Category: Eurozone Debt Crisis
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Friday, June 08, 2012
EU Implementing Border and Capital Controls to Stop People Fleeing With Their Money / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
The EU in its current form is finished. Done. Game Over. I’ve been saying this for months. But it’s a fact. Europe has literally run out of money. Indeed, the ECB’s interventions are now not only toxic for those participating in them (those banks taking money via the LTRO have been crushed in the credit market) but are losing their impact (LTRO bought only one month of market gains).
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Friday, June 08, 2012
Samaris Of Sypris Winning The World’s Dumbest Politician Contest / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
A country that represents less than 2% of the Euro block and a tiny fraction of the world economy continues to be the tail that wags the dog. We'll all have to wait until June 17th to see whether Greeks vote with their emotions or with their heads. Currently it looks like it could be the former, which would not bode well for markets.
The US and Germany have both released decent economic readings but that won't be enough to overcome fears of yet another debt meltdown unless the Greek vote goes the right way. Negative news out of Europe pummels the Euro and the correlation between the value of the Euro and commodities is currently very high. Metals prices aren't going anywhere until the issue is resolved.
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Thursday, June 07, 2012
Has Merkel Just "Blinked" and Saved the Euro Project? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
A picture tells a thousand words. The chart above shows just how grave the situation in Spain is. Europe is in crisis and the euro
is in danger of falling apart.
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Tuesday, June 05, 2012
SS €uro is Taking On Serious Water! / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
The SS €uro is taking serious water. At the hastily called EU Summit Captains meeting on the Brussels Bridge, it was agreed that the best course of action, despite the worsening waves of bank runs, was to simply instruct the orchestra to continuing playing the same old familiar tune and order the rearrangement of the deck chairs.However, all the captains somberly recognized there were neither sufficient lifeboats nor anyone willing to come to their rescue. As usual they were in complete disagreement on what to do, they knew they had insufficient resources for anything dramatic and they were well aware the public passengers had no tolerance for any cold water austere attempts for the sake of survival.
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Tuesday, June 05, 2012
The Euro-zone Solution Illusion / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Nobody, in my book, slices and dices data more thoroughly or convincingly than Greg Weldon. In this week's Outside the Box, he first dispels the illusion that either of the two most-expected outcomes of the growing eurozone crisis is really any kind of a solution – neither expelling Greece nor keeping Greece in the club is going to work, he argues – and then, in a feat of legerdemain, he conjures up an alternative that just might work – and backs up his idea as only Greg can. But is this a rabbit he's pulled out of his hat, or is it ... a Black Eagle?
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Monday, June 04, 2012
The Pain in Spain Flashes Financial Armageddon, Inflation Wars / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
This article continues from - Euro-zone Galloping Towards Financial Armageddon
Spain is bankrupting, its central government is bankrupting, its local government is already bankrupt along with most of its banks that have been busy hiding most of their bad loan losses on crashed property developments. The credit markets despite ECB support are fast closing to Spain as it is being forced to pay credit crisis extreme financial armageddon rates of interest to borrow.
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Monday, June 04, 2012
Euro-zone Galloping Towards Financial Armageddon, Greece Will Take Third World Europe to Inflation Hell! / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Can you smell it ? There's PANIC in the Air!
For instance, apparently Britain is preparing immigration controls for an anticipated flood of refugees from Third World Europe as warns Home Secretary, Theresa May "work is ongoing to deal with large movements of people in the event of the break-up of the single currency". Though these trends have been in force for the duration of the financial crisis that has resulted in net migration of more than 250k per year as I have periodically commented upon as to why the governments forecasts for UK unemployment to FALL were never going to materialise, as workers (especially the young) from across the bankrupting Euro-zone would see Britain as a jobs safe-haven outside of the Euro-zone and that was some 2 years ago!, which the mainstream with the benefit of hindsight has only recently been picking up on.
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Monday, June 04, 2012
If you love your kids, stop the bond bonanza / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
A month and a half ago, I posed the following question in Spain, Land of Magical Financial Realism:
These days when I read about Spain I'm wondering more and more how and why it is that the country has any access at all left to international finance markets.
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Sunday, June 03, 2012
Europe Moves Closer to Banktatorship / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Yields on 10-year Treasuries plunged to a record-low 1.56 percent on Thursday morning as panicky investors stormed out of European financial assets into German and U.S. government bonds. Deteriorating credit conditions, a flurry of ratings downgrades, and bank runs in Spain and Greece have triggered a flight-to-safety which has pushed the benchmark 10-year below its previous all-time low of 1.67 percent. Falling yields indicate that investors have lost confidence in the ability of EU policymakers to resolve the ongoing debt crisis, particularly as it relates to growing troubles in Greece and Spain.
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Saturday, June 02, 2012
The Truth about Europe There is No Solution: Growth Doesn't Rhyme with Crunch / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
As everything connected to Europe seemed to fall apart even before US jobs numbers were announced, and we could say I told you so a thousand times when it comes to debt deflation and crunching credit and the rise of the US dollar, but won‘t, there's a piece by Jeremy Warner at the Telegraph that I think I should mention.
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Friday, June 01, 2012
The Irish "Fiscal Treaty" Referendum Result and the Euro Crisis / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
It is early days in the Irish referendum count but the yes side has won.This vote brings a degree of stability to Irish finances but unfortunately it may be too little too late as it looks like the Euro project in general is in trouble and may not survive. The game has moved on and it is moving fast.
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Thursday, May 31, 2012
The Truth About Europe: There Is No Solution / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
I like that title, The Truth About Europe: There Is No Solution. But I don't think it can all be summed up, the reasons why I mean, in one article. So I think I'll make it a running series. Still, whatever data we can look at, past, present and future, none of it will make an essential difference. The title stands: There Is No Solution For Europe. Period. All I can do is keep pointing to news and stats and data that confirm that. All of them do, so that should make it a lot easier, even if most voices out there never tire from pointing out the opposite.
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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Espana en Fuego / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
What's really left to say about Spain, anymore? This 12th largest economy in the world now finds itself as close to financial meltdown as a country (other than Greece) can get, and it has gotten there by taking the most twisted and shady path that it could find. Ilargi wrote about this shadiness back on April 18 in his article, Spain, Land of Magical Financial Realism. In it, he discussed how the bank bailout fund in Spain was being funded by... the Spanish banks themselves, so as to allow the Spanish government to under-state its actual deficit/GDP ratio. Most of that "money", in turn, came from the ECB LTRO Part Dos, which gave out billions worth of 3-year loans to these banks and, in exchange, encumbered just about ALL of the (already toxic) collateral available in the Spanish banking system.
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Sunday, May 27, 2012
Greece Could Implode the Second Bailout and the EU by Mid-June / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
While most of my analysis so far has concerned France’s elections, it was in fact Greece’s May election which proved more significant for the future of the EU.
I do not want to delve too much into Greek history and political parties. So I’ll simply show the results along with the names and brief descriptions of each party:
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Sunday, May 27, 2012
Germany, Greece and the Game of "Chicken" / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Shah Gilani writes: Summer unofficially kicks off this weekend, at least here in the U.S., as we celebrate Memorial Day.
Before we even get to the "official" beginning of summer on June 21, sweat will be pouring from every banker's brow on June 17.
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Friday, May 25, 2012
Merkel’s thoughts on ticker tape, Euro is no longer a friend to Germany / Stock-Markets / Eurozone Debt Crisis
As the Eurozone crisis rumbles on investors’ attention is split across a range of European issues; an apparently imminent ‘Grexit’ (possibly the ugliest wordmash we’ve ever heard), strains in the Italian bond market, Spanish property loans defaulting and busting the Spanish banking system, Portugal’s continued woes, France’s tired state driven economy and more. These are all issues that matter and are part of the macroeconomic picture. They are all here to stay, ‘givens’ if you like, or ‘known knowns’ to use Donald Rumsfeld’s contribution to the lexicon.
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Friday, May 25, 2012
Debt Crisis Investment Critical Mega Developments & Select Gold Antidote / Stock-Markets / Eurozone Debt Crisis
“When the ECB is forced to cave and act it may finally become clear to market participants that the body politics around the world will demand that central banks implement debt eroding inflations.”
“At the Threshold of the End of Central Bank Independence, Gold is Compelling”, Frank Veneroso, A Rock Meets a Hard Place, 05/20/2012
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Thursday, May 24, 2012
Euro-Zone Crisis Real Deal, Warning What Follows is EXTREMELY BAD / Stock-Markets / Eurozone Debt Crisis
The media is rife with misrepresentations and analysis of the EU. Here’s the real deal.
- The ECB is tapped out. Having provided over €1 trillion in funding via LTRO 1 and LTRO 2, taking on over €700 billion in PIIGS debt putting its own solvency at risk, it simply cannot launch another LTRO scheme for the following reasons:
- Those banks accepting LTRO funding are being punished by the market, thereby indicating that ECB funding is no financially toxic to a firm’s reputation in the market place
- The positive effects of LTRO 2 lasted only one month compared to several months for LTRO 1. Thus, we find that with each additional intervention the benefits are shorter lasting.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
All Hail the Greek Exit / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
The dialogue between academics, officials, analysts and pundits in Europe has very obviously turned towards ways of spinning a Greek exit as a "good thing" for the system, or, at least, not such a "bad thing". Last week, we saw analysts at Bank of America and HSBC telling us that a Greek exit would actually cause a large market rally for a bunch of dubious reasons (i.e. the CBs will print to infinity and cause everything to soar, while also making a stark example out of Greece). That's a common argument, and there is at least some historical precedent in support. Like I said before, though, we can no longer use recent history alone as a reliable guide to the near future.
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Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Europe One Nation (Under Germany) / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
For this week's Outside the Box I want to share with you a singularly interesting conversation between Niall Ferguson and Ben Laurance, in the Sunday Times of London. What really grabbed me about it was the way Niall goes right out on a limb and yet makes such a convincing case that, when push really comes to shove, Germany will bite the federalist bullet, because it's overwhelmingly in their interest to maintain a united eurozone.
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