest rate swap bomb that detonated. As of the latest OCC quarterly report on bank derivatives activity (Q4 2014), JP Morgan held $63.7 trillion notional amount of derivatives, $40 trillion of which were various interest rate derivatives.

If you look at the ratio of interest rate derivatives to total holdings for the top 4 U.S. banks, they all own roughly same proportion of interest rate derivatives as % of total holdings. Deutsche Bank is reported to have about a $73 trillion derivatives book. If we assume that ratio of interest rate derivatives is likely similar to JP Morgan’s, it means that DB’s potential derivatives exposure to interest rates is around $46 trillion. Interestingly, the price of the 10yr moved abruptly higher after the Fed ended QE. This is the opposite of what many of us would have expected. It wasn’t until early February that 10yr bond price began to decline (yields move higher). The 10yr bond price also crashed through its 200 day moving average – an ominous technical signal. Both of these events happened within the last week.

Again, I believe that this action in the bond market is pointing to the fact that the Fed is losing control of the markets. I also believe that the catalyst for this loss of control is a big derivatives accident of some sort in the last two weeks. Another clear indication that something has melted down “behind the scenes” recently is an ominous market call by self-made hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, founder and CEO of Elliott Management. In his latest letter to investors, released the last week of May, he stated that the best trade in a generation is to short “long term claims on paper money.

Too late.

• Beware Bond-Liquidity Traps When Hunting Yield, Pimco Says (Bloomberg)

Investors risk falling into liquidity traps as they seek to boost yields depressed by the ECB’s €1.1 trillion bond-buying program, according to Pimco. The search for yield has caused investors to buy riskier and less frequently traded bonds, which may be hard to sell quickly, said Mike Amey at Pimco, which oversees about $1.59 trillion of assets. Overall bond trading has slumped since the global financial crisis because banks have cut inventories to preserve capital in response to tighter regulations. “If you want to find some yield-enhancing assets, then make sure you’re paid for tighter liquidity,” said Amey, a speaker at Euromoney’s Global Borrowers & Investors Forum in London, which starts Tuesday. “If you’re going to take a liquidity premium, be prepared to hold the asset for years.”

One measure of bond-market liquidity is down 10% in the past year and 90% since 2006, RBS said in March. In the U.S., less than 5% of the market changes hands each month, down from about 20% in 2007, according to a November report by the Bank for International Settlements. “My biggest worry for the market going forward is liquidity,” said Kris Kowal at DuPont Capital Management, which oversees $30.8 billion of assets. Investors are “trading illiquidity for a bit more yield, and I don’t think that’s the right approach at this stage in Europe’s economic cycle.”

Structured securities and loans are among the most illiquid assets, said Wilmington, Delaware-based Kowal, who is also speaking at the Euromoney conference. Investors who need liquidity should hold cash or highly traded government bonds, Amey said. The ECB’s quantitative easing will continue to provide liquidity for the time being, said David Zahn, head of European fixed income at Franklin Templeton Investments, which manages about $890 billion of assets. Still, he is ensuring that his funds have enough liquidity to meet redemptions and to act on new opportunities.

Why does the right have to be the only side that gets it right?

• TTIP Is A Corporatist Scam And Not A Real Free Trade Deal: Ukip (Independent)

A proposed deal between the United States and European Union is a “corporatist scam”, Ukip’s MP has said. Douglas Carswell said that TTIP, which stands for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, was not what its proponents made it out to be. “Ukip [is] making clear we are the most staunchly free trade party in the UK,” he tweeted. “TTIP is not free trade. It’s a corporatist scam.” Tellingly, the message was retweeted by Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, a leading contender for his party’s nomination for Mayor of London. TTIP’s proponents say it is a free trade deal that would benefit both the United States and European Union.

One controversial aspect of drafts of the deal would be to establish a quasi-judicial trade court to which the two blocs would be subject. This could allow large corporations to ‘sue’ national governments for enacting any policy that potentially harmed their profits. Critics say that this would erode democracy and increase corporate power. The deal is also controversial because of the secret way in which it is been negotiated, with press and campaigners relying heavily on leaks to determine its direction. A Ukip spokesperson told the Independent that the party feared the destruction of public services by the deal.

“Ukip is a party that believes that free trade between people is the surest way to greater prosperity,” he said. “However the TTIP agreement is not a free trade deal, but one that favours big multinational corporates over the interests of smaller businesses, and most importantly the democratic right of people to set policy through elections. “TTIP as it currently stands could hand the NHS lock, stock, and barrel to huge corporations against the wishes of the British people.”

Long term risk.

• Will Seizure of Russian Assets Hasten Dollar Decline? (Ron Paul)

While much of the world focused last week on whether or not the Federal Reserve was going to raise interest rates, or whether the Greek debt crisis would bring Europe to a crisis, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded a $50 billion judgment to shareholders of the former oil company Yukos in their case against the Russian government. The governments of Belgium and France moved immediately to freeze Russian state assets in their countries, naturally provoking the anger of the Russian government.[..] The US government is desperately trying to cling to the notion of a unipolar world, with the United States at its center dictating foreign affairs and monetary policy while its client states dutifully carry out instructions.

But the world order is not unipolar, and the existence of Russia and China is a stark reminder of that. For decades, the United States has benefited as the creator and defender of the world’s reserve currency, the dollar. This has enabled Americans to live beyond their means as foreign goods are imported to the US while increasingly-worthless dollars are sent abroad. But is it any wonder after 70-plus years of a depreciating dollar that the rest of the world is rebelling against this massive transfer of wealth? The Europeans tried to form their own competitor to the dollar, and the resulting euro is collapsing around them as you read this.

But the European Union was never considered much of a threat by the United States, existing as it does within Washington’s orbit. Russia and China, on the other hand, pose a far more credible threat to the dollar, as they have both the means and the motivation to form a gold-backed alternative monetary system to compete against the dollar. That is what the US government fears, and that is why President Obama and his Western allies are risking a cataclysmic war by goading Russia with these politically-motivated asset seizures. Having run out of carrots, the US is resorting to the stick. The US government knows that Russia will not blithely accept Washington’s dictates, yet it still reacts like a petulant child flying into a tantrum whenever Russia dares to exert its sovereignty.

The existence of a country that won’t kowtow to Washington’s demands is an unforgivable sin, to be punished with economic sanctions, attempting to freeze Russia out of world financial markets; veiled threats to strip Russia’s hosting of the 2018 World Cup; and now the seizure of Russian state assets. Thus far the Russian response has been incredibly restrained, but that may not last forever. Continued economic pressure from the West may very well necessitate a Sino-Russian monetary arrangement that will eventually dethrone the dollar. The end result of this needless bullying by the United States will hasten the one thing Washington fears the most: a world monetary system in which the US has no say and the dollar is relegated to playing second fiddle.

Golden rule: If they can do it, they will.

• Espionnage Élysée – NSA Spied On French Governments, Presidents (Wikileaks)

Today, 23 June 2015, WikiLeaks began publishing “Espionnage Élysée”, a collection of TOP SECRET intelligence reports and technical documents from the US National Security Agency (NSA) concerning targeting and signals intelligence intercepts of the communications of high-level officials from successive French governments over the last ten years. The top secret documents derive from directly targeted NSA surveillance of the communications of French Presidents Francois Hollande (2012–present), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012), and Jacques Chirac (1995–2007), as well as French cabinet ministers and the French Ambassador to the United States.

The documents also contain the “selectors” from the target list, detailing the cell phone numbers of numerous officials in the Elysee up to and including the direct cell phone of the President. Prominent within the top secret cache of documents are intelligence summaries of conversations between French government officials concerning some of the most pressing issues facing France and the international community, including the global financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis, the leadership and future of the European Union, the relationship between the Hollande administration and the German government of Angela Merkel, French efforts to determine the make-up of the executive staff of the United Nations, French involvement in the conflict in Palestine and a dispute between the French and US governments over US spying on France.

A founding member state of the European Union and one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, France is formally a close ally of the United States, and plays a key role in a number of US-associated international institutions, including the Group of 7 (G7), NATO and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The revelation of the extent of US spying against French leaders and diplomats echoes a previous disclosure in the German press concerning US spying on the communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other German officials. That disclosure provoked a political scandal in Germany, eventuating in an official inquiry into German intelligence co-operation with the United States, which is still ongoing.

And nothing will be done. Or they risk exposure of what France itself does.

• Hollande Calls Emergency Meeting After U.S. Spying Reports (Bloomberg)

French President Francois Hollande has called a high-level emergency meeting for 9 a.m. on Wednesday after WikiLeaks reported that the U.S. had spied on him and two of his predecessors. The meeting with the defense, interior, foreign and justice ministers will “evaluate the nature” of the report posted on the WikiLeaks website, said an official in Hollande’s office who asked not to be identified. WikiLeaks, which has published unauthorized documents since it started in 2006, reported that the NSA spied on Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac from 2006 to 2012, listening in on discussions about the euro debt crisis and French relations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, including secret meetings of French government ministers about the possibility of Greece leaving the euro area.

The NSA also eavesdropped on French complaints about U.S. spying, WikiLeaks said. “We are not targeting and will not target the communications of President Hollande,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, which advises the White House on its foreign policy. “We do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose.” Sarkozy’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment. Agence France-Presse reported that his office had said the spying as reported was “unacceptable in general, and certainly between allies.” WikiLeaks has been releasing documents about U.S. wiretapping since 2010, detailing how the NSA spied on world leaders including Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

You betcha.

• World’s Big Economies Are About to Feel the Impact of China Slowdown (Bloomberg)

Emerging markets and commodity suppliers have grappled with reduced demand from China as a property downturn weighed on the world’s second-largest economy. U.S., Japanese and German exporters did better, supplying capital goods like machines that China still demanded. That may soon change, according to a study of global exposure to China by UBS Group AG economists Donna Kwok, Wang Tao and Jennifer Zhong. “As the multiyear Chinese property downshift continues to unfold beyond this year, we may see a longer-term decline in China’s appetite for foreign industrial imports,” the analysts wrote in a report June 22. “Commodity, reprocessing, and developed country exporters alike should brace themselves for the impact of weakening China demand this year, irrespective of whether U.S. or EU imports pick up.”

That’s not good news for a world economy increasingly reliant on China. China quadrupled the number of countries to which it was the biggest export market in the decade to 2014, the UBS analysts wrote. In the same period, the U.S. almost halved the number of countries for which it held the same title. In terms of exports as a share of GDP, nearly all countries UBS covers saw their China exposure rise; some doubled – Japan, South Korea, U.S., Brazil, Canada, Chile – while some tripled – Germany, the EU – and some even quadrupled, like Australia. For commodity exporters including South Africa, Australia, Indonesia and Brazil, the impact of a slowing China has been predictably negative.

Just to show you who’s really in power.

• Shell Fights To Prevent The Release Of Arctic Drilling Audit (Greenpeace)

Shell is fighting to prevent the public release of an audit of their Arctic drilling operations. Last week, in response to Greenpeace’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, Shell argued to government regulators that the entire document is “confidential business information” and should be kept from public disclosure. The problem is that – in order to comment on Shell’s Exploration Plan – the public should have had access to this document months ago. The deadline for that passed on 1 May yet the government department in charge – Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – has had the first part of Shell’s audit since November 2014. With Shell’s fleet already heading north to Alaska the failure to disclose is becoming more serious every day.

After Shell’s disastrous 2012 attempt at drilling in the Arctic Ocean — which ended with one of their drilling rigs beached on an Alaskan island and eight felony charges related to violations on the other rig — Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ordered a review of Shell’s operations to find out what went wrong, including an audit of Shell’s Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS). The audit was designed to ensure “that the management and oversight shortcomings identified with respect to all aspects of the company’s 2012 operation have been addressed and that the company’s management structure and systems are appropriately tailored to Shell’s Arctic exploration program” – before the firm was to drill again in the Arctic.

The audit was meant to be a full third party assessment – but Shell paid for the audit and was allowed to handpick the auditor (Houston-based Endeavor Management). A SEMS audit assesses the management and operational systems put in place on offshore oil rigs to protect worker safety and the environment, such as analysing potential hazards and operating procedures. The auditor will typically review documents and systems as well as conduct interviews and site visits. It was also disclosed that the audit would be split into two parts. Stage 1 would take place in Shell’s Anchorage, AK office, and Stage 2 would take place on board the drillship Noble Discoverer once it was operating in the waters of the Alaskan Outer Continental Shelf.

The in-office portion of the audit was completed in 2014 and the audit report was provided to BSEE towards the end of that year. However, this document has never been made public and Greenpeace submitted a FOIA request for its release. Despite the promise that the audit would be a requirement “before” Shell was allowed to return to the Arctic, Stage 2 has yet to be completed and will presumably happen this summer while Shell is drilling.

Sanctions?

• Russia Surpasses Saudi Arabia as China’s Biggest Oil Supplier (Bloomberg)

Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia to become China’s top crude supplier as the fight for market share in the world’s second-largest oil consumer intensifies. China imported a record 3.92 million metric tons from its northern neighbor in May, according to data emailed by the Beijing-based General Administration of Customs. That’s equivalent to 927,000 barrels a day, a 20% increase from the previous month. Saudi sales slumped 42% from April to 3.05 million tons. China is becoming a key market for global oil exporters as surging output from shale fields from Texas to North Dakota allows the U.S., the biggest crude consumer, to rely less on overseas supplies. The Asian nation will account for more than 11% of world demand this year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency predicted this month.

“This is a clear sign of how spoilt Asia is for choice these days, with Middle Eastern crude now having to compete with oil from other regions,” Amrita Sen at Energy Aspects said in an e-mail. “Russia is increasingly looking east and the various deals made between Rosneft and China are likely to see more Russian crude head to China permanently.” Russia is China’s top crude supplier for the first time since October 2005 as it seeks new markets for its crude amid western sanctions over its dispute with Ukraine. Rosneft in 2013 agreed to supply 365 million tons over 25 years to China National under a $270 billion deal. The same year, the company agreed an $85 billion, 10-year deal with China Petrochemical. Russia isn’t the only crude shipper to overtake Saudi Arabia last month. Angola sold 3.26 million tons to China, 14% more from April, rising two places to take second spot.

As we always predicted.

• Cellulosic Ethanol is Going Backwards (Robert Rapier)

In last month’s article Where are the Unicorns?, I discussed the fact that the commercial cellulosic ethanol plants that were announced with great fanfare over the past couple of years are obviously running at a small fraction of their nameplate capacity. In fact, April was a record month for cellulosic ethanol production according to the EPA’s database that tracks this information, but that meant that at least 8 months into the learning curves for these plants actual production for that month was only about 6% of nameplate capacity. May’s numbers are now in, and the situation has gotten worse. After reporting 288,685 gallons of cellulosic ethanol in April, May’s numbers only amounted to 114,018 gallons.

This is only about 2.4% of the nameplate capacity of the announced commercial cellulosic ethanol plants. If we use year-to-date numbers, the annualized capacity is still less than 3% of nameplate capacity for facilities that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Let that soak in. POET alone spent $275 million, with U.S. taxpayers footing more than $100 million of that bill. Abengoa reportedly received $229 million from taxpayers for its project. For this (plus however much that was spent by INEOS), the combined plants are running at an annualized capacity of 1.7 million gallons of ethanol, which would sell on the spot market today for $2.6 million.

We can conclude from this that the three companies with announced commercial cellulosic ethanol facilities – INEOS, POET, and Abengoa – are finding the going much tougher than expected. I believe that the costs to produce their cellulosic ethanol are higher than the price they will receive for the ethanol. This is the sort of monthly cash drain that led to the shutdown of everyone else that ever tried to produce cellulosic ethanol commercially.

The Only Good Deal For Greece Is NO Deal

Jun 242015

June 24, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: Brussels, ECB, EU, euro, Greece, Le Pen, Troika, Tsipras 14 Responses »

Ben Shahn Sideshow, county fair, central Ohio 1938

The only thing that would really go towards beginning to solve the problems with Greece is for Athens to NOT sign a deal. The short version of why that is so: it would leave the EU intact for longer. And the ECB.

Neither have any viable future, but as they go down, they can cause a lot of damage and pain. It’s mitigating that pain which should now be our priority no. 1, the pain that will result from the demise of Europe’s institutions. But we see precisely zero acknowledgment of this. Anywhere.

All that attention for whatever comes out of yesterday’s, and today’s, and tomorrow’s Troika vs Athens talks is very cute and nice and all, and putting on a ‘phantom summit’ is hilarious, but in reality it’s all based on a far too myopic picture.

Maybe that’s what you get when you’re only looking at life as exclusively consisting of things that can be either bought or sold, which seems to be the way the entire world press interprets the negotiations, the only way they have of interpreting anything. But this is not about money.

There’s more to life than money. That is to say, there’s a lot more going on than those talks and the deal-or-no-deal results that may or may not emanate from them. To wit: If the past 5 months or so have made anything clear, it’s that the eurozone has no future at all, and the EU as a whole has very little.

There is no trust left between Brussels and Greece, and therefore at the same time also not between Brussels and Rome, or Madrid. Italy and Spain could be the next to receive a five-month treatment like the one Greece has had, and the people there sense it. Even if their present governments do not.

As I said a few days ago :

None of these institutions, IMF, EU, ECB, has any raison d’être or any claim to fame unless there is explicit trust in what they represent. That trust is now gone, and it’s hard to see how it can ever be recovered.

Whatever happens to Greece going forward, that is perhaps the biggest gain its dramatic crisis will gift to the rest of Europe, and indeed the world. Which therefore owe it a debt of gratitude, and of solidarity.

You know, we’ve heard it said that politics is about seeing ahead. Well, that’s just too bad, because if there’s one thing European politicians, to a (wo)man, show us these days it’s that they lack the ability to see ahead, even just beyond the beam in their own eyes.

These people don’t see ahead, they project ahead. They are under the self-reinforcing collective illusion that the future will bring what they want it to bring. They honestly think they have the power to control history. And control all of Europe. Their vision of the future is one that they look good in.

And that can in turn only possibly bring about mayhem. Or actually, as the Greece crisis tells us, it already has. Something the leadership in Brussels, Paris and Berlin will flatly deny, because, as Paulo Coelho once said: “Collective madness is called sanity”.

The more power they seek to gather in Brussels, the harder the resistance against them, and against that power, will become. But that is not going to stop them. Just read the report issued last week by the “Five Presidents: Completing Europe’ Economic and Monetary Union.

Brussels sees, projects, solutions to its problems exclusively in more Brussels. But nobody in Europe wants more Brussels. Nobody wants to give up more sovereignty, people instead want back what has been given away. Still, the myopic Five Presidents come with this:

Economic Union: A new boost to convergence, jobs and growth
• Creation of a euro area system of Competitiveness Authorities;
• Strengthened implementation of the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure;
• Greater focus on employment and social performance;
• Stronger coordination of economic policies within a revamped European Semester.

Financial Union: Complete the Banking Union
• Setting up a bridge financing mechanism for the Single Resolution Fund (SRF);
• Implementing concrete steps towards the common backstop to the SRF;
• Agreeing on a common Deposit Insurance Scheme;
• Improving the effectiveness of the instrument for direct bank recapitalisation in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Launch the Capital Markets Union
• Reinforce the European Systemic Risk Board

Fiscal Union: A new advisory European Fiscal Board
• The board would provide a public and independent assessment, at European level, of how budgets – and their execution – perform against the economic objectives and recommendations set out in the EU fiscal framework. Its advice should feed into the decisions taken by the Commission in the context of the European Semester.

Those “Five Presidents” (isn’t it telling enough that that Brussels counts five of them?) are Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Mario Draghi and Martin Schulz. Nice little team you got there. Politico referred to them as the “Five Horsemen Of The Euro’s Future”.

• Juncker, president of the European Commission, was one of the main architects of the chaos we now see, in a long stint as president of the Eurogroup, 2005-2013. For causing the mayhem he was rewarded with his present seat. Not an unfamiliar chain of events in the musical chairs game for career politicians in Brussels.

• Donald Tusk, president of the EC council, has only one claim to fame, but that still gifted him with his present position: he is a vocally rabid anti-Putin orator. They love that in the EU these days.

• Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the Eurogroup who works hard to remain in that seat for another term, is an agricultural economist. Which is fine for telling us what strawberries should go for in winter, but not for defining policies with regards to for instance Greece. He’s so far outclassed by Varoufakis it can only lead to stupidity.

• Mario Draghi, governor of the ECB, is a Goldman Sachs man, and that’s all we need to know. He’s also one of the global class of central bankers who feel omnipotent after discovering the printing press. They will instead bankrupt their economies.

• Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, is just another career EU tool. After 20 years of loyal heel-licking and brown-nosing, he was rewarded with the seat he’s now in. Nobody should be allowed to be in Brussels any longer than perhaps 5 years at the most. It’s the worst of all possible worlds.

Summarized: it’s incredible and insane that such a set of clowns can actually present a paper about Europe’s future. They all come with a huge agenda, and their own future is far more important to them than doing what’s best for Europe. As the Greeks know better than anyone.

A structure such as the EU, we’ve said it before, selects for the exact wrong people. Power is accumulated is non-transparent and only pseudo-democratic ways, and the accumulation continues unabated if left unchecked. A certain class of wannabe ‘leaders’ feeds on just that.

And now the only conclusion is that the EU as an experiment has failed. There is nothing anyone can do anymore to repair it, there is nothing that can be done to undo the damage. Trust is broken, and will never return. Pushing one nation into utter misery, for everyone to see. is all it took.

The only remaining question now is how to dissolve the union. But that of course is not what those whose income and status depend on that union want to even contemplate, let alone discuss. So who’s going to do it? Who’s going to do it for them? People in the street, that’s who. They’re the only option there is. National governments are not willing to perform that function for them.

To do what everyone should be able to see, should be done. Because if you look hard enough, it’s awfully obvious that the euro is finished. Perhaps not the EU, but that can only continue to exist if the entire structure built around and on top of it is thrown out the window, and if European countries start again from scratch to organize their ‘channels’ of cooperation.

If they stick to the present structure, that can only lead to nasty ugliness, because they are tied together in a union that constraints their freedom and their cultures far more than people are comfortable with.

Something that could always only ever have become clear in less prosperous times. Well, we have those. And with them the gaping cracks in the political edifice. As any builder will tell you, cracks in a foundation are a death sentence.

And those times have made painfully obvious that monetary union without fiscal union, or even political union, can not work. It never could. But a political union would never be accepted. European countries want to remain sovereign.

Anything else is unacceptable. The only reason the euro was ever accepted is that hardly anyone understood at the time that it would imply handing over a substantial part of sovereign powers to increasingly dodgy bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg (well, Britain sort of understood).

In the Greek case, what we’ve seen is that the troika did not go into the negotiations on an equal partners basis. Although the EU is an equal partners union, that’s its very foundation. But it still could have worked, and the problems worked out, though only temporarily, if Brussels had resisted the temptation to turn the EU into a power game. Then again, a structure such as the EU exclusively selects for ‘leaders’ drawn to power games, removed from the everyday public scrutiny national leaders have.

The national leaders, it should be obvious, have also fallen into the power game trap. It is not hard to go out and play bully to a country like Greece, and kick it while it’s down. It’s not even hard to lure such a country, a small player when it comes to population and economy, into yet another trap: that of unpayable debts.

Certainly not if and when you can nominate technocrats to lead nations. Which Brussels has done in Greece, in Italy and in Spain. The problem with that is it’s a blind and unwinnable game in a set-up like the EU. Because the nations you attempt to force into submission, politically and economically, will always remain sovereign nations.

It’s a game you can’t win, because you can’t take over power forever in foreign sovereign nations. The EU has 29 of those. One day an election will take place in which the people will elect a government that seeks to protect the people’s personal and sovereign interests. And until you take away that option, you will never win the game, you will only cause a lot of misery. Again, in Greece this is duly noted.

We’re not entirely comfortable with the far right being the only side that thoroughly understands this, but we’ll take it; we have no choice. Besides, what happens on the left in Greece, Spain, and Portugal may yet balance this out. The crucial mistake the left makes is that so far it’s seeking to remain part of the Europe that Brussels is seeking to construct. Not a wise idea.

So we have Marine Le Pen who speaks most clearly about Europe, and who understands best of everyone in public office what is going on, or at least expresses it best:

Marine Le Pen: Just Call Me Madame Frexit

Marine Le Pen, a frontrunner in France’s 2017 presidential election, says a Greek exit from the euro is inevitable. And if it’s up to her, France won’t be far behind. “We’ve won a few months’ respite but the problem will come back,” Le Pen said of Greece[..]. “Today we’re talking about Grexit, tomorrow it will be Brexit, and the day after tomorrow it will be Frexit.”

Le Pen, 46, is leading first-round presidential election polls in France, ahead of President Francois Hollande, ex-leader Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Manuel Valls. She’s the only one of the four calling for France to exit the euro, banking on people’s exasperation with the Greek crisis and Britain’s proposed referendum on the European Union to win over voters.

“I’ll be Madame Frexit if the European Union doesn’t give us back our monetary, legislative, territorial and budget sovereignty,” Le Pen said. She’s calling for an orderly breakup of the common currency, with France and Germany sitting around the table to dismantle the 15-year-old monetary union. [..]

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed concern about the level of support Le Pen will receive in 2017 and how that power might weigh on French economic policy. “She knows perfectly well that if France leaves, there’s no more euro,” Le Pen said. Although Le Pen hasn’t given a full, detailed plan of how she would lead her country out of the euro, she says she doesn’t believe France would be shut out of the borrowing market or rejected by investors as a result.

We shouldn’t need Le Pen to voice the obvious. But that no other ‘leader’, save for Nigel Farage, puts it into these crystal clear terms, does tell us a lot about all other European leaders. And unfortunately that includes Alexis Tsipras. Though we hold out some hope for him yet.

Here’s hoping he will not sign that deal, whichever it may be in the end, and thereby set in motion the disintegration of the unholy Union.

Debt Rattle June 23 2015

Jun 232015

June 23, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:08 am Finance Tagged with: bonds, bubble, cash, collapse, crisis, debt relief, franchise, Greece, red lines, Syriza, Troika 6 Responses »

Wyland Stanley Marmon touring car at Yosemite 1919

• Greece: “It’s Like We Bought A Bad Franchise” (SMH)

• Greece Is A Sideshow. The Eurozone Has Failed (Aditya Chakrabortty)

• Crisis Is The New Normal For Weary Greeks (Guardian)

• Greece’s Red Lines Start To Blur And Bend (Guardian)

• Greek Offer To Creditors Runs Into Angry Backlash At Home (Reuters)

• Syriza Members Warn Tsipras Against Betrayal With Bailout Compromise (Dow Jones)

• On Those Creditor ‘Red Lines’ For Greece (Peter Doyle)

• Greek Bank Run Fears Escalate As Capital Controls Openly Discussed (Telegraph)

• EU Leaders Weigh Greek Debt Relief as Second Step in Aid Talks (Bloomberg)

• The 2 Main Points Of Contention In The Greek Debt Saga (MarketWatch)

• Why The Words ‘Civil War’ Are No Longer A Joke In Greece (Paul Mason)

• The Euro “Young Adults Living With Their Parents” Zone (Zero Hedge)

• Chinese Investors Are Swimming Naked in a Bubble (Pesek)

• India Infrastructure: Built On Debt (FT)

• “What We Are Paying For Is 20 Years Of Blunder & Neglect” (Simon Black)

• Wages of Sin Still Weigh on Big Banks (WSJ)

• $140 Billion Bond Fund Goes To Cash, “Braces For Bond-Market Collapse” (ZH)

• History in Free Verse (Jim Kunstler)

• Pop Goes The Bubble (Dmitry Orlov)

• Ukraine President Poroshenko Admits Overthrow of Yanukovych Was a Coup (Zuesse)

• What Would Europe Look Like If The Soviets Hadn’t Defeated Hitler? (John Wight)

“.. if Syriza can deliver just 20% of what it promised, it will be in power for 20 years..”

• Greece: “It’s Like We Bought A Bad Franchise” (SMH)

The received wisdom is that if this summit does not strike a deal, then there is no hope of avoiding a Greek default on a €1.6 billion IMF loan, due to be repaid by the end of June. And if the loan is not repaid, Greece is likely to crash out of the euro and perhaps even the EU. International lenders are holding “hostage” €7.2 billion of new bailout cash, which will be released when Greece agrees to an economic reform package. However on Sunday the possibility was flagged that leaders could reach a broad, “in principle” deal on Monday, and hammer out the details at the very last minute when the loan is due. Neither side wants Greece to leave the eurozone. And there is said to be just a few billion euros difference in the reform packages being proffered.

But it’s not about the money, says Panagiotakis. “It’s political, it’s about who has control. If Syriza is seen as giving in to their demands, then they have no reason to continue in government. “Syriza – and Greece – doesn’t want a deal where something is given now but taken away again in three months time. Syriza wants a deal, even with compromises, that allows them to continue with policies without being kept hostage.” Syriza’s negotiators are also painfully aware that concessions that would be broadly acceptable to the Greek public may prove unacceptable to its own MPs. Depending on the degree of movement, they could lose as many as 20 MPs from their fragile coalition.

But if they secure a lasting deal, rather than a temporary fix, they will have achieved what many thought impossible. “My neighbours, friends and family say if Syriza can deliver just 20% of what it promised, it will be in power for 20 years,” Panagiotakis says. But the mood at the protest was that “rupture” with Europe was vastly preferable to more government spending cuts. “The cost of living is rising, business life has been ‘disappeared’, there’s no development,” says Bletas. “If we don’t succeed [in getting a better deal] it’s not worthwhile to stay in Europe. It’s like we bought a bad franchise.”

Every European got poorer.

• Greece Is A Sideshow. The Eurozone Has Failed (Aditya Chakrabortty)

Workers in France, Italy, Spain and the rest of the eurozone are now being undercut by the epic wage freeze going on in the giant country in the middle. Flassbeck and Lapavitsas describe this as Germany’s “beggar thy neighbour” policy – “but only after beggaring its own people”. In the last century, the other countries in the eurozone could have become more competitive by devaluing their national currencies – just as the UK has done since the banking meltdown. But now they’re all part of the same club, the only post-crash solution has been to pay workers less. That is expressly what the EC, the ECB and the IMF are telling Greece: make workers redundant, pay those still in a job much less, and slash pensions for the elderly. But it’s not just in Greece.

Nearly every meeting of the Wise Folk in Brussels and Strasbourg comes up with the same communique for “reform” of the labour market and social-security entitlements across the continent: a not-so-coded call for attacking ordinary people’s living standards. This is what the noble European project is turning into: a grim march to the bottom. This isn’t about creating a deeper democracy, but deeper markets – and the two are increasingly incompatible. Germany’s Angela Merkel has shown no compunction about meddling in the democratic affairs of other European countries – tacitly warning Greeks against voting for Syriza for instance, or forcing the Spanish socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to rip up the spending commitments that had won him an election.

The diplomatic beatings administered to Syriza since it came to power this year can only be seen as Europe trying to set an example to any Spanish voters who might be tempted to support its sister movement Podemos. Go too far left, runs the message, and you’ll get the same treatment. Whatever the founding ideals of the eurozone, they don’t match up to the grim reality in 2015. This is Thatcher’s revolution, or Reagan’s – but now on a continental scale. And as then, it is accompanied by the idea that There Is No Alternative either to running an economy, or even to which kind of government voters get to choose.

“..half the Greek workforce has no income.”

• Crisis Is The New Normal For Weary Greeks (Guardian)

As the “last-chance” talks rolled on towards another “last-ditch” summit possibly at the end of this week, weary Greeks have deadline fatigue. “Unfortunately, we’ve become hardened and accustomed to all this, including the never-ending talks,” said Christos Griogoriades, a physics and IT teacher in Greece’s northern second city of Thessaloniki. Panic about so-called “knife-edge”, “life-or-death” negotiations has become so commonplace that it is almost meaningless to a population whose major concerns are still making ends meet and scrimping for enough to eat. Griogoriades, 42, has friends who have lost good jobs and are now living back in their parents’ rural northern villages, supporting their young children on €40 a month and homegrown vegetables.

“We’ve got to the point where people here look at others, saying: ‘OK, I think I’ve got it bad but that man over there is eating from a garbage can.’ This is going to be our reality for many years, and I think the worst is yet to come.” His parents had lived through extreme post-war poverty and knew how to live very frugally. He felt the younger generation now felt condemned to live through an economic crisis that could stretch on for decades. With the Greek crisis now dragging on longer than the first world war, there have been at least a dozen emergency summits since 2009. The nation has so often been described as perched “on the edge of a cliff” and “staring into the abyss” that it has become part of the depressing new normality, just like cash-strapped hospitals, rocketing unemployment or the families with children living in flats with no running water or electricity because they cannot pay the bills.

Thessaloniki, which has long had the country’s highest jobless rates, now has 65% youth unemployment and around a third of the general workforce out of work. But unemployment is only part of the picture. Greece has around 1.5 million jobless, but a further one million people get up every day to go to work in jobs where bosses fail to pay them promptly. Salaries can trickle in three months late or even take a year to arrive in bank accounts. This means half the Greek workforce has no income. Meanwhile, whole families can depend for survival on grandparents’ shrinking pensions. While the emergency talks focus on immediate debt and repayments, many Greeks feel that little will help their daily struggle in the grim economic landscape.

A risky game for Tsipras.

• Greece’s Red Lines Start To Blur And Bend (Guardian)

Like a husband forgiven for countless infidelities, Greek leader Alexis Tsipras is back in Brussels with a wink and a smile and, yes, another kiss and make-up proposal. Only this time, it looks like the marriage is saved. Tsipras has for the first time in several months taken the time to consider the concerns of his partners and rather than simply demanding solidarity, he has put together a plan to patch things up. What his partners want is simple, if difficult to achieve without further sacrifices. They want to close a funding gap in this year’s budget that most analysts estimate at €2bn (£1.4bn). It would appear that the leader of the leftist Syriza government has done enough to keep alive his country’s hope of staying inside the euro.

The question for his supporters at home will be, has he ditched his principled stand against further austerity, and if he has, do they care? Tackling the towering cost of the Greek pension system was once considered a no-go area. Already cut by his predecessors, Tsipras had ruled out shaving anymore from the bill. Likewise VAT was off the agenda. Now it seems he is prepared to compromise on both issues. On pensions, Athens appears to have conceded that the government’s coffers must be shielded from a wave of early retirements. According to documents supplied by Tsipras’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, there are 400,000 Greeks looking to retire this year who qualify for a state pension, most of them under the existing early retirement rules. That’s a whole bunch of 60- and 61-year-olds who want to get under the wire, probably to supplement a meagre income from working or to serve as an unemployment benefit, all at a huge cost to the public purse.

Part of the negotiations.

• Greek Offer To Creditors Runs Into Angry Backlash At Home (Reuters)

Greek lawmakers reacted angrily on Tuesday to concessions Athens offered in debt talks and parliament’s deputy speaker warned the proposals would struggle to win approval, puncturing optimism that a deal to lift Greece out of crisis might be quickly sealed. European leaders on Monday welcomed the new budget proposals from Athens as a basis for a possible agreement to unlock frozen aid and avert a default that could trigger a Greek exit from the euro zone. Stock markets also welcomed the plan, with European shares extending the previous session’s sharp rally and climbing to a three-week high on Tuesday, with growing expectations that Greece was getting closer to striking a deal.

But Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who was voted into office in January on a pledge to roll back years of austerity in a country battered by recession, must keep his leftist Syriza party as well as his creditors onside for a deal to stick. “I believe that this program as we see it … is difficult to pass by us,” Deputy parliament speaker and Syriza lawmaker Alexis Mitropoulos told Greek Mega TV on a morning news show. If parliament does fail to back the latest offer, which included higher taxes and welfare changes and steps to curtail early retirement, Tsipras might be forced to call a snap election or a referendum that would prolong the uncertainty.

Tsipars walks dangerously close to the line with new concessions.

• Syriza Members Warn Tsipras Against Betrayal With Bailout Compromise (Dow Jones)

To avert a default and possible exit from the eurozone, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras must sell Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, on his plan to fix Greece’s finances. Then he needs to persuade Vassilis Chatzilamprou. But out at the Resistance Festival, an annual gathering of Greece’s far left, the lawmaker from Mr. Tsipras’s left- wing Syriza party said he was in no mood for submission. “We cannot accept strict, recessionary measures,” Mr. Chatzilamprou warned. It was after midnight Sunday, and the weekend festival was winding down. “People have now reached their limits.” Syriza isn’t a traditional party but a coalition of left-wing groups with an intricate family tree formed out of doctrinal splinters and squabbles.

It is those many, disparate factions that Mr. Tsipras must also satisfy with any potential bailout agreement with Greece’s creditors. Mr. Chatzilamprou, for instance, is a member of the Communist Organization of Greece, which is an outgrowth of the Organization of Marxist-Leninists of Greece. It is distinct from the Communist Tendency, which has a Trotskyite bent. (Neither should be confused with the Communist Party of Greece, which is outside Syrzia.) That unusual composition has made it especially hard for Mr. Tspiras to strike a deal with eurozone and IMF officials. “The people who are responsible for the negotiation move within a frame that is determined by the central committee of the party,” says Alekos Kalyvis, a longtime union official who is on the committee and responsible for its economic-policy portfolio.

The negotiators have some latitude to make decisions, he said, “but this shouldn’t be interpreted as if they have a blank check from the party – neither them nor Tspiras.” Many of Syriza’s factions regard the party’s rise as a epochal moment for the left–and any compromise on a bailout as a deep betrayal of its principles. Stathis Leoutsakos, another Syriza member of Parliament, said Germany and the other creditor countries are determined to defeat Syriza. “In my opinion, their aim is to humiliate the Greek government,” he says. “They want the message that no other politics are accepted in the eurozone.”

“Disfunction is very deeply entrenched indeed.”

• On Those Creditor ‘Red Lines’ For Greece (Peter Doyle)

Troika-Greek negotiations are reportedly down to the wire over early-retirement pensions, VAT, and labor reforms: the IMF says all are non-negotiable; Tsipras, perhaps inadvertently echoing Mrs. Thatcher, has, so far, responded “No! No! No!” These three issues converge on those at the upper end of their working lives, the 50-74 year old cohort, and are reflected in its participation and unemployment behavior. So it is worth considering data on those and the associated implications for the negotiations. Doing so suggests that these creditor red lines lack foundation Start with the obvious. Prior to 2009, Greece stands out with lower participation rates for this cohort than all but Hungary (males) and Malta (females). And the gender participation gap is also somewhat higher in Greece, but evolving.

So Greece is unusual, but why? Possibly early/generous retirement; possibly underreporting due to tax-evasion, low-pay, and/or predominance of agriculture and services; or perhaps skills outdating/mismatching and non-participation hysteresis; or public provision of education (easing the direct financial burden on parents of young adults); or health issues; and maybe slow-evolving gender cultural choices. But whatever their roots, these participation rates give rise to the political narrative of “cosseted Greeks” and they need to rise to boost incomes in Greece over the longterm. Once identified, their causes need to be fixed; the issue is “how and when?” Alongside, prior to 2009, unemployment rates in this cohort in Greece were either low (males) or middling (females); but no evident Greek stand-out.

These unemployment data clarify that relatively low participation rates in the 50-74 cohort prior to 2009 did not evidently reflect withdrawal due to lack of jobs for them to find, the “discouraged worker” effect. Instead, they were, in that sense, some kind of voluntary/structural feature of the labor market. To get a handle on the nature of those voluntary/structural characteristics of low Greek participation rates in this cohort, consider post-2008 developments. Given how much room there was for them to rise towards European “norms”, it is astonishing that participation rates barely budged despite an extraordinary battering from policy changes aimed to shift them—with average pensions, wages, and public employment cut broadly by 50, 40, and 30 percent respectively.

Greek male participation only edged up to end-2012 while Greek females continued their slow rise through early-2011. Then participation rates for both fell relative to their trends. This makes clear that any notion that the evident disfunction in the labor market in Greece—and hence the country’s long-term growth performance—is amenable even to enormous short-term parametric fixes on early-pensions, VAT, and wages in the current negotiations can be set aside. Disfunction is very deeply entrenched indeed.

As if capital controls in a sovereign nation is something any foreigner has any legal say in.

• Greek Bank Run Fears Escalate As Capital Controls Openly Discussed (Telegraph)

Pressure is mounting on the European Central Bank to keep Greece’s flailing banking system alive for another day, amid tentative hopes Greece will finally be granted the bail-out money it needs to avoid a debt default next week. The possibility of capital controls was raised at an aborted meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Monday, with Belgium’s finance minister admitting EU officials had discussed the draconian measures to stop money bleeding out of the financial system. “There were indeed different opinions; not everybody was on the same wave length with respect to capital controls” said Johan Van Overtveldt. Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is thought to have raised the possibility which was roundly dismissed by his Greek counterpart Yanis Varoufakis.

Capital controls, such as deposit withdrawal limits, can only be imposed in a country at the request of a member state government in the EU. They were last seen in the eurozone in 2013, during Cyprus’s banking crisis, after the ECB threatened to pull the plug on the country’s financial system. The remarks came as European leaders failed to agree a deal to keep the country in the eurozone after two emergency summits convened in Brussels on Monday. After the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there remained “much more to do” as Athens failed to get its reforms rubber stamped by the euro’s finance ministers earlier in the day. The Eurogroup said they needed more time to consider a revised set of Greek reforms in order to ascertain whether or not they “added up”.

Confusion reigned in Brussels as Athens was reported to have sent the wrong document to creditors at 2am on Monday morning. But in a hopeful sign, president Jeroen Dijsselbloem said the Greek plans were a “welcome step in a positive direction”. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, said on Monday night it was now up to European authorities to find a debt deal to save Athens from default. “The ball is in the court of the European authorities,” radical leftist leader Tsipras told reporters after an emergency eurozone summit in Brussels. “Our proposal has been accepted as the basis for discussion by the institutions,” he said. “Negotiations will continue over the next two days. We don’t want a fragmented deal that is only for a limited time. We want a complete and viable solution.”

It’ll be all too watered down. Greece needs very serious relief.

• EU Leaders Weigh Greek Debt Relief as Second Step in Aid Talks (Bloomberg)

Euro-area leaders said talk of debt relief for Greece is possible once the nation resolves the immediate financing dispute with its creditors. Easing Greece’s massive obligations won’t be decided in coming days and will instead come later in aid negotiations, French President Francois Hollande told reporters after a Brussels summit on Monday. He said creditors should commit to discussing debt changes as a “second step” after an agreement on Greece’s budget, economy and near-term financing is achieved in coming days. German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a similar line. While a third aid program is off the table for now, debt sustainability is part of the aid talks, she said.

“As far as the question of Greece’s ability to finance itself and its debt sustainability, this wasn’t discussed in detail, but it became clear that this question of being able to finance itself must be part of the deal,” Merkel told reporters after the meeting. The euro area said in 2012 that it might ease terms on some existing loans if Greece fulfilled its rescue conditions. For Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to take advantage of those pledges, he’ll have to show his government has taken steps to fulfill its bailout obligations. As Monday’s summit took shape, leaders weighed how to present a renewed commitment to debt relief as part of talks on Greece’s bailout, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

France wants follow-on rescue arrangements to be part of any deal on how to handle the current program, the officials said. Greece will insist on a debt-relief component of any aid agreement, a Greek government official told reporters in Brussels. At the same time, the Greek official said, Greece is open to considering any type of debt arrangement that would pass muster with creditors. Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the outlines of the debt talks are already in focus. “There is a commitment towards the realization of restructuring the Greek debt,” Muscat said in an interview after the summit. Haircuts would seem to be off the table, while three things on the agenda are the maturity of the debt, the grace period for no interest and the reduction of the coupon, he said.

The numbers.

• The 2 Main Points Of Contention In The Greek Debt Saga (MarketWatch)

Hopes for an imminent deal between Greece and its creditors led stock markets to rally in Europe and in the U.S. on Monday, after Athens offered last-ditch proposals aimed at ending a debt deadlock that has left the country on the brink of default. The proposals received a warm, preliminary welcome from the Eurogroup, which is composed of eurozone finance ministers, which called the measures a “positive step in the process.” The Greek proposals are projected to save €2.7 billion or 1.51% of GDP in 2015, up from €2 billion in Greece’s initial proposal, according to Greek newspaper Kathimerini, which posted a copy of the official cost analysis of the Greek proposal late Monday. In 2016 the measures would save €5.2 billion or 2.87% of GDP, up from €3.6 billion in the initial proposal.

However, an agreement is still far from a done deal. And the political stakes are high. A joint poll conducted last week by Greek firm Kapa Research and German firm Infratest dimap in both countries showed that voters feel that the other side is being too rigid. In Germany, 78% of citizens polled said that the Greek government doesn’t sufficiently understand German demands. In Greece, 67% said Germany doesn’t understand the Greek position. Here are the two biggest bones of contention between Greece and its creditors:

Pensions Greece’s creditors have consistently asked the cash-strapped country to eliminate early retirement and phase out solidarity grants for all pensioners. On Monday, Greece offered to raise the retirement age gradually to 67 and curb early retirement, Reuters reported. The question, however, is how long it would take the Greek government to get the retirement age to 67 and what this would mean in absolute euro amounts. The Greek side wants to increase pension contributions now and to phase in cuts over three years, starting Jan. 1, so that vested rights can be safeguarded, according to Greek newspaper To Vima.This would create pension savings worth 0.37% of GDP for this year and 1.05% starting next year, according to the Greek proposal.

Value-added tax Greece’s creditors have been pushing the country to modify its value-added tax, or VAT, by imposing a 23% rate across the board, with the exception of food, medicine and hotels, which would be taxed at an 11% rate. A value-added tax is a consumption tax that is levied on goods and services at every stage of the supply chain. T The Greek government, on the other side, wants to keep VAT on certain basic goods and services at a lower rate. They say the objective is to protect the most financially vulnerable citizens, since the VAT is viewed as regressive, meaning that it affects low-income citizens more than the high earners.

Greece’s initial proposal was a sliding scale: 6% on medicine, books and theaters; 11% on newspapers, food, energy, water, hotels and restaurants; and 23% on all other goods and services. The creditors wouldn’t accept this, so Greece came back offering 6% on medicine and books; 13% for energy and basic foods; and 23% for everything else. This is expected to provide savings and new revenues equal to 0.38% of GDP in 2015 and 0.74% in 2016, according to the proposal. According to the Greek press, the main bone of contention is energy: Greece won’t budge from a 13% tax rate on electrical bills while the creditors are pushing for 23%. Meanwhile, last week the Greek electric power authority reported that its unpaid bills reached €1.9 billion in 2015, up from €1.7 billion in 2014.

A tad overdone,

• Why The Words ‘Civil War’ Are No Longer A Joke In Greece (Paul Mason)

Here’s the situation as the Eurogroup on Greece is underway. On Sunday the Greek cabinet met and decided to make a further retreat on the fiscal targets their lenders want them to meet. There’s a gap of about €2bn between the two sides, and this latest move fills €1bn of it. This is by putting up the VAT rate on electricity, cutting the pensions of better-off pensioners, reducing early retirement rights quicker than planned, a one-off tax on companies with turnover above half a million, and closing tax loopholes. However, the real change is in the tone on debt relief. Alexis Tsipras has always argued that any deal done now should form the framework of a future discussion on rescheduling Greece’s debts. Until Sunday this was a red-line issue.

Now I understand the Greek government would accept a form of words that pledged to address this in future; and an un-named EU official has said this is likely. The problem is, these extra measures are effectively “left austerity” – changes of the kind the lenders don’t like, hitting the rich harder than the poor. So even if they accept they could help balance Greece’s books, they might still object that they are not sustainable. But the background to this final concession is ominous. Tsipras and his team are under huge pressure from within Syriza, and from within the 47% of voters who, when polled last week, said they would vote for Syriza. The pressure comes verbally, in constant text messages from constituents, and from a group within the parliamentary party known as the 53 group.

These are grassroots “modernised” left-wingers – and their 53+ MPs, combined with around 30 or so from the pro-Grexit Left Platform, have enough support and willpower to reject any deal that looks like humiliation. So Tsipras and his cabinet went to Brussels to make one more big concession, but fully prepared to endure an unwilling “rupture” with lenders, leading to the imposition of capital controls and a default, if they judge lenders are actually trying to humiliate them and force them to the exit. They understand the likely chaos would not just be economic. The second of the pro-euro demonstrations is due to be held tonight.

So far has the mood darkened between this essentially right-wing, pro-austerity movement and the mass base of Syriza that it has in the past week become routine for people to start throwing around the words “civil war”, and no longer in the jokey way they used to. People fear, sooner or later, that the left and right will stop alternating their demonstrations in Syntagma Square and start vying for control of it. As I’ve explained before, this is because the election of Syriza triggered a kind of recovered memory syndrome on both sides of politics, about the cold war and fascist collaboration and dictatorship in the 1970s.

How to gut a society 101.

• The Euro “Young Adults Living With Their Parents” Zone (Zero Hedge)

A ‘region’ divided… because nothing says ‘recovery’ like 45-55% of young peripheral European adults (25-34 year olds!!) living with their parents.

The crash will be momentous.

• Chinese Investors Are Swimming Naked in a Bubble (Pesek)

The question is, can Beijing put a bottom under history’s biggest equity bubble? As JPMorgan strategist Adrian Mowat sees it, “policy makers will step in if the market correction gets beyond a comfortable level. I would imagine if the correction continues [this] week you will hear something reassuring.” He’s not necessarily wrong for the moment. China will indeed throw everything it has at the market: central bank rate cuts, tweaking margin-trading rules, slowing the pace of initial public offerings, talking up share prices, you name it. What is wrong, though, is the belief that China can prevent the crash of a market already defying the most wildly optimistic of economic scenarios. Beijing can’t do it anymore than Tokyo could in 1990, Seoul in 1997 or Washington in 2008.

China is reaching the limits of its ability to prolong a rally that turned 928 days old Friday. Beijing has encouraged companies to pursue splashy IPOs in order to sustain the excitement on stock markets, and lure Chinese households to open trading accounts. The thought is that if average Chinese feel wealthy, they’ll buy into Xi’s vision of a “China Dream” and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. But the market bubble has grown to unsustainable proportions. The median stock, for instance, has a price-to-earnings ratio of 98, while the Shanghai Composite, which has a heavy weighting toward low-priced bank shares, is valued at 23 times. The reason bank shares are so depressed, of course, is China’s dueling bubble in debt.

China has $28 trillion of public and private debt; then there’s the unprecedented $363 billion of margin debt that’s supporting shares. It doesn’t help that China’s economic fundamentals have turned for the worse. As Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kenneth Hoffman detailed in a report Friday, Chinese demand for steel is collapsing. On June 18, Bloomberg’s steel profitability lost $37 per metric ton, hitting a record low. Chinese manufacturing activity, Hoffman wrote, could be in for a “major decline,” even if Beijing ramps up its stimulus programs.

Everybody does it. Except for Russia?!

• India Infrastructure: Built On Debt (FT)

Some day, the Delhi Metro will be able to take race fans to the Buddh International Circuit, a $400m, 16-turn, state-of-the-art track on the outskirts of India’s sprawling capital. And once a gleaming new highway is completed, the track will be connected to Delhi and the tourist destination of Agra. But for now, there is little traffic on the highway leading to Buddh and even less on the pristine racetrack. It has been three years since Formula One abandoned the Buddh International Circuit, adding it to the sporting world’s crowded list of white elephants. It does not stand in total isolation, however. Block after block of concrete skeletons of towers that were meant to provide up to 200,000 apartments line the highway, casting shadows on dusty wasteland, dried riverbeds and mesquite weeds.

Welcome to what is likely India’s largest ghost city, which extends across five expansive parcels of land along the highway adjacent to the racetrack. What was meant to be the crowning achievement of Jaypee Group and Jay Prakash Gaur, its 85-year-old patriarch, has become a monument instead to unrealistic aspirations and poor execution on the one hand and a shortfall in growth, the high cost of capital and an uncertain political landscape on the other. The scale of Jaypee’s ghost city rivals that of some of China’s famous unoccupied cities. Fortunately for Jaypee, it also owns a collection of power and cement plants across India as well as three listed companies. Unfortunately, it also has about $12bn of debt, creditors and analysts say.

Jaypee is not alone in its plight. The company is ranked number six of 10 indebted Indian conglomerates that collectively owe about $125bn to their bankers, and account for 13% of all bank loans in India, according to data from Ashish Gupta, an analyst with Credit Suisse. Others on the list include Lanco, a construction and power company; GVK, an energy and transport group; and GMR, an infrastructure conglomerate. They are among the companies that should be leading India’s efforts to bolster its inadequate infrastructure, but instead are hampered by high debt levels and weak balance sheets. In many ways, the difficulties of these groups embody the problems facing modern India, where private sector investment has virtually ground to a halt. The cost of capital is high, and banks are reluctant to extend credit because they have too many bad loans.

Nice historical metaphor.

• “What We Are Paying For Is 20 Years Of Blunder & Neglect” (Simon Black)

In May 1940, a visibly concerned Winston Churchill traveled to Paris to survey the city’s defenses. Nazi forces had already blasted past French units and were rolling easily through the Somme Valley towards Paris. There wasn’t much time. And Churchill bluntly asked the commanders in his notoriously pitiful French, “Où est la masse de manoeuvre?” “Where are your reserve forces?” He later wrote in his memoirs that their response was one of the most shocking moments of his life. “Aucune,” replied the commander. “We have none.” Hitler took Paris within a few weeks. And on June 22, 1940, seventy-five years ago to the day, French diplomats signed a peace treaty making France a vassal state of Nazi Germany.

Maxime Weygand, France’s most esteemed general, remarked of the occasion, “What we are paying for is twenty years of blunder and neglect.” Given the extraordinary risks in the system right now, these words may soon come to haunt us as well. Seven years ago a global financial crisis was spawned from too much debt, artificially low interest rates, and a complete misperception of obvious risks (like loaning money to dead people…) They ‘solved’ that problem with even more debt, lowering interest rates below zero, and continuing to ignore obvious risks (like buying stocks at all-time highs). You don’t have to be a financial genius to see the absurdity in this logic. Based on their own financial statements, most Western governments are completely insolvent, and most major central banks are close to insolvency.

They’ve already ratcheted interest rates down to zero (or below) and have racked up a mountain of debt. There are effectively no tools left for governments and central banks to deal with another major crisis. Like Paris in 1940, they have no Plan B. They’re completely defenseless to support the financial system or the currency in the event of a major shock. We should all take a moment to appreciate this level of incompetence. This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes decades of “blunder and neglect” to engineer financial vulnerability on this scale. But they’ve somehow managed to pull it off. The only question is– how long until the next financial shock? Because it’s not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’.

How nonsensical is this?

• Wages of Sin Still Weigh on Big Banks (WSJ)

The tide might not be turning. Hopes that regulatory and compliance costs at the biggest U.S. banks might begin to retreat after years of rising may be premature. As several recent stumbles make clear, banks still have more work to do to get right with regulators. Examples abound. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently determined that six banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, had failed to satisfy a 2011 order to fix foreclosure practices. As a consequence, the banks face restrictions on purchases of mortgage-servicing rights. Bank of America, which got a passing grade from the OCC on its foreclosure fix, was told by the Federal Reserve this year that its “stress test” performance had showed that management isn’t forward looking enough…

BofA has said it would spend $100 million to improve its stress-test abilities. The fact big banks still are running afoul of regulators raises doubts about the idea lenders can quickly cut back on the billions of dollars of additional costs they have incurred since the financial crisis. And that means bank results could disappoint compared with forecasts built on lower costs. Banks’ ability to cut costs continues to be important given revenue growth is lackluster and net-interest margins remain squeezed by superlow interest rates. Although the Federal Reserve is expected to begin raising overnight rates this year, that won’t immediately relieve the pressure. Banks have been promising to improve their efficiency ratios, which measure costs as a percentage of net revenue.

JP Morgan, for example, said in a presentation in February that it was aiming for a 55% efficiency ratio, down from 58% to 60% over the past few years. Wells Fargo says it targets 55% to 59%, compared with its current 58.8% ratio. Citigroup says it is targeting the mid-50s for its core business. The persistence of elevated regulatory and compliance costs could stymie their efforts. If costs remain high and revenue doesn’t pick up meaningfully, it will be hard to hit those targets. And while stress-test costs already are baked into bank expenses, the biggest banks are having to increase spending in hope of clearing another regulatory hurdle: living wills. Up until last year, banks didn’t pay too much attention to these. A regulatory shot across their bows, though, has forced them to devote far more time and resources to them.

Look out below.

• $140 Billion Bond Fund Goes To Cash, “Braces For Bond-Market Collapse” (ZH)

Recently, it’s become readily apparent that some of the world’s top money managers are getting concerned about what might happen when a mass exodus from bond funds collides head on with a completely illiquid secondary market for corporate credit. Indeed, bond market illiquidity is the topic du jour and has almost become something of a cliche among pundits and mainstream financial media outlets years after we first raised the issue in these pages. But just because something has become fashionable to discuss doesn’t mean it’s not worth discussing and indeed, we’re at least pleased to see that the world is suddenly awake to the fact that a primary market supply bonanza catalyzed by rock-bottom borrowing costs and yield-starved investors could spell disaster when paired with shrinking dealer inventories.

[..] whether you’re talking about corporate credit or “risk free” government debt, liquidity simply isn’t there and as was on full display last October, wild swings in illiquid markets will be exacerbated by the presence of parasitic HFTs. Meanwhile, Treasury market participants are shifting to futures and corporate bond fund managers are using ETFs to offset “diversifiable” outflows, phenomena which prove investors are actively avoiding credit markets by resorting to derivatives, a practice which only serves to make the underlying markets still more illiquid.

”..derivative interest rate swaps and credit default swaps that have been laid into history’s greatest financial minefield.”

• History in Free Verse (Jim Kunstler)

History might not rhyme, exactly, but it’s not bad for free verse. Greece is this century’s Serbia — a tiny, picturesque backwater nation blundering haplessly into the center stage of geopolitics. And the European Union is, whaddaya know, Germany in drag, on financial steroids. Nobody knows what will happen next in the struggle to wring some kind of debt repayment promises out of poor Greece. Without “restructuring” — a virtual national bankruptcy proceeding — there can be no plausible promises of repayment. Both sides seem to have exhausted their abilities to juke their way out. The European Union and its wing-men at the ECB and the IMF can only pretend to kick that fabled can down the road because it has turned into a cement-filled 50-gallon drum.

The Greek government can only pretend to further dismantle its civil service and pension systems lest angry citizens toss it out and replace it with a new government, perhaps an ugly and pugnacious one made up of Golden Dawn party Nazis. In the background, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and perhaps even France wait without peeping to see if Greece is allowed to restructure, because you can be sure they will demand the same privilege to debt relief. But that’s hardly possible because the ECB has been engineering a shift of debt-holding away from the big corporate banks — which made all the stupid loans — to the taxpayers of their member states, especially Germany, which stands to be the biggest bag-holder when a contagion of serial default seeps across the continent.

This implies, of course, that along the way to that outcome something sickening happens to the price of all the bonds that the debt is embodied in. Namely, its value craters for the simple reason that the threat of non-payment makes interest rates shoot up to reflect the actualization of risk. That would certainly set off the booby-trap of derivative interest rate swaps and credit default swaps that have been laid into history’s greatest financial minefield. Thus, the big banks that were supposedly shielded by the ECB shell game of Hide the Debt Pea Somewhere Else, will blow up in a daisy-chain of unpayable obligations. The net effect of all that will be the disappearance of nominal wealth — it crosses an event horizon into a black hole never to be seen again.

The continent discovers it is a lot poorer than it thought. Fifty years of financial engineering comes to the grief it deserves for promoting the idea that it’s possible to get something for nothing. The same thing more or less awaits the USA, China, and Japan. For the USA in particular the signs of bankruptcy have been starkly visible for a long time outside the bubble regions of New York, Washington, and San Francisco. You see it in the amazing decrepitude of the built environment — the cities and towns left for dead, the struggling suburban strip malls tenanted if at all by wig shops and check-cashing operations, the rusted bridges, pot-holed highways, the Third World style train service.

“..most houses in the US aren’t really worth the skinny little sticks that hold up their roofs..”

• Pop Goes The Bubble (Dmitry Orlov)

And so all that Americans can do with all this free money is gamble with it. There are lots of worthwhile ways to spend money—build public transportation, for instance—but the problem is that none of them make money. And that, stupid though it seems, is a requirement. But creating a huge, wasteful financial casino alongside the real economy doesn’t help the real economy—it crowds it out. And it doesn’t really make money either; it makes bubbles. This should in some measure explain the more or less continuous economic shrinkage that has been happening in the US so far this century. It is also worth noting that, dire though these negative effects already seem, Americans have by no means seen the worst of it yet.

The story one commonly hears is that the US is the richest country on earth. Well, that may be true, on average, if you include financial wealth (which tends to be rather ephemeral), overvalued real estate (which is another great big bubble), promises that won’t be kept (such as the various retirement schemes that will never pay out) and much else that isn’t quite real. But it is definitely true that the US also has the largest group of incredibly poor people—much poorer than the poorest person in the poorest country on Earth. Their wealth is measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—but with a negative sign in front.

They are deep in debt from investing in overvalued real estate (most houses in the US aren’t really worth the skinny little sticks that hold up their roofs), or from getting an overpriced higher education (which has qualified them to serve coffee), or from running up other kinds of debt. Some of them may still look rich and prosperous for the moment, but that’s only because… you guessed it, four whole decades of ever-lower interest rates! Once interest rates start ticking up, and their entire incomes are gobbled up by interest payments, they will start looking as destitute as they actually are.

How long can a government act against its own laws?

• Ukraine President Poroshenko Admits Overthrow of Yanukovych Was a Coup (Zuesse)

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko requests the supreme court of Ukraine to declare that his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by an illegal operation; in other words, that the post-Yanukovych government, including Poroshenko’s own Presidency, came into power from a coup, not from something democratic, not from any authentic constitutional process at all. In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English):

“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.” I had previously reported, and here will excerpt, Poroshenko’s having himself admitted prior to 26 February 2014, to the EU’s investigator, and right after the February 22nd overthrow of Yanukovych, that the overthrow was a coup, and that it was even a false-flag operation, in which the snipers, who were dressed as if they were Ukrainian Security Bureau troops, were actually not, and that, as the EU’s investigator put his finding to the EU’s chief of foreign affairs Catherine Ashton [and with my explanatory annotations here]:

“the same oligarch [Poroshenko — and so when he became President he already knew this] told that well, all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, [this will shock Ashton, who had just said that Yanukovych had masterminded the killings] that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides [so, Poroshenko himself knows that his regime is based on a false-flag U.S.-controlled coup d’etat against his predecessor]. … Behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”

This was when Ashton first learned that the myth that Yanukovych had been overthrown as a result of public outrage at his having rejected the EU’s offer of membership to Ukraine was just a hoax. (Actually, the planning for this coup was already under way in the U.S. Embassy by at least early 2013, well prior to Yanukovych’s EU decision. Furthermore, the Ukrainian public’s approval of the government peaked right after Yanukovych announced his rejection of the EU’s offer, but then the U.S.-engineered “Maidan” riots caused that approval to plunge.)

If the Court grants Poroshenko’s petition, then the appointment of Arseniy Yatsenyuk by the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland on 4 February 2014, which was confirmed by the Ukrainian parliament (or Rada) at the end of the coup on February 26th, and the other appointments which were made, including that of Oleksandr Turchynov to fill in for Yanukovych as caretaker President until one of the junta’s chosen candidates would be ‘elected’ on May 25th of 2014, which ‘election’ Poroshenko won — all of this was illegal.

Now there’s history for you.

• What Would Europe Look Like If The Soviets Hadn’t Defeated Hitler? (John Wight)

Never has a leader so catastrophically misjudged the character of an enemy as Hitler misjudged the Soviet Union and its people prior to launching his invasion of the country on June 22, 1941. Hitler and other top Nazis were convinced that the Soviet Union would crumble under the weight of the largest military operation ever mounted, codenamed Operation Barbarossa. German and Axis forces comprising 4 million men, 3,600 tanks, over 4,000 aircraft, and 46,000 artillery pieces attacked the Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer front from the Baltic in the north to the Black Sea in the south.

Hitler’s grand ideological project of colonizing Eastern Europe, granting the German and German-speaking peoples so-called “lebensraum” (living space), destroying in the process the “degenerate” and “inferior” Slav peoples, untermenschen, while crushing the threat of “Jewish Bolshevism” to his vision of a racially pure Aryan Europe, was now under way. From the outset it was to be a war of annihilation in which millions would be slaughtered. Many Western historians have attempted, when interpreting this aspect of the Second World War, to represent it a struggle between two equally monstrous totalitarian systems. This is of course completely false – a blatantly revisionist and ideological attempt to undermine the role of the Soviet and Russian people in crushing fascism in the interests not only of themselves, their country and culture, but also in the interests of humanity as a whole.

Debt Rattle June 19 2015

Jun 192015

June 19, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:31 am Finance Tagged with: debt, default, EU, Greece, Grexit, IMF, pipeline, pope, Russia, Troika, Tsipras 2 Responses »

G.G. Bain New York, suffragettes on way to Boston 1913

• Are Surpluses Normal? (Steve Keen)

• Greece Is Literally Dying To Leave The Euro (Daily Mail)

• Eurozone Ministers Insist On ‘New Proposals’ For Greece Summit (AFP)

• Greece’s Proposals to End the Crisis: My Eurogroup Intervention (Varoufakis)

• ECB Meeting To Decide On €3.5 Billion Greek Emergency Funding (Guardian)

• Greece Faces Banking Crisis After Eurozone Meeting Breaks Down (Guardian)

• Why Greece Might Now Have The Upper Hand In Crunch Talks (Guardian)

• Grexit Would Be ‘Beginning Of End’ For Eurozone, Greek PM Tsipras Says (AFP)

• Euclid Tsakalotos: Greece’s Secret Weapon In Credit Negotiations (Guardian)

• Would An Argentina-Style Cure Work For Greece? Probably Not (Guardian)

• What Greece Can Learn From Iceland’s Banking Crisis (Independent)

• Leaving Greece To Its Own Devices Is Not An Option (FT)

• Portugal Says It Has Reserves to Face Financing Restrictions (Bloomberg)

• If Greece And Russia Feel Humiliated, Europe Cannot Ignore That (Guardian)

• Russia, Greece Sign Deal On Turkish Stream Gas Pipeline (RT)

• Moscow Threatens Retaliation Over Belgian Seizure Of State Assets (RT)

• ‘True Friend Of Ukraine’ Tony Blair Tapped To Join Kiev Advisory Council (RT)

• New Zealand Posts Weakest GDP Growth In Two Years (MarketWatch)

• Pope Francis’s Climate Encyclical Will Launch A Revolution (Paul B. Farrell

• The Green Pope: How Religion Can Do Economics A Favour (Guardian)

Another great explanation. Very simple to understand.

• Are Surpluses Normal? (Steve Keen)

England’s Chancellor George Osborne took the Conservative Party’s claim to fiscal responsibility one step higher last week when he announced that they will enact a law which will require British governments to run surpluses “in normal times”: “in normal times, governments of the left as well as the right should run a budget surplus to bear down on debt and prepare for an uncertain future.” (“Mansion House 2015: Speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer”) This begs the question, “what is normal?” Can a word like “normal” even be applied to something as volatile as the economy? If we’re honest, when we say “why can’t you just be normal?” to someone or about something, what we really mean is “why can’t you be the way I’d like you to be?”

So by “normal times”, the Chancellor really means “when things are really good”. In that sense, the ultimate “normal times” for the Western world were the years from the end of the Korean War until just before the OPEC Oil crisis—from 1954 until 1973. These were the socially tumultuous years from Happy Days and The Fonz, to the Beatles, the Vietnam War and the death of Jim Morisson. But they were also the years when the economy boomed, with the real rate of growth in America averaging 4% a year (I use US data in this post rather than British since key UK data from that time period isn’t available). Can you imagine how happy George Osborne would be to report a real rate of growth of 4% today? So 1954 until 1973 is the yardstick for “normal times” in the modern, post-World-War era. And in those normal times, the annual change in US government debt was normally plus 1.72% of GDP.

Yes, that’s right, the “normal thing” for the government during those Happy Days was to run a deficit of just under 2% of GDP. As Figure 1 shows, only once—for about 6 months during 1956—did government debt actually fall. But at the same time, government debt as a percentage of GDP did fall—from almost 70% at the start of Happy Days to just under 40% by 1973. How did that happen? Because the rate of growth of the economy exceeded the rate of growth of government debt. In other words, the causation seems to run, not from the government deciding to “fix the roof while the sun is shining”, but from the sun shining so much that no roof was needed.

There is also little support in this data for Osborne’s mantra “that the people who suffer when governments run unsustainable deficits are not the richest but the poorest”—that is, unless we take his cue from the qualifier “unsustainable” to consider that there may in fact be “sustainable deficits”. The only problem for Osborne is that it appears that sustainable deficits apply even during “normal”—read “good”—economic times.

I suggest you read through this with care.

• Greece Is Literally Dying To Leave The Euro (Daily Mail)

How does a nation die? This week, in the beleaguered hospitals of Athens, I saw a glimpse of the shocking answer. It is when its own people die in their thousands simply because the state cannot afford to heal them. In the Reichstag in Berlin, it is now said openly that Angela Merkel is ready to discuss putting Greece out if its misery – to let it ‘Grexit’ and parachute free of its colossal European debt, which could have a huge impact across the globe. Yet to pay down this debt, Greeks have been battered by austerity measures that make Labour complaints about Osborne’s cutbacks utterly laughable.

There is no greater metaphor for a country’s health than its own healthcare system. And it is only when you see for yourself the horrors convulsing Greece’s NHS that you realise just how insane it is for this once-proud nation to continue as it is. If it was your country, it would make you weep with pain and shame. In its overloaded hospital wards, I either saw or heard first-hand accounts of babies held hostage for payments and dying patients left unattended; of porters sent out as paramedics, patients told to bring their own sheets, brakes failing on ancient ambulances travelling at high speed and hospitals running out of drugs and dressings. Operating theatres have been shut and staff numbers slashed because there simply is no money left.

Five years ago, Greece spent £13 billion on the health of its 11 million population – above the European average. It is now spending about half this. Worse still, in the first four months of this year the 140 state hospitals received just £31 million, a 94% fall on the previous year. And to make matters even blacker, any reserves have just been taken back by the government in its desperate scramble for cash to pay public servants and international debts. There are claims of an astonishing three-year fall in a Greek person’s life expectancy in just five years since the country’s economy crashed. If confirmed, this would be without precedent in modern Europe. And the individual human stories are pitiful, verging on the macabre.

These guts are nuts. They didn’t even discuss the latest Greek proposals on Thursday.

• Eurozone Ministers Insist On ‘New Proposals’ For Greece Summit (AFP)

Eurozone ministers Friday insisted that an emergency leaders summit called to solve the Greece debt crisis required firm proposals by Athens in advance of the meeting. “Calling a summit that will not be prepared if there is no arrangement this weekend, I don’t find that very constructive,” said Austrian Finance Minister Hans Jorg Schelling arriving for a meeting with his EU counterparts. “We don’t know if Greece is going to make a move and make new proposals. Taking this to the political level, as Greece does, is obviously a double-edged sword,” he added.

EU President Donald Tusk called a summit of the leaders of the 19 eurozone countries Monday in Brussels after finance ministers Thursday failed to break the five-month-old deadlock between the anti-austerity government in Athens and its EU-IMF creditors. “It’s very important that this is first prepared on the technical level because we need to have some kind of a proposal on the table for the euro summit,” Finnish Finance Minister Alex Stubb said Friday. Any deal between the Greek authorities and its creditors will first require an agreement on the technical details, negotiated by teams of experts from the institutions overseeing Greece’s bailout — the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

Several rounds of talks to strike a cash for reforms deal at this level have broken off in the five months since SYRIZA came to power, with the government insisting that any agreement be negotiated at the higher political level. But any deal “must be prepared by the institutions, then discussed in the Eurogroup [of euro finance ministers] and the heads, of course, have the right and responsibility to discuss political issues,” said Lithuanian Finance Minister Rimantas Sadzius.

These are those latest proposals.

• Greece’s Proposals to End the Crisis: My Eurogroup Intervention (Varoufakis)

The only antidote to propaganda and malicious ‘leaks’ is transparency. After so much disinformation on my presentation at the Eurogroup of the Greek government’s position, the only response is to post the precise words uttered within. Read them and judge for yourselves whether the Greek government’s proposals constitute a basis for agreement.

Colleagues,

Five months ago, in my very first Eurogroup intervention, I put it to you that the new Greek government faced a dual task: We had to earn a precious currency without depleting an important capital good. The precious currency we had to earn was a sense of trust, here, amongst our European partners and within the institutions. To mint that precious currency would necessitate a meaningful reform package and a credible fiscal consolidation plan. As for the important capital we could not afford to deplete, that was the trust of the Greek people who would have to swing behind any agreed reform program that will end the Greek crisis.

The prerequisite for that capital not to be depleted was, and remains, one: tangible hope that the agreement we bring back with us to Athens:
• is the last to be hammered out under conditions of crisis;
• comprises a reform package which ends the 6-year-long uninterrupted recession;
• does not hit the poor savagely like the previous reforms did;
• renders our debt sustainable thus creating genuine prospects of Greece’s return to the money markets, ending our undignified reliance on our partners to repay the loans we have received from them.

Five months have gone by, the end of the road is nigh, but this finely balancing act has failed to materialise. Yes, at the Brussels Group we have come close. How close? On the fiscal side the positions are truly close, especially for 2015. For 2016 the remaining gap amounts to 0.5% of GDP. We have proposed parametric measures of 2% versus the 2.5% that the institutions insist upon. This 0.5% gap we propose to bridge over by administrative measures. It would be, I submit to you, a major error to allow such a minuscule difference to cause massive damage to the Eurozone’s integrity. Convergence had also been achieved on a wide range of issues. Nevertheless, I will not deny that our proposals have not instilled in you the trust that you need. And, at the same time, the institutions’ proposals that Mr Juncker conveyed to PM Tsipras cannot engender the hope that our citizens need. Thus, we have come close to an impasse.

Given the push for bank runs, hard to say what this will result in. More bullying?

• ECB Meeting To Decide On €3.5 Billion Greek Emergency Funding (Guardian)

The ECB is holding an emergency meeting on Friday morning to discuss whether to pump more funds into Greek banks to prevent a full-blown banking crisis. The meeting, starting at noon (11am UK time) via conference call, comes after the acrimonious breakdown of talks between finance ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday night raised the prospect of Greece’s exit from the eurozone. After the talks broke up with a war of words between Greece and its creditors, European leaders agreed to an emergency summit on Monday evening. The timing – just three days before a scheduled summit of all European Union leaders – was determined by fears of a run on the banks.

Greek depositors have withdrawn more than €3.2bn since Monday, including €1.2bn on Thursday, raising fears of a run on the banks. The ECB warned finance ministers on Thursday that Greek banks may not open on Monday. According to Reuters, when asked whether the banks would be open on Friday, ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure said: “Tomorrow yes. Monday I don’t know.” On Friday morning, the ECB’s decision-making governing council will discuss a request from the Bank of Greece for an increase in liquidity to Greek banks. According to newspaper Kathimerini, the Bank of Greece will ask for – and expects to get – €3.5bn of assistance via the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) facility. The request comes just two days after the ECB threw Greece a €1.1bn lifeline in ELA funds.

Used this for my article this morning. The quotes are insane.

• Greece Faces Banking Crisis After Eurozone Meeting Breaks Down (Guardian)

Greece is facing a full-blown banking crisis after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers broke down in acrimony and recrimination on Thursday evening, bringing the prospect of Greek exit from the eurozone a step nearer. Some €2bn of deposits have been withdrawn from Greek banks so far this week – including a record €1bn yesterday – triggering fears that a breakdown in talks would spark a further flight of funds. The German leader Angela Merkel, French president François Hollande and Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to stage an emergency EU summit on Monday as a last critical attempt to prevent Greece going bankrupt. A representative of the ECB told the meeting it was unsure whether Greek banks would have the funds to be able to open on Monday.

As thousands of pro-EU protestors gathered outside the Athens parliament building, leaders of the eurozone and the IMF aimed bitter criticism at the leftwing Greek government, accusing it of lying to its own people, misrepresenting and misleading other EU leaders, refusing to negotiate seriously, and taking Greece to the brink of catastrophe. The Luxembourg talks broke down within an hour of discussions about the Greek crisis starting, indicating the bad blood between both sides. Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said there was an urgent need for dialogue “with adults in the room”. She added: “We can only arrive at a resolution if there is a dialogue. Right now we’re short of a dialogue.”

Lagarde has taken a tough line on debt talks with Athens over the past four months, since the radical leftist Syriza government took control and insisted creditors drop proposals for further austerity as the price of releasing the last tranche of bailout funds. At the talks in Luxembourg she reportedly introduced herself to Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis as “the criminal in chief”, in reference to Tsipras’s claim earlier this week that the IMF bore “criminal responsibility” for the situation in Greece.

Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner for economic affairs, who has been more sympathetic to the Greek case, said: “There’s not much time to avoid the worst.” He appealed to the Tsipras government to return to the negotiating table, making it plain that Athens has been treating its creditors and EU partners with contempt. He said Athens had made no credible counter-proposals on the bailout terms and said that Varoufakis tabled no new proposals on Thursday, despite the session of Eurogroup finance ministers being billed as the last chance to secure a deal sending Greece a financial lifeline and keeping it in the euro. He called on the Greek government “to avoid a fate that would be catastrophic”.

Merkel’s legacy?!

• Why Greece Might Now Have The Upper Hand In Crunch Talks (Guardian)

Greece knows it. The IMF knows it. Every European finance minister knows it. After the latest failure to secure a deal at the meeting of finance ministers in Luxembourg, the crisis is coming to a head. The unescapable facts are that between Monday and Wednesday, some €2bn (£1.43bn) left the Greek banking system – more than the €1.1bn in additional emergency financing provided by the European Central Bank this week. The banks are losing around 0.5% of their deposits each day and cannot sustain losses of this sort. They are on the brink of collapse. Greek public finances also look dire, with tax revenues 24% below target in May. The government is balancing the books – but only by not paying its bills.

There will be an emergency summit of eurozone leaders on Monday, but by then it may already be too late. Capital controls look inevitable to stem the outflow from the banks and could be needed before the weekend after the latest setback. Athens has already said it will be unable to pay the IMF at the end of the month unless it gets some immediate financial assistance. There was little evidence in Luxembourg of a deal, no sign even that either side was adopting a more emollient approach. The idea that Greece might be offered a grace period after its debts become due to the IMF was rejected by Christine Lagarde. The fund’s managing director could not have been clearer: “I have a deadline, which is 30 June, when a payment is due from Greece. If 1 July it’s not paid, it’s not paid.”

Meanwhile in Athens, the government said it was preparing for the return of the drachma. “If we are forced to say the big no, the difficulties will last for a few months”, said the social security minister, Dimitris Stratoulis. “But the consequences will be much worse for Europe.” This is a reasonable point. Throughout the crisis, the IMF, the ECB and the European commission have been negotiating from what they perceive as a position of strength. That’s because traditionally debtors do what creditors tell them. But not this time
There have been four big factors that have allowed Alexis Tsipras to run rings round Angela Merkel. The first is that being flat broke can sometimes help. When a country has suffered as much as Greece has in the past five years, telling it that life will be awfully bad outside the eurozone is not that much of a threat.

No doubt.

• Grexit Would Be ‘Beginning Of End’ For Eurozone, Greek PM Tsipras Says (AFP)

A Greek exit from the eurozone would be the beginning of the end of the single currency, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was quoted as saying Friday in a newspaper interview. “The famous Grexit cannot be an option either for the Greeks or the European Union. This would be an irreversible step, it would be the beginning of the end of the eurozone,” Austrian daily Kurier quoted Tsipras as saying, in an interview published in German. “The Greek government cannot absorb the savings program forced upon it by the EU and the IMF. They would also not be positive for the Greek economy. Greece would not become more competitive and the debts would also not be reduced. The whole concept needs to be changed,” he said.

Many highly educated people on the Greek side that is constantly ridiculed by the troika.

• Euclid Tsakalotos: Greece’s Secret Weapon In Credit Negotiations (Guardian)

For those who thought the battle to save Greece was all about a rag tag bunch of leftists finally seeing the light, Euclid Tsakalotos has made many think again. At the eleventh hour, the Oxford-educated economist has emerged as Athens’ secret weapon, sounding every inch the man he was raised to be: a public school member of the British establishment. “It is rather surprising to the other side,” he says, the Greek parliament framed in the window of his eighth floor office. “But so, too, is the fact that I understand their economic arguments.” Phlegmatic, professorial, mild-mannered, Tsakalotos has spent the best part of 30 years in the ivory towers of Britain and Greece “engaging critically” with neoclassical economic thinking.

No other training could have prepared him better for his role as the point man in negotiations between Athens and the international creditors propping up its near-bankrupt economy. “The fact that he also sounds like an aristocrat helps too,” said an insider in the Syriza party. “He speaks their language better than they do. At times it’s been quite amusing to watch.” The son of a civil engineer who worked in the well-heeled world of Greek shipping, Tsakalotos was born in Rotterdam in 1960. When his family relocated to London, he was immediately enrolled at the exclusive London private school St Paul’s. A place at Oxford, where he studied PPE, ensued. The hurly burly world of radical left politics could not have been further away.

“My grandfather’s cousin was general Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos who led the other side, the wrong side, in the Greek civil war,” he said of the bloody conflict that pitted communists against rightists between 1946-49. “He expressed the fear that I might end up as a liberal, certainly not anything further to the left.” Tsakalotos, who has written six books including The Crucible of Resistance, an analysis of Greece at the forefront of Europe’s economic crisis, embraced the left at Oxford when he joined the student wing of Greece’s euro communist party. What goaded him more than anything else was the treatment of the Greek left – who had led the resistance movement against Nazi occupation – after the second world war.

“Greeks have had a lot to resist, civil war, dictatorship, authoritarianism,” he said. “But perhaps the most terrible thing was the unfairness with which the left was treated in the postwar period. We were the only nation where people who had participated in what had been a very important resistance movement were treated like pariahs while those who had collaborated with the Germans had it good. It was just so wrong.”

Just one of a myriad of theories.

• Would An Argentina-Style Cure Work For Greece? Probably Not (Guardian)

There is a beguiling argument that life for Greece outside the eurozone wouldn’t be so bad. Sure, the immediate economic pain would be severe, but a new drachma, coupled with debt default, might deliver a whoosh of relief in time. Isn’t history full of countries that have devalued their way out of crisis by generating an export boom? Didn’t Argentina recover that way when it abandoned its currency peg to the US dollar in 2002? Taken to its logical extreme, this argument says the real threat to the survival of the eurozone is that Greece leaves and prospers. Come the next crisis, other strugglers might opt to quit, dumping their debts as they go. If this idea sounds far-fetched, Jim Leaviss on M&G’s bond team would agree. He makes an excellent case that Greece isn’t Argentina, not by any stretch.

Sure, there are parallels between the causes and symptoms of distress – an overvalued currency, unsustainable debts, shoddy tax collection, dodgy official statistics and high unemployment. But an Argentinian-style cure – massive devaluation and conversion of bank accounts – is unlikely to produce the same recovery in Greece, thinks Leaviss. Argentina was lucky with its timing of its devaluation, he argues. Global trade boomed after 2002 as the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates after the 9/11 terrorism attacks and China was welcomed into the world economy. A newly-competitive Argentina increased exports by 120% between 2002 and 2006. It’s hard to imagine Greece copying that performance. Tourism is already 18% of the economy, so probably can’t double as it almost did in Argentina.

The poorer quality of the land makes an agricultural boom harder. Greece’s biggest export (surprisingly) is refined petroleum, which is priced in dollars. And its biggest export market is Germany – “possibly problematic post a debt default”, notes Leaviss dryly. His common-sense conclusion is that countries that thrived after devaluation (Canada and Sweden are other examples) had trading partners that were growing strongly. “Greece does not have that luxury, nor an economy that can respond quickly to increased export competitiveness,” concludes Leaviss. Note, too, that the Argentinian revival looks less impressive these days with real growth at just 0.5%. They’re all good points, even if life inside the eurozone for Greece is also hellish.

Tell ‘em to grow a pair.

• What Greece Can Learn From Iceland’s Banking Crisis (Independent)

Greece is teetering on the brink of a financial crisis at the same time as Iceland is finally lifting controls imposed during one. The Icelandic finance minister has announced the end of capital controls – or limitations on what people there can do with their money – imposed after the 2008 crash. Iceland’s recovery has been celebrated. While other countries are still suffering from flat inflation and badly behaved bankers, Iceland has jailed those in charge when its banks were borrowing 20 times their worth. Unemployment is below 5 per cent, down from almost 10% at the height of the crisis in 2010.

Should Greece follow Iceland’s example? Iceland had its own currency, the krona, It could artificially devalue it relative to other currencies, reducing the real value of high wages by 50%, cutting spending, making exports more competitive and imports more expensive. The devalued currency also put Iceland on the map as a tourist destination. Greece can’t pull the same trick because it has the euro. The Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson told the BBC: “It can be difficult to leave the euro when you’re in. Since the Greeks are already within the Eurozone, this is a problem that must be solved not just by the Greeks but by the Eurozone as a whole.”

Many commentators watching the situation in Greece have raised fears about the possibility of the Greek government imposing capital controls if the country was unable to default on its debts. Iceland embraced capital controls, freezing foreign money in its banks, which stopped inflation. Now the government is relaxing these controls. It might be too late for capital controls to have the same impact in Greece. Around €30bn of capital has left Greek bank accounts since October.

Better get going then.

• Leaving Greece To Its Own Devices Is Not An Option (FT)

Spectators of the debt drama starring Greece and its eurozone creditors are shuffling uncomfortably in their seats. They do not know the ending, but every twist in the plot suggests that it is extremely unlikely to be happy. The Greek state is slipping closer to official default on its loans, and even exit from the eurozone. This creates an impression that the drama, which began in 2001 with the fatal decision to admit Greece into Europe’s monetary union, is approaching a sort of Act V dénouement. But real life is not a play, when the curtains come down after a fixed period of action. Some high-level eurozone politicians – by which I mean prime ministers and finance ministers – have made it clear for at least five weeks that they are ready to let Greece default and, if necessary, drop out of the 19-nation currency area.

Yet not all have thought hard enough about what might follow. To say “good riddance to the Greeks, they’ve been unreliable and irresponsible, we’ll be better off without them” does not amount to a serious policy. For the likely consequences would go beyond capital controls in Greece, or the issuance of scrip that ordinary Greeks would mark sharply down against the euro. This emergency is about more than money. It is about European security, especially in the Balkans, an area that for at least 140 years has repeatedly sucked in outside powers and left them licking their wounds afterwards. The economic, financial and political turmoil that would erupt in Greece after a debt default, let alone a eurozone exit, would be terrible for most Greeks – but it would also have repercussions beyond Greece’s borders.

It would add to the political disorder, economic distress, corruption, organised crime, irregular migration, great power manoeuvring and outright war that characterises an arc of countries stretching all the way from Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Balkans to Syria on the east Mediterranean coast. Now here is the point. As a matter of self-interest, European governments – and the US – would not want to let Greece slide into complete chaos, any more than they stood on the sidelines when armed conflicts erupted in nearby Kosovo in 1998-99 and in Macedonia in 2001. It is telling that, after 22 people were killed last month in political and ethnic violence in Macedonia, the Europeans and the US swung quickly into diplomatic action to broker early general elections in the former Yugoslav republic.

Sure.

• Portugal Says It Has Reserves to Face Financing Restrictions (Bloomberg)

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said his country has cash reserves to weather developments that might come from Greece’s standoff with creditors. “If anything happens, we have reserves to face any more serious financing restriction that might occur in international markets,” Coelho said Tuesday night at an event in Oporto, northern Portugal. “And that’s the reason why if something more serious happens in Greece, Portugal won’t fall next because it doesn’t have any problem of financing in the markets.” His comments were broadcast by television station RTP.

The Portuguese government built up a cash buffer before the end of its aid program and the country’s debt agency forecast in a May 29 presentation that Portugal’s treasury cash position will be €9.8 billion at the end of 2015, compared with €12.4 billion at the end of 2014. Portugal has been selling longer-maturity bonds and easing debt repayments due in the next three years after exiting a bailout program provided by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Coelho’s government, which faces elections in September or October, in March made an early repayment of part of its IMF loan after the European Central Bank announced a bond-buying plan and borrowing costs fell.

The country’s 10-year bond yield is at 3.15%, after falling to 1.509% on March 12, the lowest since Bloomberg began collecting data in 1997. The yield climbed to more than 18% in 2012. The nation’s debt remains rated below investment grade by Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s. “Portugal’s treasury is able to face any volatility in external markets until the end of the year,” Coelho said. The debt agency said in the May 29 presentation that it had already sold 12.6 billion euros of bonds this year and planned to sell another 6.9 billion euros of the securities in 2015.

That’s not how Brussels sees things.

• If Greece And Russia Feel Humiliated, Europe Cannot Ignore That (Guardian)

Listening to the news these days, you’d assume that the politics of humiliation has taken over in Europe. Coming out of Greece and Russia, there is fiery rhetoric about nations being downtrodden, their pride trampled, their wellbeing attacked by hostile external forces. Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has accused his country’s creditors of attempting to “humiliate our people”, while Vladimir Putin has announced that 40 intercontinental missiles would be added to his country’s arsenal, as a retaliatory measure against what he claims are western attempts to humiliate and intimidate Russia. The grievances that Putin and Tsipras harbour against Europe are different, and translate into acts of varying degrees of gravity: military aggression on one hand, and the threat to the eurozone on the other.

But they share a notion that national feelings have been severely damaged, and that amends need to be made. That Tsipras felt the need to travel to St Petersburg and seek solace in a meeting with Putin says a lot about this alliance of the aggrieved. Of course, their comments need to be seen in a context of heightened diplomatic posturing. Greece’s negotiations with creditors have reached crunch time. Russia’s regime pursues a strategy aimed at rewriting post-cold war rules to its advantage, after having launched a war in Ukraine last year. But the perception of humiliation is real nonetheless, not least because the Greek and the Russian people seem to share it with their leaders. And in international relations, careless rhetorical flourishes can leave lasting damage.

As the language of humiliation is being ratcheted up to hysterical heights, it’s increasingly hard to see how the involved parties can climb down to a more diplomatic level. After so much energy has been spent on claiming victimhood and nursing grievances, talk of a compromise would suddenly sound too much like a retreat. To deflate the situation, it would be helpful to ask two questions. First: was there ever an intention to actually humiliate? Second, if a conciliatory gesture is really required, should it entail a full-blown mea culpa from the supposed humiliators? My answer to both of these questions would be no.

Russian Deputy PM reportedly said today the country is ready to help Greece with funds.

• Russia, Greece Sign Deal On Turkish Stream Gas Pipeline (RT)

Russia and Greece have signed a deal to create a joint enterprise for construction of the Turkish Stream pipeline across Greek territory, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said. The pipeline will have a capacity of 47 billion cubic meters a year. The Greek extension of the Turkish Stream project is called the South European pipeline in the memorandum signed on Friday, Novak said at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. Construction will start in 2016 and be completed by 2019. The two countries will have equal shares in the company, Novak added.Construction of the pipeline in Greece will be financed by Russia, and Athens will return the money afterward.

The Russian shareholder in the joint enterprise will be state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), Novak said. Greek Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis said the Friday meeting was”historical”. “The pipeline will connect not only Greece and Russia, but also the peoples of Europe,” Lafazanis was quoted as saying by Sputnik news agency. “Our message is a message of stability and friendship… The pipeline we are beginning today is not against anyone in Europe or anyone else, it is a pipeline for peace, stability in the whole region.”

France is going the same route.

• Moscow Threatens Retaliation Over Belgian Seizure Of State Assets (RT)

Moscow has summoned the Belgian ambassador to lodge a protest over the freeze of its state assets. It said that Moscow may consider retaliatory measures against Belgium if the assets are seized, including against Belgium diplomatic property in Russia. This comes after Belgian bailiffs notified Belgian, Russian and other international companies of the seizure of assets belonging to Russia at the behest of the Isle of Man-based Yukos Universal Limited, a subsidiary of the Russian energy giant, which was dismantled in 2007. They have given the target companies a fortnight to comply.

“The frozen Russian assets include accounts of the Russian Embassy and Russia’s Permanent Mission to the UN. Even without any further analysis, this means a blatant violation of international law. We don’t yet know what the official position of our Belgian partners is, but at first sight, this seems to be an excessive act,” Russia’s Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov said. Russia will appeal the court’s arrest of Russian property, Russian presidential aide Andrey Belousov said. According to the official, “the situation with the arrest of the property is politicized, [and] Moscow hopes to avoid a new escalation in relations.”

On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it views Belgium’s actions as “an unfriendly act” and “a blatant violation” of the norms of international law, adding that it could consider retaliatory measures against Belgium if the assets are seized. “The Russian side will have to consider the adoption of adequate retaliatory measures against the property of Belgium located in the Russian Federation, including the property of the Embassy of Belgium in Moscow, as well as its legal entities,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

A low even for aburdist theater.

• ‘True Friend Of Ukraine’ Tony Blair Tapped To Join Kiev Advisory Council (RT)

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has invited former British PM Tony Blair to “share his experience of public administration” on an international council of European public figures advising Kiev on government reforms. After meeting with Poroshenko in Kiev, the former UK leader told reporters that Ukraine faced “great challenges” from “Russian aggression” and “corruption.” Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, also called on Ukrainian leaders to follow “not self-interest but values” such as “freedom, democracy and a desire to serve the people.” Poroshenko boasted that “despite the war, we are carrying out reforms,” and said that Blair asked him “exactly what help was needed from the international community.”

“This is the approach of a true friend of Ukraine,” said Poroshenko, who was elected in June 2014 in a controversial poll boycotted by rebellious regions in Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s International Advisory Council for Reforms started working last month. Leading it is former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has since been appointed governor of the Odessa Region, in the south of the country. In Georgia, Saakashvili is wanted for crimes related to embezzlement during his time in office. Other members of the body, which has no executive or legislative powers, include former Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, Slovak reformer Mikulas Dzurinda and economist Anders Aslund. US Senator John McCain, a prominent supporter of the 2014 Maidan coup that deposed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, said he was forced to decline a seat on the council, due to US Congress regulations.

A nation on crack.

• New Zealand Posts Weakest GDP Growth In Two Years (MarketWatch)

New Zealand’s economy continued to expand in the first quarter but growth was the weakest in two years, weighed by a fall in agriculture, forestry and mining. Gross domestic product rose 0.2% on the quarter in the three months to March 31, Statistics New Zealand said Thursday. On the year, GDP rose 2.6%. Both figures were below the median expectations in a Wall Street Journal poll of 14 economists, which had forecast growth of 0.6% on the quarter and 3.1% on the year. New Zealand’s agriculture-focused economy has started to flounder in recent months: global dairy prices are down more than 50% since early 2014 and New Zealand’s biggest trading partners, Australia and China, are experiencing slower growth.

“The lower growth reflected a 2.9% fall in primary industries–agriculture, forestry and mining–the largest fall since September 2010,” Statistics New Zealand said. Agricultural activity fell 2.3% in the March quarter on the back of decreased milk production in a quarter marked by drought conditions and lower dairy prices. However, Statistics New Zealand noted oil and gas were big factors in the lower GDP growth in the quarter. “There was less extraction and exploration, as international prices fall,” said national accounts manager Gary Dunnet. Mining activity was down 7.8%. Forestry production and exports of forestry products were also down, Statistics New Zealand said.

Wishful thinking.

• Pope Francis’s Climate Encyclical Will Launch A Revolution (Paul B. Farrell

Thursday is launch day for Pope Francis’s historic anticapitalist revolution, a multitargeted global revolution against out-of-control free-market capitalism driven by consumerism, against destruction of the planet’s environment, climate and natural resources for personal profits and against the greediest science deniers. Translated bluntly, stripped of all the euphemisms and his charm, that is the loud-and-clear message of Pope Francis’ historic encyclical released Thursday. Pope Francis has a grand mission here on Earth, and he gives no quarter, hammering home a very simple message with no wiggle room for compromise of his principles: ‘If we destroy God’s Creation, it will destroy us,” our human civilization here on Planet Earth.

Yes, he’s blunt, tough, he is a revolutionary. Pope Francis’s call-to-arms will be broadcast loud, clear and worldwide. Not just to 1.2 billion Catholics, but heard by seven billion humans all across the planet. And, yes, many will oppose him, be enraged to hear the message, because it is a call-to-arms, like Paul Revere’s ride, inspiring billions to join a people’s revolution. The fact is the pontiff is already building an army of billions, in the same spirit as Gandhi, King and Marx. These are revolutionary times. Deny it all you want, but the global zeitgeist has thrust the pope in front of a global movement, focusing, inspiring, leading billions. Future historians will call Pope Francis the “Great 21st Century Revolutionary.”

Yes, our upbeat, ever-smiling Pope Francis. As a former boxer, he loves a good match. And he’s going to get one. He is encouraging rebellion against super-rich capitalists, against fossil-fuel power-players, conservative politicians and the 67 billionaires who already own more than half the assets of the planet. That’s the biggest reason Pope Francis is scaring the hell out of the GOP, Big Oil, the Koch Empire, Massey Coal, every other fossil-fuel billionaire and more than a hundred million climate-denying capitalists and conservatives. Their biggest fear: They’re deeply afraid the pope has started the ball rolling and they can’t stop it. They had hoped the pope would just go away.

But he is not going away. And after June 18 his power will only accelerate, as his revolutionary encyclical will challenge everything on the GOP’s free-market capitalist agenda, exposing every one of the anti-environment, antipoor, antiscience, obstructionist policies in the conservative agenda.

Well, it sounds cute.

• The Green Pope: How Religion Can Do Economics A Favour (Guardian)

Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher is probably the most influential text on green economics ever written. As a collection of essays by a former industrial economist, who for two decades after the second world war was chief economic adviser to the National Coal Board, it did more than anything else to reimagine economics as servant to a convivial society living in balance with the environment. But its most enduring idea from which the book’s title is derived, about the importance of scale, was taken straight from a papal encyclical. Schumacher took subsidiarity, the principle that things are always best done at the lowest practical level, from an encyclical of Pope Pius XII issued in 1931 in the wake of the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression.

It is an injustice and disturbance of right order to push power up rather than down, it said, insisting that nations which do the latter will be happier and more prosperous. Today local democracy, decentralised food and energy systems and local participatory budgeting are arguably better paths for progress. Following the Pope’s encyclical this week on the need for a more equal global economy that respects planetary boundaries, high-profile church figures from across the spectrum of faiths echoed his concerns.

The Christian faith has an honourable tradition of criticising capitalism and the excesses of the market, and of insisting on different ways of doing things, not least since the crash of 2007–08. Famously, medieval Christianity placed a prohibition on usury, the charging of punitive interest on loans. That was only relaxed with the emergence of an aggressive mercantile middle class. Islamic banking today, at least notionally, still operates without the charging of formal interest. There is also a debate in green economics about the degree to which interest-bearing loans are hard–wired to an environmentally destructive growth imperative.

Inciting Bank Runs as a Negotiating Tactic

Jun 192015

June 19, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:42 am Finance Tagged with: bank run, crisis, Greece, liquidity, solvency, Troika, trust 5 Responses »

G.G. Bain Three-ton electric sign blown into Broadway, New York. 1912

The troika of Greek creditors has gone into full-frontal morals-be-damned attack mode, handpicking arms from a weapons arsenal we haven’t seen used before, and that we never should have seen in an environment that insists – and prides – on presenting itself as a union, both in name and in spirit. Now that they are being used, there no longer is such a union other than in name, in empty words.

This has turned into the kind of economic warfare one would expect to see between sworn and lethal enemies, that the US would gladly use against Russia for instance, but not between partners in a union founded on principles based entirely and exclusively on being mutually beneficial to everyone involved.

Those principles, and everything that has been based on them, the common currency, the surrender of ever more sovereignty on the part of the nations involved, the relinquishing of national powers to the various supra-national bodies in Brussels, has for everyone involved been based on trust. Nobody would ever have signed up to any of it without that trust. But just look where we are now.

When spokespeople at the troika side of the table stated on Thursday that they don’t know if Greek banks will be open on Monday, they crossed a line that should never even have been contemplated. This is so far beyond the pale, it should by all accounts, if everyone involved manages to keep a somewhat clear head, blow up the union once and for all. If a party to a negotiation that can’t get its way stoops to these kinds of tactics, there is very little room left for talk.

And all EU nations should understand by now that this is not about Greece anymore, it’s about all of them. Any member nations that does not fall into -goose- step with Brussels must from here on in be prepared to deal with attempts to crush it economically and politically.

Whatever trust there once was is now gone. And trust, once blown, is painfully difficult to regain. The negotiations on the Greek debt crisis have become just another dirty business deal, and have nothing to do anymore with conversations between equal partners in a union. Even though that is still what they’re supposed to be. Officially.

Translation: there are no equal partners in Europe. There only ever were in name. When people thought they signed up for a tide to lift all boats. The Greek crisis has destroyed that lift-all-boats notion once and for all. All that’s left of the union is power politics, of those (s)elected to represent all member nations, working to crush one of them with all weapons at their disposal.

One of those weapons is utilizing the media to incite a bank-run in Greece, aimed at paralyzing the Greek government into full submission. The run-up to the bank-run has been building up steam ever since Syriza took over 5 months ago, but apparently not fast enough for the troika.

The threat has always been simmering below the surface; what changed is that the moral constraint which kept the creditors from speaking out loud in public about it, was dropped yesterday. And that changes everything.

The European Union cannot deliberately aim at a bank-run in an individual eurozone member nation without quashing the very trust that holds the union together. The only remaining question after this is: who’s next in line?

This is from the Guardian:

Greece Faces Banking Crisis After Eurozone Meeting Breaks Down

Greece is facing a full-blown banking crisis after a meeting of eurozone finance ministers broke down in acrimony and recrimination on Thursday evening, bringing the prospect of Greek exit from the eurozone a step nearer. Some €2bn of deposits have been withdrawn from Greek banks so far this week – including a record €1bn yesterday – triggering fears that a breakdown in talks would spark a further flight of funds.

[..] leaders of the eurozone and the IMF aimed bitter criticism at the leftwing Greek government, accusing it of lying to its own people, misrepresenting and misleading other EU leaders, refusing to negotiate seriously, and taking Greece to the brink of catastrophe.

‘Not negotiating seriously’ translates as ‘not doing what we tell you to do’. It’s absurd to claim that Syriza, which has tabled an entire range of proposals, one even more detailed than the other, does not attempt to negotiate seriously. It’s a claim the Greek side can make just as well. The underlying tendency is that the troika does not see the talks as taking place between equal partners. And that is lethal for the whole idea behind the European Union. It’s its instant death even if people will be slow to realize it.

Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said there was an urgent need for dialogue “with adults in the room”. She added: “We can only arrive at a resolution if there is a dialogue. Right now we’re short of a dialogue.”

This is something only a juvenile mind would come up with. Lagarde is obviously not worried about her reputation, she feels -nigh- omnipotent, but she really should be. She’s causing enormous damage to the IMF, and its future standing in the world. There are many IMF member nations who now know they can and must expect to be treated in the same way should there ever be a conflict involving their nation and the Fund.

Lagarde has taken a tough line on debt talks with Athens over the past four months, since the radical leftist Syriza government took control and insisted creditors drop proposals for further austerity as the price of releasing the last tranche of bailout funds. At the talks in Luxembourg she reportedly introduced herself to Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis as “the criminal in chief”, in reference to Tsipras’s claim earlier this week that the IMF bore “criminal responsibility” for the situation in Greece.

Pierre Moscovici, the European commissioner for economic affairs, who has been more sympathetic to the Greek case, said: “There’s not much time to avoid the worst.” He appealed to the Tsipras government to return to the negotiating table, making it plain that Athens has been treating its creditors and EU partners with contempt.

Who’s been treating whom with contempt? Have the Syriza team ever been treated as equal partners in the conversation? This is perhaps best expressed by Bob Dylan’s “It’s a restless hungry feeling that don’t mean no-one no good; when everything I’m-a-sayin’, you can say it just as good”.

Dijsselbloem demanded that the Greek government act quickly to restore trust and stem the haemorrhaging of deposits. “It’s a sign of great concern for the future,” he said. “It can be dealt with, but it requires quick action.”

It’s Greece that caused the deposit flight? The only sense in which that could be true is that is has refused to bend over and let the troika have its way with its democratically elected government.

Top officials from the ECB told the meeting that Greece might need to impose capital controls within days. They said the banks would be open on Friday. “On Monday, I don’t know,” Benoit Coeure from the ECB board was said to have told the ministers.

There is no longer even any semblance of equality among partners either in the eurozone or at the negotiating table. It’s important to see this not just in the light of the current talks, but in that of future of the European Union as a whole, and in that of future talks about debts that EU member nations have incurred with any of the troika parties.

What the antagonism is about is really quite simple. Though the fact that the troika is split doesn’t make it any simpler. The IMF won’t budge on imposing additional austerity measures, but wants Europe to execute debt relief. Europe is more flexible on austerity but refuses debt relief.

Or, actually, it says debt relief can be discussed, but only after Greece has signed on for a list of demanded ‘reforms’. For the Greeks, that’s the wrong way around. Not in the least because the EU floated debt relief back in 2012 but has never delivered.

Politicians and media in countries like Germany and Holland have engaged in so much rhetoric about Greeks living lavishly off other nations’ taxpayers’ money that they fear for their political careers if they were to offer an overt restructuring and tell the truth about wat actually happened in the bailouts.

The IMF’s Olivier Blanchard this week held out some vague idea of even longer maturities and even lower interest rates as the definition of debt relied for Greece, but what is needed is a much more comprehensive restructuring. Along the lines of a 50% or so reduction of the debt.

The problem is that Germany, France and Holland used the money that Greece now supposedly owes, to bail out their own banks. And never presented it domestically this way. But that is not Greece’s fault, or its responsibility.

The second main issue, austerity measures, comes in the shape of ‘reforms’ to the Greek pension system. Which badly needs a revamp, and Syriza is the first to acknowledge that. What it doesn’t want, though, is for the system to be cut first, and changed only later. Because that would mean that many Greeks who are already in dire need would from one day to the next be made even poorer.

And since any comprehensive change to the pension system would be laborious and time consuming even under advantageous circumstances, and there is little faith that Europe wouldn’t stretch it out even further, cutting now and talking about it later is not acceptable for Varoufakis and his people.

To add to the vicious irony of the situation, as Paul De Grauwe noted, Greece is illiquid -it has no access to capital markets-, but it’s not insolvent.

Greece Is Solvent But Illiquid. What Should The ECB Do?

[Greece’s] headline debt burden of 175% of GDP in 2015 vastly overstates the effective debt burden. The latter can be defined as the net present value of the expected future interest disbursements and debt repayments by the Greek government [..] Various estimates suggest that this effective debt burden of the Greek government is less than half of the headline debt burden of 175%.

[..] the effective debt burden of the Greek government is lower than the debt burden faced by not only the other periphery countries of the Eurozone but also by countries like Belgium and France. This leads to the conclusion that the Greek government debt is most probably sustainable provided Greece can start growing again[..]. Put differently, provided Greece can grow, its government is solvent. [..]

Today Greece has no access to the capital markets except if it is willing to pay prohibitive interest rates that would call into question its solvency. As a result, it cannot rollover its debt despite the fact that the debt is sustainable. There is something circular here. If Greece is unable to find the liquidity to roll over its debt it will be forced to default. [..] The expectation that the Greek government will be faced with a liquidity problem is self-fulfilling.

If the ECB would simply include Greece in its €60 billion a month QE bond-buying scheme, and buy Greek bonds as well as allow Athens to access international capital markets through one of Mario Draghi‘s whatever-it-takes statements, the crisis would be lifted in very substantial ways, in a heartbeat.

Instead, the troika part of the ‘negotiations’ does not involve trying to find such a solution, what they want is for Greece to give in, give up, bend over, and take it up the …

The powers that be are so full of hubris and of themselves that they ignore the fact that their actions today sow the seeds for the demise of all three of their constituencies, IMF, ECB and EU.

None of these institutions has any raison d’être or any claim to fame unless there is explicit trust in what they represent. That trust is now gone, and it’s hard to see how it can ever be recovered.

Whatever happens to Greece going forward, that is perhaps the biggest gain its dramatic crisis will gift to the rest of Europe, and indeed the world. Which therefore owe it a debt of gratitude, and of solidarity.

How The IMF Can Save Greece And Itself

Jun 112015

June 11, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:06 pm Finance Tagged with: AIIB, Banks, EU, Greece, IMF, relevance, reputation, Troika, US 1 Response »

G.G. Bain Auto polo, somewhere in New York 1912

There’s a Reuters article by Paul Taylor today that’s thought provoking, but not along the same line of thought that the writer follows (or the twist he gives to it). Taylor concludes that the IMF would love to wash its hands off Greece, but can’t because it’s subservient to German and Brussels interests (a junior partner). However, he also describes, without realizing it, why and how the Fund can rectify that.

Not that we’re not under the illusion the IMF is prone to latch on to the following, but that it would nevertheless be an extremely wise move for the Fund, and especially for its reputation. Which, no matter how you see it, is under threat from its Asian ‘competitor’, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), not in the least because the non-western world has long found that the west has far too much power in the IMF, which after all is a global organization.

In that vein, let’s start off with an article the FT published in April 2013, by Ousmène Mandeng, who also features in Taylor’s piece. This former IMF deputy division chief pointed out what unease the IMF role in Greece caused, and how that role undermined its role as an international institution. Today, nothing has changed.

The IMF Must Quit The Troika To Survive

There are many victims of the eurozone crisis but one loser is seldom mentioned: the IMF has suffered considerable collateral damage. It has been dragged along in an unprecedented set-up as a junior partner within Europe, used as a cover for the continent’s policy makers and its independence lost. The monetary fund was set up as a technocratic institution. That, indeed, is why it was brought into Europe: it was felt that a neutral broker was needed to fix the eurozone’s problems.

It is an outsider that would seem less biased in its assessments of peripheral eurozone countries than, say, the chancellor of Germany or the president of the European Commission. While the distribution of voting power within the IMF has been controversial for some time, it is a consensus-driven body. Its independence from any one region or power has provided the basis for efficient decision-making – and is essential to it.

That last sentence sounds more like wishful dreaming than an assessment of reality.

So the fact that decisions about IMF-supported adjustment programmes are seemingly being taken in Berlin, Frankfurt and Brussels should horrify its members.

The commission and the ECB are not even members of the IMF yet they seem to be running the show.

Together with the IMF, they are the troika running the continent’s rescues. Being part of this approach means political meddling has been institutionalised. The approach to the eurozone crisis also undermines the long-running efforts to reform the governance of the IMF, which were, after all, intended to reduce the disproportionate influence of western European governments.

The interests of other eurozone countries or institutions dominate proceedings unduly, so it is often unclear whether the interests of the IMF, the global economy, the eurozone or individual countries are being protected by its work.

For the neutral observer, it seems very clear whose interests the IMF ‘protects’.

[..] troika adjustment programmes have been guided often by the needs of neighbouring European governments rather than global economic considerations. It would surely already have walked away from Greece had it not been held back by political inconvenience. The eurozone has further undermined the IMF by setting up its own crisis resolution institution. The European Stability Mechanism is for all practical purposes a European monetary fund.

Proposals for an Asian monetary fund during the Asian crisis were attacked with good reason: there was real concern that a regional fund would reduce the effectiveness of multilateral co-operation. These concerns seem to have been forgotten.

Well, those concerns are back.

It is not hard to imagine a scenario where a country has suffered a considerable economic shock and requires significant financial resources to avoid a painful and disruptive adjustment – say a large debt restructuring. In such circumstances, the interests of that nation, the world and neighbouring countries might not be aligned.

The fund cannot be seen as neutral and at the same time serve the immediate interests of the eurozone. [..] the eurozone debacle risks destroying the credibility of the IMF – and therefore the foundations for multilateral economic co-operation.

The IMF’s potential effectiveness has suffered and countries may be less willing to seek assistance from the fund, possibly prolonging future economic pain. This will come to matter a great deal if a larger eurozone country should come to require its help. To save itself, the IMF needs to leave the troika.

The main take-away from this should perhaps be that the IMF has not even so much served the interests of the eurozone, but exclusively those of its richest members, Germany, Britain and France. That this can be damaging in the long term is obvious. But there may be a way it can redeem itself, as we will argue. First, though, let’s go to Taylor’s article today:

IMF’s ‘Never Again’ Experience In Greece May Get Worse

For the IMF, five years of playing junior partner in European bailouts for Greece has been a “never again” experience, and the worst may be yet to come. The global lender has lent far more to Athens than to any other borrower, contributing nearly one-third of the total €240 billion.

But it has sat uncomfortably in the side-car of the Greek rescue. Called in by EU paymaster Germany to try to keep the European institutions and the Greeks honest, the IMF has never had control of the program.

Critics say the IMF has damaged its credibility by going along with political fudges to keep Greece in the euro zone rather than insisting on write-offs, first by private creditors and now by European governments..

Keep that in mind: uncharacteristically, the IMF has not made restructuring debts a priority for Greece. Or, one could argue, debts were restructured, but too late and in the wrong way. That, too, may prove very damaging for the Fund.

“One of the most important lessons for the IMF from the Greek program should be that a multilateral institution should not institutionalize special interests of a subset of its membership,” said Ousmene Mandeng, a former IMF official.. “The interest of the IMF is not necessarily aligned with the EU/ECB,” he said.

In 2013, the IMF published a critical evaluation of its own role in the first Greek bailout in 2010, arguing that it should have insisted on a “haircut” on Greece’s debt to private creditors from the outset. Instead it went along with European governments frightened of a Lehman-style market meltdown and keen to shield their banks from losses.

A 2010 IMF staff position note described default on any debt in advanced economies as “unnecessary, undesirable and unlikely”, yet 18 months later the IMF advocated a 70% “haircut” on Greek government debt as a condition for continued involvement in lending to Athens.

Now IMF chief Christine Lagarde is hinting that European governments need to give Greece debt relief to make the numbers add up, but since this is politically unacceptable in Germany, she has had to talk in code in public. “Clearly, if there were to be slippages from those (fiscal) targets, for the whole program to add up, then financing has to be considered,” Lagarde told a news conference last week.

In other words, politically unacceptable in Germany trumps politically unacceptable in Greece by seven leagues and a boot and a half. That is not just damning for the IMF’s image, it damages that of the EU just as much. The leaders of neither seem to care much. But internally in the IMF, the discussions have always been there, and always provided the right approaches. It’s just that third-party considerations prevailed.

Behind closed doors, IMF officials are telling the Europeans that Greece will not survive without a third bailout program, which will require debt restructuring by European governments. The IMF insists on being repaid in full and is not expected to lend any more to Athens. But Berlin and its allies want the Fund to remain involved..

[..]The Fund prefers to see its role as that of a truth-teller, making an objective assessment of a country’s ability to sustain its debt based on economic criteria such as interest rates and loan maturities, growth, productivity and the fiscal balance. Insiders say privately it would love to get out of the Greek program for good, but the Europeans may not let it.

Summarized: the IMF is a political tool. Nothing new there. But it’s being a tool that threatens for the Fund to become a bit-player in the global scene. China and Russia have seen enough, as, obviously, has Greece. Though Athens whould have been justified in venting a lot more anger about what happened to it than it has, even to this -Syriza- day.

In its various ‘critical evaluations’, the IMF will probably use a term like ‘mistake’. But there is a large difference between ‘mistake’ and fault’ or ‘blunder’ or even ‘criminal neglicence’. And the IMF needs to admit that it has been at fault, and seek to retroactively rectify that fault. If it wants to undo the damage to its reputation, that is.

The 2010 -first- Greek bailout, worth €110 billion, happened without any debt restructuring. Of course that should never have been accepted inside the IMF offices. It was a gross departure from established policy.

But the reason why is crystal clear: 90% of the money didn’t go to Greece, it went to save German, Dutch and French banks who had gambled and lost big-time, largely with loans to an Athens government serving the interests of the country’s existing oligarchic elite. The proper term is ‘collusion’.

After the troika had bailed out the European banks and thus further indebted the Greek people to the tune of another €100 billion, obviously a second bailout became necessary. After all, Greek debt had neither been relieved not restructured. It took just 18 months for that second bailout to enter the scene, stage left.

Meanwhile, those same European banks, handily helped along by the €100 billion they received courtesy of the Greek people, had reduced their exposure to Greek debt from €122 billion to €66 billion. Which put a further € 56 billion pressure on Athens.

In July 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had overseen the first bailout, was forced out of the IMF governor role through some ‘bizarre incidents’, and in came Wall Street darling Christine Lagarde. A second bailout package for € 100 billion was agreed, but Greek PM Papandreou didn’t feel secure enough politically to accept its terms without calling a referendum. The EU, though, doesn’t like referendums (it tends to lose out in those).

In short order, Berlin/Paris/London had Papandreou replaced by Yale and Federal Reserve clone Lucas Papademos as Greek PM on November 10 2011. Just 6 days later, they also toppled Silvio Berlusconi as Italian PM, and replaced him with another banking technocrat, Mario Monti. Europe and democracy, it’s a strange-bed-fellows relationship.

That second bailout, agreed to in October 2011, but ratified only in February 2012, included a 53.5% face value loss for bondholders. But since the big ‘foreign’ banks had pulled out, that loss was mainly forced upon Greek banks and funds. Dragging the country’s economy even further down. The pattern is deceptively simple and even almost elegant in its destructiveness.

And that is why we find ourselves where we are today.

The whole point of this long history lesson is that what the IMF can do today to restore its reputation, its independence and indeed its very relevance, is to go back to the first Greek bailout of 2010 – it can simply claim that any deals agreed to under Strauss-Kahn were illegal for, by lack of a better term, pimping reasons-, and to retroactively undo the damage done by any and all deals under the troika umbrella.

That is to say, since the IMF is on the hook for €80 billion, a third of the €240 billion Greece ‘owes’, it can go to the ‘systemic’ European banks that were the recipients of this unjustified largesse, and demand its money back from them, instead of from the Greek people.

That would instantly solve the whole Greek debt issue everyone’s been talking about for forever and a day, the Athens government could go to work on reforms aimed at alleviating the misery forced upon its people instead of having to focus on troika talks 24/7, and all the false narratives about lazy Greeks living above their means could be thrown out the window in one fell swoop.

And the IMF could, make that would, regain its reputation, its credibility and its -global- relevance. Just like that. Overnight.

Like stated at the beginning, we don’t expect it to happen. But the opportunity is there. And it makes a lot more sense than just about anyone in the west will be willing to admit. The IMF can’t just serve only the EU and US and their banking sectors, or its days are numbered. It can either try and restore its reputation by doing what’s right or it can become yet another ingredient in history’s long gone and forgotten alphabet pea soup.

Debt Rattle June 8 2015

Jun 082015

June 8, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 11:10 am Finance Tagged with: ATM, bitcoin, China, derivatives, Fed, Greece, Juncker, local currency, stocks, Troika, Ukraine, VAT 9 Responses »

Unknown Army of the James, James River, Virginia. 1865

• The Troika Is Supposed To Build Greece Up, Not Blow It Apart (Guardian)

• Greece Updating Proposals It Sent To Lenders (Kathimerini)

• Young Greek Radicals Don’t Just Want Power – They Want To Remake The World (PM)

• VAT Rate Hikes Always Reduce State Revenues (Thanos Tsiros)

• Juncker Vents Fury Over Greek Bailout Talks At G7 Summit (Guardian)

• If You Think Greece’s Crisis Will End Any Time Soon, Think Again (Bloomberg)

• 103 Years Later, Wall Street Turned Out Just As One Man Predicted (Zero Hedge)

• Obama Sidelines Kerry On Ukraine Policy (Eric Zuesse)

• Masked Attackers Break Up Tent Camp On Kiev’s Maidan (RT)

• Literally, Your ATM Won’t Work… (Bill Bonner)

• Banks’ Post-Crisis Legal Costs Hit $300 Billion (FT)

• Will China’s Stock Market Explode On Wednesday? (MarketWatch)

• China Imports Fall 17.6%, Exports Decline 2.5% (AFP)

• Deutsche Bank CEO’s Forced to Resign Over Imminent Derivatives Melt-Down? (Doc)

• The Bristol Pound Is Giving Sterling A Run For Its Money (Guardian)

• Max Keiser’s Bitcoin Capital Continues to Attract Investors (NBTC)

• Canada to Train Ukrainian Police as Russia Conflict Worsens (Bloomberg)

• Greek Island Gateway To EU As Thousands Flee Homelands (Irish Times)

A voice of reason, but the troika is not about reason.

• The Troika Is Supposed To Build Greece Up, Not Blow It Apart (Guardian)

The phrase “trench warfare” comes to mind. On Friday evening the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, lobbed some choice words at his foes in Brussels, calling their proposed debt deal “absurd”. Days earlier, the IMF had joined its allies in Brussels to fire a volley of criticism at Athens. The Greeks already had “significant flexibility” to get out of their budget mess, IMF boss Christine Lagarde said, as she urged Athens to repay the €300m instalment of its bailout loan due on Friday. This could go on for several more weeks: Greece told the IMF it will have to wait until the end of the month to get its money, when it will “bundle” four payments together. And should the sides become more entrenched, this long-running war could still end in the disaster of Greek default.

In Washington, where the IMF is hunkered down, and in Europe’s finance ministries, the Greek stance is considered wilfully unreasonable. The Syriza government’s demand for the return of national pay bargaining, a relaxed timetable for pension reform and a lower budget surplus than that demanded by the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank are all but ridiculed in Berlin, Helsinki and Riga. As Greece’s chief creditors, the EU and the IMF want Greece to adopt flexible labour markets, immediate restrictions on early retirement and a budget surplus big enough to accommodate some debt repayments.

While much of what the radical leftists want seems unreasonable – especially the slow pace of pension reform, which in effect would allow tens of thousands of people in their late 50s to grab early retirement – it is the demands being made by Brussels and the IMF that are unconvincing and, worse, untenable. Running a larger budget surplus is only going to destroy Greece, not build it up. As US economist Joseph Stiglitz and many others, including former IMF staffers, have pointed out, the troika of creditors badly misjudged the economic effects of the programme they imposed in 2010 and 2012. “They believed that by cutting wages and accepting other austerity measures, Greek exports would increase and the economy would quickly return to growth,” Stiglitz said last week.

“They also believed that the first restructuring would lead to debt sustainability. The troika’s forecasts have been wrong.” The current proposals repeat the same mistake. Seven years after the crash, the Greek economy is still 25% smaller than it was at its previous peak, 10% of households have no electricity and youth unemployment is running at more than 50%. Tsipras and his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, may specialise in needling their creditors, but the troika also need to take into account the fact that Syriza has formed a legitimate, democratically elected government and cannot be told that its electoral programme is irrelevant.

826th edition.

• Greece Updating Proposals It Sent To Lenders (Kathimerini)

The Greek government is redrafting the 47-page proposal it sent to lenders last week with the aim of securing an agreement that would allow the disbursal of €7.2 billion in bailout funding. Kathimerini understands that Athens is focussing its attention on adjusting the fiscal measures it proposed with the aim of getting closer to the revenue target set by lenders. However, the coalition is reluctant to adjust its VAT proposal, which sees three brackets (6, 11 and 23%) rather than the two proposed by lenders (11 and 23). Greece also seems prepared to raise slightly its primary surplus proposals from 0.6% of GDP this year and 1.5% next year. The institutions proposed 1% for 2015 and 2% for 2016.

The updated suggestion from the Greek side is not expected to reach these targets. While Athens is prepared to change the law regarding early retirement, saving 100 million euros, it does not seem willing to go as far as lenders are demanding in terms of pension reform. There are also substantial differences between Greece and its creditors on the issue of labour market regulations. The updated proposals are expected to be discussed between Greek officials and representatives of the institutions over the next few days, ahead of a meeting between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in the Belgian capital on Wednesday.

They want to make sure this sort of crisis will not happen again.

• Young Greek Radicals Don’t Just Want Power – They Want To Remake The World (PM)

At some point, as the Greek crisis lurches to its crescendo, Syriza – the radical left party – will call a meeting of something called a central committee. The term sounds quaint to 21st-century ears: the committee is so big that it has to meet in a cinema. You will not be surprised to learn that the predominant hair colour is grey. These are people who were underground activists in a military dictatorship; some served jail time, and in 1973 many were among the students who defied tanks and destroyed a junta. But they think, speak and act in a way shaped by the hierarchies and power concepts of 50 years ago.

The contrast with the left’s mass support base, and membership, is stark. In the average Greek riot, you are surrounded by concert pianists, interior designers, web developers, waitresses and actors in experimental theatre. It is usually 50:50 male and female, and drawn from a demographic as handy with a smartphone as the older generation are with Lenin’s selected works. Like young radicals across Europe and the US, they have been schooled in the ways of the modern middle classes: launching startup businesses, working two or three casual jobs; entrepreneurship, loose living and wild partying are the default way of life. Of course, every generation of radicals looks different from the last one, but the economic and behavioural contrasts that are obvious in Greece are also present in most other countries.

And this prompts the question: what do the radicals of this generation want when they win power? The success of Syriza, of Podemos in Spain and even the flood of radicalised young people into the SNP in Scotland makes this no longer an idle question. The most obvious change is that, for the rising generation, identity has replaced ideology. I don’t just mean as in “identity politics”. There is a deeper process going on, whereby a credible identity – a life lived according to a believed truth – has become a more significant badge in politics than a coherent set of ideas.

Just ask Abe and Kuroda.

• VAT Rate Hikes Always Reduce State Revenues (Thanos Tsiros)

Greece’s value-added tax rates have been raised three times since 2010, all within the space of one year: in March and July 2010 and then in January 2011. The hike that the government is negotiating with the country’s creditors will be the fourth in five years. Already the low and very low VAT rates have gone up by 44% since early 2010 – i.e. from 4.5 to 6.5% and from 9 to 13% respectively – while the main rate has grown 22%, from 19 to 23% nowadays. Those hikes, intended to increase the state’s income takings, in fact reduced revenues by 20%: In 2014 VAT revenues dropped below €14 billion, to €13.6 billion.

For this year, the budget had provided for VAT revenues of €14.4 billion, but in the first five months there has already been a shortfall of 350 million compared with the target for that point of the year. In comparison with 2008, the year that the recession started, VAT revenues shrank by €5 billion in 2014 in spite of the major hike in the rates. Modern Greek economic history has shown that any indirect tax rate increase leads to a reduction in consumption and an increase in tax evasion, meaning that revenues go down instead of up.

A rehearsed ploy.

• Juncker Vents Fury Over Greek Bailout Talks At G7 Summit (Guardian)

European Union officials delivered a blistering attack on the Greek government at the G7 summit in Bavaria, and world leaders including Barack Obama sought to avoid a transatlantic split over Ukraine by agreeing to maintain sanctions against Russia. In a day of secluded talks in the Alpine resort of Schloss Elmau, the biggest drama was provided by a verbal attack on the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, by the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. The summit’s host, Angela Merkel, had hoped to solve the Greek bailout crisis before the summit, but instead Juncker felt forced to open proceedings by staging a press conference accusing Tsipras of undermining negotiations over new terms for a bailout and of effectively lying to the Greek parliament.

A visibly angry Juncker said he had told Tsipras during a meeting last Wednesday evening that there was room to negotiate but said the Greeks had been unwilling to take part in in-depth discussions at the meeting. Instead, he said, Tsipras had promised to send him his proposals the following day, but he was still waiting for them on Sunday. “Alexis Tsipras promised that by Thursday evening he would present a second proposal. Then he said he would present it on Friday. And then he said he would call on Saturday. But I have never received that proposal, so I hope I will receive it soon. I would like to have that Greek proposal,” he said. He told reporters he had said to Tsipras that he continued to exclude the idea of a Grexit – “because I don’t want to see it” – but that he could not “pull a rabbit out of a hat”.[..]

Juncker, perceived until now as an honest broker in the crisis – taking a softer approach than the Germans, who are viewed in Greece as the architects of austerity – has rarely been seen in such an irate state, sources close to the EU in Garmisch-Partenkirchen said. They warned that Greece might have lost its closest ally in its long fight to secure a rosier deal. Juncker said he had been disappointed by a speech Tsipras had given to the Athens parliament on Friday. “He was presenting the offer of the three institutions as a leave-or-take offer. That was not the case … He knows perfectly well that is not the case.” Juncker said Tsipras had failed to mention to parliament his (Juncker’s) willingness to negotiate over Greek pensions. [..]

In Athens Mega TV reported that relations between Berlin and Washington over Greece had become increasingly frosty – despite the exhortation from Barack Obama at the G7 for a quick solution to the European debt crisis. The Greek television channel, citing a senior German official, described the US treasury secretary, Jack Lew, imploring his German counterpart Wolfgang Schäuble to “support Greece” only to be told: “Give €50bn euro yourself to save Greece.” Mega’s Berlin-based correspondent told the stationthat the US official then said nothing “because, as is always the case according to German officials when it comes to the issue of money, the Americans never say anything”.

We have at least 3 weeks left. But after that, of course, Greece will have to plod on for many years.

• If You Think Greece’s Crisis Will End Any Time Soon, Think Again (Bloomberg)

Frustrated by Greece’s cat and mouse game with its creditors? Get used to it. Even if PM Alexis Tsipras clinches the €7.2 billion that creditors are withholding, he’s going to need another cash infusion shortly thereafter. What will ensue is a renewed battle after almost five months of trench warfare. The beleaguered country requires a third bailout of about €30 billion, according to Nomura analysts Lefteris Farmakis and Dimitris Drakopoulos. Tsipras says any aid must be on his terms rather than those of governments whose taxpayers have forked out billions in the past five years to keep Greece in the euro. “Any plausible deal at this stage is unlikely to do enough and it’s unlikely to be the end of the matter,” said Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform in London.

“This could just play out again and again.” The latest episode in the five-year saga has focused on releasing the final tranche of Greece’s second bailout, which expires at the end of June. The amount at stake roughly equates to the bond repayments that Greece needs to make to the ECB in July and August. Here’s the problem for the policy makers struggling to avoid a default in Athens: Even if Greece muddles through until August, it faces a financing shortfall of at least €25 billion euros through the end of 2016. That’s likely to worsen as the economy slides deeper into recession and tax revenue shrivels. [..] “The dependence on our creditors will remain for two years in the best-case scenario,” said Aristides Hatzis, associate professor of law and economics at the University of Athens. “Greece is going to need cheap loans for the next two years.”

It was all there right from the start.

• 103 Years Later, Wall Street Turned Out Just As One Man Predicted (Zero Hedge)

In 1910, three years before the US Federal Reserve was founded, Senator Nelson Aldrich, Frank Vanderlip of National City (Citibank), Henry Davison of Morgan Bank, and Paul Warburg of the Kuhn, Loeb Investment House met secretly at Jekyll Island in Georgia to formulate a plan for a US central bank just years ahead of World War I. The result of their work was the so-called Aldrich Plan which called for a system of fifteen regional central banks, i.e., National Reserve Associations, whose actions would be coordinated by a national board of commercial bankers. The Reserve Association would make emergency loans to member banks, and would create money to provide an elastic currency that could be exchanged equally for demand deposits, and would act as a fiscal agent for the federal government.

In other words, the Aldrich Plan proposed a “central bank” that would be openly and directly controlled by Wall Street commercial banks on whose behalf it would solely operate, instead of doing so indirectly, behind closed doors and the need for criminal probe of Yellen’s Fed seeking to find who leaked what to whom. The Aldrich Plan was defeated in the House in 1912 but its outline became the model for the bill that eventually was adopted as the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 whose passage not only unleashed the Fed as we know it now, but the entire shape of modern finance.

In 1912, one person who warned against the passage of the Aldrich Plan, was Alfred Owen Crozier: a man who saw how it would all play out, and even wrote a book titled “U.S. Money vs Corporation Currency” (costing 25 cents) explaining and predicting everything that would ultimately happen, even adding some 30 illustrations for those readers who were visual learners. The book, which is attached at the end of this post, is a must read, but even those pressed for time are urged to skim the following illustrations all of which were created in 1912, and all of which predicted just what the current financial system would look like. Or, in the words of Overstock’s CEO Patrick Byrne, “that’s uncanny”

“..she also famously said “F—k the EU!” Obama is now seconding that statement of hers.”

• Obama Sidelines Kerry On Ukraine Policy (Eric Zuesse)

On May 21st, I headlined “Secretary of State John Kerry v. His Subordinate Victoria Nuland, Regarding Ukraine,” and quoted John Kerry’s May 12th warning to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to cease his repeated threats to invade Crimea and re-invade Donbass, two former regions of Ukraine, which had refused to accept the legitimacy of the new regime that was imposed on Ukraine in violent clashes during February 2014. (These were regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the Ukrainian President who had just been overthrown. They didn’t like him being violently tossed out and replaced by his enemies.) Kerry said then that, regarding Poroshenko, “we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy.

And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.” Also quoted there was Kerry’s subordinate, Victoria Nuland, three days later, saying the exact opposite, that we “reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine.” I noted, then that, “The only person with the power to fire Nuland is actually U.S. President Barack Obama.” However, Obama instead has sided with Nuland on this. Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, bannered, on June 5th, “Poroshenko: Ukraine Will ‘Do Everything’ To Retake Crimea’,” and reported that, “President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to seek Crimea’s return to Ukrainian rule. … Speaking at a news conference on June 5, … Poroshenko said that ‘every day and every moment, we will do everything to return Crimea to Ukraine.’”

Poroshenko was also quoted there as saying, “It is important not to give Russia a chance to break the world’s pro-Ukrainian coalition,” which indirectly insulted Kerry for his having criticized Poroshenko’s warnings that he intended to invade Crimea and Donbass. Right now, the Minsk II ceasefire has broken down and there are accusations on both sides that the other is to blame. What cannot be denied is that at least three times, on April 30th, then on May 11th, and then on June 5th, Poroshenko has repeatedly promised to invade Crimea, which wasn’t even mentioned in the Minsk II agreement; and that he was also promising to re-invade Donbass, something that is explicitly prohibited in this agreement. Furthermore, America’s President, Barack Obama, did not fire Kerry’s subordinate, Nuland, for her contradicting her boss on this important matter.

How will that be taken in European capitals? Kerry was reaffirming the position of Merkel and Hollande, the key shapers of the Minsk II agreement; and Nuland was nullifying them. Obama now has sided with Nuland on this; it’s a slap in the face to the EU: Poroshenko can continue ignoring Kerry and can blatantly ignore the Minsk II agreement; and Obama tacitly sides with Poroshenko and Nuland, against Kerry. The personalities here are important: On 4 February 2014, in the very same phone-conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, America’s Ambassador in Ukraine, in which Nuland had instructed Pyatt to get “Yats” Yatsenyuk appointed to lead Ukraine after the coup (which then occured 18 days later), she also famously said “F—k the EU!” Obama is now seconding that statement of hers.

Absolutely in chracter.

• Masked Attackers Break Up Tent Camp On Kiev’s Maidan (RT)

Unidentified assailants wearing balaclavas assaulted and destroyed a tent camp set up on Sunday by protesters on Kiev’s landmark Maidan Square. Activists at the camp had been calling on the Ukrainian President to report on progress since taking office. The attack happened late Sunday evening, when a gang stormed the activist camp, forcefully removing tents and dispersing protesters. Police officers were reportedly stationed right next to the site and did nothing to stop the violent group. The organizer of the action, Rustam Tashbaev, was arrested, RIA Novosti reported. There were also blasts heard on Institutskaya Street near the Maidan. In Ruptly’s video, assailants are seen ripping through the camp, tearing everything apart, and dragging protesters out of the tents, while they can be heard screaming in the background.

“They took me and dragged me like I was in a sleigh. I screamed, thinking they would beat me up, but they quickly dispersed. It looked like a theater production because the police were nearby and did nothing,” one of the demonstrators told Ruptly video news agency. Earlier on Sunday, about 100 protesters set up several tents on Maidan, demanding President Petro Poroshenko and his cabinet report on what progress has been made in implementing the reforms which were promised last year. “We have launched this campaign, set up tents, and called this protest Maidan 3,” one of the organizers, Rustam Tashbaev, told Ruptly. “We demand these people perform the duties which they are obliged to perform.” Placards at the protest read “Out with [PM Arseny] Yatsenuk and his reforms” and “I’m on hunger strike against administrative dereliction.”

“..it costs the banks almost nothing to create new credit. That’s why we have so much of it.”

• Literally, Your ATM Won’t Work… (Bill Bonner)

While we were thinking about what was really going on with today’s strange new money system, a startling thought occurred to us. Our financial system could take a surprising and catastrophic twist that almost nobody imagines, let alone anticipates. Do you remember when a lethal tsunami hit the beaches of Southeast Asia, killing thousands of people and causing billions of dollars of damage? Well, just before the 80-foot wall of water slammed into the coast an odd thing happened: The water disappeared. The tide went out farther than anyone had ever seen before. Local fishermen headed for high ground immediately. They knew what it meant. But the tourists went out onto the beach looking for shells! The same thing could happen to the money supply…

Here’s how.. and why: It’s almost seems impossible. Hard to imagine. Difficult to understand. But if you look at M2 money supply – which measures coins and notes in circulation as well as bank deposits and money market accounts – America’s money stock amounted to $11.7 trillion as of last month. But there was just $1.3 trillion of physical currency in circulation – about only half of which is in the US. (Nobody knows for sure.) What we use as money today is mostly credit. It exists as zeros and ones in electronic bank accounts. We never see it. Touch it. Feel it. Count it out. Or lose it behind seat cushions. Banks profit – handsomely – by creating this credit. And as long as banks have sufficient capital, they are happy to create as much credit as we are willing to pay for.

After all, it costs the banks almost nothing to create new credit. That’s why we have so much of it. A monetary system like this has never before existed. And this one has existed only during a time when credit was undergoing an epic expansion. So our monetary system has never been thoroughly tested. How will it hold up in a deep or prolonged credit contraction? Can it survive an extended bear market in bonds or stocks? What would happen if consumer prices were out of control?

Jailing them would be better for shareholders value. And who in their right mind can claim it’s time to go easy on the banks?

• Banks’ Post-Crisis Legal Costs Hit $300 Billion (FT)

The total cost of litigation aimed at a group of the biggest global banks since 2010 has broken the £200bn ($306bn) barrier, according to a new study that challenges assumptions that banks are through the worst of post-crisis reparations. The annual study, carried out by the UK-based CCP Research Foundation, uses regulatory notices, annual reports and other public disclosures to tally the cost of fighting claims of misconduct over rolling five-year periods. In the latest report, which runs until the end of last year, the total for 16 banks stands at £205.6bn of fines, settlements and provisions — up almost a fifth from the previous year.

Despite that trend, many bank executives continue to act as if these are irregular charges from “legacy” issues, said Chris Steares, research director at the foundation. He noted that a recent flurry of settlements for currency manipulation cited abuses continuing until 2013. “If you ask the banks if their reputational risk is going to change, they’d have to say yes,” he said. “[But] with conduct costs continuing to be incurred, year after year, it does beg the question whether behaviours are being changed for the better.”

Some politicians in the US and UK have tried to draw a line under years of heavy lawmaking, taxes and fines, arguing that regulators should now go easier on the banks. Executives, too, have signalled that expenses have begun to fall, particularly after the resolution of cases linked to the mis-selling of residential mortgage-backed securities. Presenting earnings in April, for example, Bruce Thompson, Bank of America’s finance chief, noted two “much lighter” quarters of legal expenses which he hoped would allow the bank to hold less capital under international standards on operational risk.

Not unlikely.

• Will China’s Stock Market Explode On Wednesday? (MarketWatch)

Wednesday could be huge for Chinese stocks. On that day, about four hours before Shanghai opens for trade, MSCI will announce whether it will welcome China’s top yuan-denominated stocks into its extremely influential Emerging Markets Index, tracked by a mountain of roughly $1.7 trillion in assets worldwide. Such a move would be expected to ignite a significant rally in Shanghai blue chips, and a recent Wall Street Journal report cited major funds such as those of Vanguard Group Inc. planning to purchase Chinese equities ahead of the MSCI decision, which is due to be revealed Tuesday at about 5:30 p.m. EDT (Wednesday 5:30 a.m. in Shanghai) on the financial company’s website.

Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese companies – known as “H-shares” – are already a sizeable presence in the MSCI EM Index. Rival FTSE Group (owned by the London Stock Exchange) recently added the mainland-listed stocks – known as “A-shares” – into transitional global indexes, and may add them to its benchmark EM index this September, according to HSBC. The possible MSCI move has been making big headlines in China’s news media, but that said, many analysts are not so sure the index compiler will take the plunge into Chinese equities this week, suggesting it will wait a little longer for the country’s financial reforms to solidify further.

Ironically, this means a huge increase in the trade surplus…

• China Imports Fall 17.6%, Exports Decline 2.5% (AFP)

Chinese imports fell for a seventh straight month in May while exports also sank, according to official data, as the world’s second-biggest economy shows protracted weakness even in the face of government measures to stimulate growth. The disappointing figures, out on Monday, also come as leaders try to transform the economy to one where growth is driven by consumer spending rather than government investment and exports. Imports slumped 17.6% year on year to $131.26bn, the Chinese customs department said in a statement. The decline was much sharper than the median forecast of a 10% fall in a Bloomberg News poll of economists, and followed April’s 16.2% drop.

“The May trade data … suggest both external and domestic demand remain weak,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, an analyst with the research firm Capital Economics. Exports dropped for the third consecutive month, falling 2.5% to $190.75bn, customs said, although that was better than the median estimate of a 4% fall in the Bloomberg survey. The sharp decrease in imports meant the trade surplus expanded 65.6% year on year to $59.49bn, according to the data. In yuan terms, imports fell 18.1%, exports decreased 2.8% and the trade surplus expanded 65%. The figures provided further evidence that frailty in the Chinese economy, a key driver of world growth, has extended into the current quarter despite intensified government stimulus measures.

“Deutsche Bank is sitting on a powderkeg of derivatives dynamite..”

• Deutsche Bank CEO’s Forced to Resign Over Imminent Derivatives Melt-Down? (Doc)

The co-CEOs of Deutsche Bank unexpectedly stepped down. Recall that Deutsche Bank is now the largest holder of derivatives in the world. The ONLY reason these resignations would have been unexpectedly coerced like this is if Deutsche Bank was having a potentially uncontrollable problem in its OTC derivatives holdings. Because of accounting rules, we have no possible way of knowing what DB’s OTC derivatives book looks like. Although Jain oversaw the build-up of the book, it’s likely that not only does he not know where all the bodies are buried, he has lied to the board of directors and shareholders about the riskiness of the bank’s holdings. I know Jain from personal experience with him right after Deutsche Bank acquired Bankers Trust for BT’s derivatives capabilities.

It instantly put Deutsche Bank in the forefront of the fraud-based OTC derivatives business. Jain has lost money wherever he worked. He was brought over to DB from Merrill when Edson Mitchell assumed the reigns at Deutsche Bank’s US unit. I just remember thinking Jain was about as sleazy as they come. His sole charge was to build Deutsche’s derivatives book of business into the biggest in the world. From there he sleazed his way into the CEO position, a few years after Mitchell went down in plane accident. He then proceeded to climb to the top of Deutsche Bank by conspiring to “shoot” then-CEO Josef Ackerman in the back. Deutsche Bank is sitting on a powderkeg of derivatives dynamite. DB is also the entity that has leased out most of Germany’s sovereign gold.

From a good friend of mine who worked at DB and still keeps in touch with former colleagues: “Deutsche Bank is sitting on a lethal amount of derivatives and everyone at the bank knows it.” [..] “Like I said many times over the past 6 months…the derivatives in Europe have gone SIDEWAYS and there is blood in the back rooms of the world’s biggest derivative traders! News yesterday that $6B in derivatives were being “internally investigated” at the world’s largest derivative holder, Deutsche Bank, is followed today by the resignation of BOTH of it’s CEO’s!! Anshu Jain has thus overseen the world’s largest arsenal of deadly financial derivatives. When Deutsche Bank goes down in flames, the Jain’s bank account should be the first source of funding the losses. May whatever Higher Power there may be up above help us all when the derivatives financial nuclear daisy-chain starts to blow…

Moany spent locally is worth many times what is spent into box stores. Shopping at Wal-Mart impoverishes your economy, and ultimately you yourself.

• The Bristol Pound Is Giving Sterling A Run For Its Money (Guardian)

When his firm was going up against national companies for contracts to manage waste, Jon Free needed an edge to win the pitches. The answer he found was in the sense of community that existed among small businesses like his. By using his local currency, the Bristol pound, he saw companies were more willing to give their business to him and keep money flowing in the area. Launched almost three years ago, the community currency aims to keep money circulating among independent retailers and firms by encouraging people to use the local ‘cash’ instead of sterling, an idea that has inspired other towns and cities to take up similar schemes in the UK and abroad. “To be able to drop in and create a link to make [the money] a circular thing is a big part of it,” the managing director of Waste Source said.

“To say that we are registered with the Bristol pound shows that we are more community based.” In use since 2012, the system operates as both notes and in electronic form with each Bristol pound equal to one pound sterling. Some 800 businesses in the Bristol area now use the community currency, with coffees, meals, council tax and even pole-dancing lessons paid for with it. “The practical vision was to get something which would connect local communities with their businesses in a way which kept money building up in their local communities,” the currency’s co-founder, Ciaran Mundy, said. “What happens is that if you spend it at a large supermarket chain, 80% of that will exit the economy very quickly.”

While community currencies have a history going back to Victorian times, there has been a resurgence in recent years, with Bristol emerging as the standard-bearer in the UK. The system works by people exchanging their sterling for paper Bristol pounds – in single, five, 10 and 20 denominations – or by opening an account at the Bristol Credit Union. The currency can then be spent in participating businesses, or between businesses, in return for goods or services. So far, some £1m has been issued in the community currency, according to Mundy, of which about £700,000 is still in circulation. As it is a voluntary scheme, the currency can switch between sterling and Bristol pounds, he said.

The thinking behind the creation of the new currency, said Mundy, was to make a minor change to allow for more money to be spent in local areas. “I was looking for a technological and cultural innovation which allows people to conduct themselves in a way which is more sustainable. A big part of that is being aware of the impact of your economic activity,” he said.

Just did an interview with Max. Airs tomorrow on RT.

• Max Keiser’s Bitcoin Capital Continues to Attract Investors (NBTC)

Bitcoin Capital, a venture capital fund initiated by the celebrated finance journalist Max Keiser, is hinting to close on a very optimistic note. According to the details available at BnkToTheFuture.com, the VC fund has already generated a little over $1 million upon receiving support from 580 backers (at press time), especially when there are still three days left to the curtain call. The reports also claim that each investor has injected over $1,000 into the Bitcoin Capital, for which they are offered a 50% equity in the fund. A third part of the generated funds are promised to be invested in Bitcoin Capital’s Bitcoin mining rig in Iceland, a place which will also make sure that investors get to receive daily dividends in the form of newly-minted Bitcoins.

This step is planned to ensure speedy investment returns for the investors, something that puts Bitcoin Capital’s plan in an altogether different category, as it seems. But more than its promises, the VC fund is riding high on its backer’s reputation in the market. Max Keiser is known to be one of the most celebrated faces in the finance sector, for his previous professional collaborations with BBC News, Al Jazeera, Resonance FM and Huffington Post. He currently works for the last two, and also hosts a self-branded financial program on RT, titled Keiser Report. His activism for the cryptocurrency sector however was something that earned him a reputation inside the Bitcoin sector. He supported the idea of decentralization when every government and bank was rubbishing it right away.

“I have been critical of the traditional financial system for many years on my show” Keiser said. “I was the first global news outlet to cover bitcoin when it was trading at $3, recognizing its potential to change the world. Many startups in the bitcoin space credit Keiser Report for getting them started in the business. Bitcoin Capital allows the founders and investors to experiment with new crypto financial business models and currencies to transform global finance.”

Canada was once a nice country. Harper changed all that.

• Canada to Train Ukrainian Police as Russia Conflict Worsens (Bloomberg)

Canada will send officers and provide funding to bolster the Ukrainian police force, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in his latest show of support for Ukraine on the eve of a Group of Seven nations summit. Canada will never accept the Russian occupation of Crimea or parts of eastern Ukraine, Harper said after meeting Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday in Kiev. Work continues between the countries on trade talks and visa restrictions. “I’m proud to be here with you again to demonstrate our continued resolve in the face of the enormous challenge you and all Ukrainians are confronted with,” Harper said after earlier announcing the funding to help train Ukrainian police.

The conflict with Russia is “very high on Canada’s agenda” heading into the G7 summit in Germany, which begins Sunday, Harper said. He called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to withdraw all troops, equipment and support for separatists in Ukraine. “Canada will not, and the world must not, turn a blind eye to the near-daily attacks that are killing and wounding Ukrainians here on their own soil, soldiers and civilians alike,” Harper said. Poroshenko thanked Canada, and said he spoke Saturday with the leaders of the U.S., Japan and Germany. “The support by Canada in this very difficult and decisive time is very important for every Ukrainian,” Poroshenko said. “The relentless violation of international norms will not stand without punishment.”

Brussels lets others do its job and washes its hands.

• Greek Island Gateway To EU As Thousands Flee Homelands (Irish Times)

“Excuse me. Is this Greece?” asked a 24-year-old Pakistani man, whose suit was soaked to his waist. Behind him, a group of young Somali men struggled to lift the sole woman passenger from the boat to her wheelchair, the only possession she managed to bring from the other side. Later, Riyan (30), would explain that she had been shot in the back 15 years previously. She said she was making the journey on her own, and her aim was to reach Germany where she hoped she could have an operation. This migrant vessel was one of four to land last Tuesday morning near the beautiful town of Molyvos, with its medieval hilltop fortress that can be seen from miles around.

Tourism is the lifeblood of the place and the permanent population of about 1,500 relies almost exclusively on the money they make during the summer to keep them going during the difficult winter months after the tourists have gone. For weeks, Kempson, a British painter and sculptor who made his home in Molyvos 16 years ago, and his wife Philippa have been daily witnesses to the rapid increase in the numbers of refugees and migrants arriving from Turkey. “It’s been a nightmare for the last few weeks. We really need some help. Only a few of us have been trying to help. This story needs to get out there and Europe really needs to send some help,” he says.

About 70% of those arriving on the boats are Syrian refugees, including many families with young children. They are fleeing the four-year civil war that has devastated their country and, according to the United Nations, triggered the largest humanitarian crisis since the second World War. An estimated 7.6 million people are now displaced within Syria, while almost four million have fled to neighbouring countries, mostly to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, where the vast majority have remained, often in appalling conditions. Syrians in Molyvos say only Europe – by which they usually mean Germany or Sweden – can offer them and their families the safety and opportunities they desperately seek.

Will Austerity Be the Straw that Breaks the EU AND the UK?

May 102015

May 10, 2015 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:30 pm Finance Tagged with: austerity, Cameron, EU, Greece, referendum, SNP, Troika, UK 3 Responses »

Jack Delano Worker inspecting locomotive, Proviso Yard 1942

From where we’re sitting, the biggest victory in the May 7 British election will turn out to be not that of the Conservatives, but of the SNP, the Scottish nationalists. The party took 56 out of 59 Scottish seats in the United Kingdom’s Westminster parliament in London (with just half of the total votes..). Perhaps even more significant is the increased divide between Scotland and ‘the rest of the UK’.

While Cameron’s ‘unexpected’ victory marks a sharp turn to the right, the SNP’s landslide win sets the Scots on a course that’s close to a 180º opposite, even sharper turn to the left. Or in other words: while Britain voted for more of the same, Scotland voted for change. And never the twain shall ever see eye to eye again?! The left side of the spectrum was represented by the SNP, not by Labour, who Tony Blair now claims should run even more to the right – which he calls center.

Perhaps it’s nice to start off with a more philosophical angle about the future viability and/or inevitable fate of the United Kingdom. Just to set the overarching and underlying tone. Ian Jack had this for the Guardian yesterday:

Did The End Of The British Empire Make The Death Of The Union Inevitable?

.. what some of us were in Denmark to consider is the now almost-conventional wisdom about British identity: that it rose and fell with the empire, and with the empire’s going the United Kingdom will almost inevitably break up. Stuart Ward, professor of global and imperial history at Copenhagen University, reminded us of this theory’s several advocates, from Tom Nairn, writing presciently in 1977, to Linda Colley in her book Britons, published in 1992.

David Marquand took the idea to the extreme when he announced in 1995 that shorn of empire, Britain had “no meaning” and it was therefore impossible “for Britain as such to be post-imperial”. In a what-goes-up-must-come-down way, it looks a plausible argument. The logic is, as Ward said, that if you can demonstrate that the empire forged an idea of Britain, then Britain’s vanishing two centuries later “is merely a question of the laws of physics – remove the load-bearing pillar, and the structure falls”.

Is Britain destined to fall to pieces? Are all empires? How long can the center hold?

There are more interesting angles besides these, not least of which is the similarities between Greece vs Eurozone and Scotland vs United Kingdom. The keyword in this is ‘austerity’. The Greek people voted en masse to end it, and so did the Scots. Here’s what SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon had to say post-election:

Nicola Sturgeon Tells Westminster: ‘Scotland Will No Longer Be Sidelined Or Ignored”

“Scotland has given the SNP a mandate on a scale unprecedented for any political party, not just in Scotland but right across the UK. “We will use that mandate to speak up for and protect the interests of Scotland. “Let us be very clear, the people of Scotland on Thursday voted for an SNP manifesto which had ending austerity as its number one priority, and that is the priority that these men and women will now take to the very heart of the Westminster agenda.” Ms Sturgeon said: “After Thursday, and as I told the Prime Minister when I spoke to him yesterday, it simply cannot be and it will not be business as usual when it comes to Westminster’s dealing with Scotland.”

Sturgeon has hinted that she aims to end austerity across the UK, not just in Scotland. That may be a bit much to ask given that her mandate is limited, but at the same time it’s hard to see how ending austerity only in some parts of a union would work out in practice. The EU certainly doesn’t seem eager to grant Greece an austerity-free status, and how Cameron would tackle this mandate issue is unclear. Can he abandon austerity in Scotland and continue it in the rest of the UK? And if he can’t do it in Scotland, then how can he in Wales?

Cameron thinks he’s riding a major victory, and he will now be called upon to deliver on his election promises, which just so happen to include a deepening and acceleration of austerity measures. At a time when we can see even such sworn antagonists as Steve Keen and Paul Krugman agree on the failure of austerity as a financial/fiscal policy measure, David Cameron insists on inflicting more of it on Britain in the exact same way that the Troika insists on more of the same for Greece. And he’s not kidding.

Here are two British pieces on the topic; first the Mirror:

100 Days Of Tory Cuts Carnage As George Osborne Plans To Fast-Track £12 Billion In Savings

George Osborne is preparing to drastically speed up the pace of £12 billion in brutal spending cuts. Before the election, Tories feared proposals to slash cash from the welfare bill would have to be watered down under any coalition deal. But now the party has a majority, the Chancellor plans to race ahead with his austerity cuts to meet his pledge of eliminating the deficit by 2018. Senior Tories revealed how ministers would try to push through the majority of the welfare cuts within two years instead of the original three-year timescale.

But Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to kick it off with a 100-day policy blitz. One senior party source admitted: “When it comes to cuts, we want the pain to be out of the way long before the next general election. Without the restraint of the Lib Dems, it means we can go further and faster when it comes to controlling the welfare bill.” The new Conservative Government is due to present its programme of legislation to Parliament through the Queen’s Speech on May 27. But officials are already drawing up worrying plans to squeeze a host of benefits.

Ministers are looking at means testing unemployment benefits like Jobseeker’s Allowance, according to a document leaked earlier this year. Other proposals to slash the £125 billion welfare bill include limiting Child Benefit payments to the first two children and taxing Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payments. The Tories also want to reduce the maximum any household can receive in benefits from the current £26,000 a year to £23,000. Other cuts include a £3.8 billion raid on tax credits, which are relied on by millions of families on low wages.

The number of people who get Carer’s Allowance could also fall by 40%. Such moves are likely to pile the pressure on food banks and charities as the cost of living crisis deepens. Senior Labour MP John Mann warned: “People don’t realise what’s going to hit them. The entire benefits system is going to crumble and almost everyone will lose out apart from private landlords who will remain untouched. It will be a return to the Victorian age.” “Everyone will have to stand on their own two feet, even people with no legs.”

And second, this is from Here Is The City:

Tories Weigh Up Options For £12 Billion Welfare Cuts

Either the poorest in society or the “hard-working people” courted by the Conservatives face being targeted under the party’s commitment to £12bn of welfare cuts, experts have said. One way of achieving the £12bn goal could be by reducing the £38bn cost of out-of-work payments to working-age families, for example by cutting entitlements to a third of the recipients, according to John Hills at the London School of Economics.

“But that would mean hitting lone parents and disabled people and create pressure on food banks and hardship on a scale that would be hard to imagine,” Hills said. “Alternatively you could take it from hard-working families who rely on housing benefit and tax credits. That’s a lot of pain from a large number of people who have just voted for you.”

[..] To justify the cuts, the Tories are likely to employ a narrative of skivers v strivers, suggesting a clear division between a large, permanently welfare-dependent group and the rest of the population who pay taxes to support it. The Tories know this is a fiction, but it is a politically useful one. Welfare is mainly about taking money from those of working age – when incomes are high on average – and giving cash and services to older people, and families with children.

A DWP paper setting out options was leaked to the BBC in March. [..] if the BBC’s document is any guide, George Osborne – reappointed as chancellor – could look to strip £1bn from carers’ allowances; means-test national insurance-backed unemployment benefits, saving another £1.3bn; and tax disability benefits to raise another £1.5bn. Then there’s limiting child benefit to two children – affecting a million families to save another £1bn.

The Institute For Fiscal Studies noted: “These may well not be the decisions that a future Conservative government would make. But it is likely they would have to make changes at least as radical as this to find £12bn a year.” Not all these changes would require a new bill, but if past form is anything to go by then the Tories would want to lay a trap for their opponents with new legislation so as to paint anyone who votes against it – such as the anti-austerity Scottish Nationalists – as pro-welfare parties prepared to spend lavishly on the idle poor.

How this will not end badly and ugly is hard to see. As we quoted in an earlier article, the number of foodbanks in Britain went from 66 to 421 in the first 5 years of Cameron rule. How many more need to be added before people start setting cities on fire? Or even just: how much more needs to happen before the Scots have had enough?

Very much like the Greeks, the Scots unambiguously voted down austerity. And in very much the same fashion, they face an entity that claims to be more powerful and insists on forcing more austerity down their throats anyway. It seems inevitable that at some point these larger entities will start to crack and break down into smaller pieces. As empires always do. Now, the EU was of course never an empire, there’s just tons of bureaucrats dreaming of that, and Britain is a long-decayed empire.

Larger entities like empires are more powerful only for a limited period of time, for as long as the center can make the periphery benefit; once the center starts feeding off the periphery, the endgame starts. This can take a while, but it will happen, it’s a law of nature. When periphery regions figure out they have nothing to lose by splitting off, they will elect to stand on their own two feet and be their own boss.

And it’s not as if either Scotland or Greece lack a history of fighting for their independence. Just a reminder.

What’s next for Greece is by now anybody’s guess. And a whole other story too. What’s next for Britain and Scotland is or seems -for now- somewhat less convoluted.

Nicola Sturgeon will have conversations with Cameron. Who will offer her more ‘autonomy’ for Scotland. But the budget, also for Scotland, is decided in London, not in Edinburgh. How Cameron’s austerity 2.0 can be made to fit with the SNP’s anti-austerity message, their number 1 priority in last week’s elections, is hard to fathom. Label us curious to see what happens.

It would seem that there are two referendums in Britain’s future. First, the EU in-or-out referendum Cameron promised his voters. It looks like the majority of British voters will opt to leave the EU, or at least partially; things may change if or when Cameron convinces Brussels to change the entire concept of the Union to ‘pacify’ the UK. But that majority will probably come from England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will -almost certainly- choose to remain in the EU. And it just so happens that Sturgeon addressed the issue in the Guardian in no uncertain terms:

There are huge issues and challenges ahead – not least the looming question of the UK and Scotland’s place in Europe. A key requirement of the prime minister’s in-out referendum should be a “double-lock” requiring the assent of all four UK home nations before any withdrawal from the EU..

It doesn’t look like there will a general endorsement for the Tories’ vision for leaving the EU. So what’s your run of the mill Cameron to do? Ignore the Scottish demand for that ‘double-lock’? That wouldn’t be very democratic, and it would raise the chance of the UK falling to pieces. No easy choices, no easy pieces for David.

The other referendum, brought closer, as time passes, by Cameron’s multiple conundrums, is of course about Scottish independence. If London holds on to its position on austerity, it’s hard to see how there can not be another of these plebicites, soon.

Granted, it would depend on how much of a warrior Nicola Sturgeon is. Just like in Greece, the outcome of the Syriza vs Troika battle depends on how much chutzpah each side carries. And how much integrity. That last one should be an easy contest. London and Brussels have none, Athens and Edinburgh may yet find some.

All in all, yours truly is going for the center cannot hold.

Older Entries Newer Entries