First, there was the Telegraph report about how the halls are filled with "despair" amid a complete collapse in French-German relations.
And now this: According to Peter Spiegel at FT, the leaders won't even accomplish anything on bank recapitalizations this weekend. That was the one thing they'd hoped to have done, before coming back to solve everything else next week.
Meanwhile, there are rumors that the Wednesday meeting might not be the end, and it could spill over into Thursday.
Bottom line: Everything coming out of Europe suggests they're not about to end this once and for all.
France CANNOT let Greece fail...or its own BANKS fail...and then a pompous, self righteous, lazy, cowardly stae will be revealed to all.
Emperoror Sarkozy has no clothes...and Frau Merkel may be about to expose him to an Arctic draft.
( jeex I love this chick..the only Western politician with some integrity and a pair of balls)
The core issue is whether imprudent bankers (once again) should be "saved" from the consequences of their own -- perhaps even deliberate -- bad "investments."
The scam of deliberately buying lots of, say Zimbabwe "Sovereign Debt" -- then recklessly counting that Zimbabwe debt as 100% Tier 1 capital reserves -- and then shedding huge crocodile tears on the banks need for bailouts -- is becoming a tediously regular bit of Kabuki.
Particularly so if the bailout costs are (once again) imposed upon the public by central banks' monetization of member banks' losses. Unless banks are given a painful reason to NOT continue this nonsense, we can expect its endless and increasingly costly repetitions.
The challenge in EU is that France wants to save French banks, Germany wants to save German banks, etc. And French banks and German banks face different issues so they can't agree on things.
The European Union is a marriage made in hell!
I wonder if in Europe there isn't a capitalist/banker collusion that we don't have in the USA?
Showing first 5 of 13 replies. View All
Shows once again what a worthless newspaper The Daily Telegraph is. They're so anti-euro that they fabricate stories, like a Merkel and Sarkozy break up, just to get some readers. They should focus on Mervyn King and his cronies instead, they are absolutely destroying the pound, British savers and pensioners. As a Brit abroad, I feel the pain everyday. I get my salary in pounds, but I live in euroland. My purchasing power took a huge hit already, and with his latest round of quantitative easing I will lose a lot more. Just take a look at the all time EURGBP chart. You'll see that the euro has been steadily rising against the pound since the very beginning. If anything, there's a pound crisis, not an euro crisis. These guys are nuts!
Well said, Mrs. Thatcher. Europe in general, and Greece in particular, has run out of other people's money. But it is important to leftists everywhere that they blame it on the banks. Why? Because here in the US under Obama and the Democrats we have embarked on the same socialism that has ruined much of Europe. The banks don't deserve to be bailed out. But the people of Greece deserve no sympathy either. They have been living the good life on other people's money for about 40 years now. If there is anyone I have sympathy for it is the German people. They have worked hard and lived responsibly and now they have been abandoned by their own government which is caught up in this one-Europe campaign.
You're looking at "The problem with crony capitalism is . . ." and NOT anything to do with socialism. The multiple FED acronyms for it's multiple bank bailouts ALL serve to "Socialize" bank losses -- while letting banks keep their ill-gotten gains -- private.
EVERYONE has borrowed to much. Debt on ALL fronts, consumer, local, state, fed, and business is the problem period. You cannot borrow to get out of debt. Kicking the can down the road only makes our children and their children "indentured servants" brought on by baby boomers and older, who could care less. Why, because they will be gone. If you don't believe me "who is" going to pay for everything borrowed and the big question, HOW? I submit know one has an answer.
Governments are broke, only making money by printing, business is supposed to have this cash, but they also have more debt than any other time in the HISTORY of business. Hell even the supper-committee is tasked not to bring about balance, nor stop borrowing, nope they just have to figure out how not to borrow so much, like instead of 1.5 trillion per year it's only 1.25 trillion per year, for the next 10 years or more. Ya-Hoo isn't that refreshing.
It's natural to blame someone or governments but the people have been going along with this and are not blameless. If someone waved easy money in front of poor people, poor countries, cash poor businesses, and social programs, it's natural they are going to step up and take it.
Now it's time to PAY, and no one wants that, but pay we will have too, it's coming down to when. The repayment will now be extremely high and frightening. I wish all good luck.
Yup. Worse yet, our entire economy has become BASED on ever-increasing debt-fueled-consumption. The implicit assumption is that we can always use the credit earned by our forbearers -- and the "soundness of the dollar" to borrow without limit. Then too, there's the line that our creditors "need us" to keep buying their stuff with IOUs."
Finally, there's the biggest lie of all, that the Federal Reserve can "print" as much "wealth" as needed to "pay off" our $52 Trillion of debt. For an informative peek at who owes how much, see http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/search/TCMD/1
New Euros.
Debt to GNP, Debt to national equity should only be 2 of many elements in
an algorithm assigning exchange ratios by tax jurisdiction.
Many things factor into a nation's net wealth and agreeable present potential
(national P/E ratio, shall we say.)
The real way back to a productive world, though, will be letting failure serve as
failure, particularly where stupid, even shady business practices may have
been involved. TBTF banks are not supposed to be guaranteed forever, though
the families that have long controlled them obviously wish that to be the case.
Otherwise, no one wants to go bankrupt and fresh start jurisprudence should
rule the day.
Where Earth's latest debt creations are as notionally back-breaking as they are
notionally founded on dubious reference assets, I would look to annul them.
Your only problem is using facts, and real market rules (not to be changed in the middle of the crisis, mark to market being only one) to establish a logical path. Most will not like your common sense, business and social reality.
Besides that the taxpayer should not backstop dollar 1 of credit
derivatives, if taxpayers ARE asked to do so, they must see who
the winners / losers are on the sold risk.
I'd simply like to know if the middle class is being asked to give up
$10's Trillions to make up billionaires' humungous losses.
There someone on the the opposite side of every deal, and if the
people who buy out our leaders decided to play Lloyds of London
for the Ponzi scheming of the greater bulk of the world's real estate,
that's there very smart idea, not ours.
The whole notion that "Sovereigns" can't default is absurd on it's face -- even a relatively graceful "inflation default" as a much a default a default as a crude fist-in-elbow salute