The BillyB, Aster & JR8 roundtable!

[JR8]

Billy,

Couple of opinions going around re: that article yesterday
- It took him 12 years living in that culture to realise it wasn't for him.
- He can say that now he has a multi-million $ fortune to retire on.

I have to say I wonder why he had to do it so publicly. Unprofessional, publicity-seeking? ... or maybe he just lost it and snapped?

[JR8]

Classic pair of headlines emerging from Germany, from the same outlet and both this week.

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'Germany not seeking to 'occupy' Greece
Germany is not seeking to "occupy" Greece or control Europe German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told a Greek daily on Sunday, dismissing the idea as "stupid."'
http://www.thelocal.de/national/2012031 ... ontent=243
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Trouble is that Schaeuble has a record as long as your arm of to-your-face lying. In fact I recall him unashamedly recounting last year something like 'Sometimes you just cannot tell the people the truth, you are justified in lying'.
Add to that that everything that has happened re: Greece, well, he has denied - often in front of the German Parliament - every single step of it is planned or going to happen. And now, a further, 3rd bail-out of Greece is already being floated as on the cards...


AND

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Merkel wants her finance minister in euro top job
Chancellor Angela Merkel has tipped German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to take over as head of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, a newspaper reported on Friday.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/2012031 ... ontent=243
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Vee must have total control of everything, no one else can be trusted!!

[aster]

Unprofessional, publicity-seeking? ... or maybe he just lost it and snapped?

Or maybe he's just had enough and is being honest and truthful about the whole shylock biz?

Didn't cross your mind, did it?

[JR8]

You're so Dopey it probably would take you 12 years to figure you didn't like your job

[JR8]

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PIMCO chief Mohamed El-Erian expects 'second Greece’ in Portugal
The giant bond fund PIMCO said Europe has not yet tamed its debt crisis and will soon face a “second Greece”

[aster]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxch-yi14BE

LMFAO! Genius!

[JR8]

From this week's Private Eye (UK satirical/investigative current affairs magazine)

[JR8]

The mechanism by which Greece will probably exit the euro...


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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... -euro.html
Eurozone debt crisis: how Greece could exit the euro
'As global companies draw up contingency plans for a Greek exit from the euro, we examine the feasibility of Athens’ departure – from new drachmas to illegality and €1 trillion costs.'
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[JR8]

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'In an interview on the BBC's Newsnight programme on Monday night, Ms Merkel ruled out Greece or any other country leaving the eurozone. “We have taken the decision to be in a currency union,”

[aster]

In all fairness the latest bailout came courtesy of the shlocks, who given a strong kick in the ass by Merkel and others have even "voluntarily" agreed to charge less interest than they are charging Australia on whatever remains of that initial debt.

Spread the love!

[JR8]

A reader comment from an article re: the euro that I can identify with...


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'The real issue now is the fight to the death between politics and economics.

It seems to me that if the euro currency is to survive it will be in the face of desperate economic realities. Tens of millions of European citizens will have to suffer penury for years, probably for decades to ensure that the great political project prevails.

The moment that it becomes clear the euro is to be dismantled (ie the politicians accepting defeat in the face of those desperate economic realities I mentioned) then the euro is doomed. This is the assumption behind Mr Record's proposals.

My own view is that for the time being the politico-bureaucratic mafia will continue to resist any notion, any proposal whatsoever that the euro should be proactively dismantled. In the short term at least, political vanity trumps economic reality any day ... especially when the politicos and the 45,000 EU apparatchik bureaucrats who feed off them (or is it the other way around?) are largely unaffected by the financial disasters hitting millions of ordinary Europeans every day of the week now. The EU is a masterclass in medieval feudalism, geared for the 21st century..

So, the euro farce will rumble on, possibly for years to come. There will be crisis after crisis, summit after summit, bail out after bail out, money printing like there's never been before. Financial chicanery, already rife, will be a commonplace.

Until, in the end, there will be a critical mass of Europeans who will be the manifestation of desperate economic realities eventually overwhelming absurd political and bureaucratic vanities (and avarice). An uprising against EU feudalism.

Consequently, my money is on a disorderly collapse of the euro: the politicos will never, ever accept defeat on this one. Therefore, it's probably best to brace yourself for a "global shock [that] could be 5 to 10 times worse than the Lehman earthquake in 2008."

You bet.

Since when did a political class - still less 5 divisions' worth of unelected feudal barons who themselves, thanks to the arrant madness that is the EU, hold sway over the political class, and whose gilded lives depend upon the very existence of an unworkable and unsustainable currency union - ever give a toss about the life circumstances of a few hundred million citizen-serfs?

Lord Wolfson's Economics Prize has been an interesting academic aside, but the fight to the death between economics and politics will play out regardless. Economics will win in the end, but the casualty count will be horrendous. The politicos and the bureaucrats will survive nonetheless; that's the tragedy of it all.

To the winner of the £250,000 prize I would say go and buy yourself a small farm somewhere and learn self-reliance: Europe is going to be hell on earth soon enough. Thank the political class for that.

I suppose, in truth, I'm defying the bureaucrats and the politicians to dismantle the euro, but I just don't think they're going to do it. So, the euro will collapse out of control. It's inevitable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comm ... ating.html
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[JR8]

And here is the latest edition of 'Death Spiral Weekly' [Sound the trumpets! (er, Ode to Joy isn't it?)]


Pensioner in Athens commits suicide by shooting himself in the head in front of parliament.

Two government buildings in Athens blown up. This tends to happen when the people feel they are becoming detached from representation.

Spick yields back at 6%

The trillion euro LTRO, a Sarkozy can-kicking exercise for 3 years lasted 6 months. Oh crap!

Spanish and Italian banks used this 'free money' to buy stacks of national debt at 3-5%, thats er, now gone to 6%.

Still, like Aster says everyone loves the euro lol.

[JR8]

Another interesting situation is what the euro-debacle is doing to London property.

Last year we had the Arab Spring which saw a lot of Middle Eastern money seeking a safe haven in London. Interestingly a neighbouring flat to one of mine (for those who recall the tale: the one where the Brazilian hooker was briefly living) sold last year to a Saudi woman. Interesting to me as they, like the Chinese, tend to go for anonymous purpose-built flats in highly urban blocks, not Victorian flat conversions in character neighborhoods where people stop and talk to each other. Anyway...

Now while property in the UK as a whole is easing back a little, any vendor in central London with a half decent offering is having his arm chewed off, prices are at record levels. And where is much of this money from... Italy and Spain apparently. Coincidentally I also had some long-term Greek tenants of mine mention in passing to me earlier this year that if their flat went up for sale they'd be interested.

The way I see it the euro-zone has two choices, perpetual quantitative easing (money printing) or the break-up of the euro. If you follow the money, the capital flight that a break-up would cause is already well under way.

[JR8]

I'm not sure if George Soros could have been more candid with the below...

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'11.23 George Soros isn't beating around the bush when it comes to the euro; he's warned it "threatens to destroy the European Union" and says that if he was still an active investor he'd bet against it. The comments come in an interview published yesterday afternoon in Le Monde:

"The introduction of the euro has led to divergence instead of bringing about convergence. The most fragile countries of the eurozone have discovered that they are in a Third World situation, as if they were indebted in a foreign currency, with a crucial effect that there is a real risk of default. Trying to make them respect rules that don’t work just makes matters worse. Sadly, the authorities don’t understand this.

Mario Draghi has launched extraordinary measures with his €1 trillion injection of liquidity through three-year loans. But the effect of this operation has been broken by the counter-attack of the Bundesbank. Watching the growth of the ECB’s balance sheet, the Bundesbank has realised that it risks heavy loses if the euro blows up and is therefore opposed to the (LTRO) policy. Let us hope that this does not become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt ... -Live.html

[aster]