France Confirms It Is Now Openly Buying Sovereign Bonds In The Open Market

Update: Germany now officially joins the fray: Euro zone central banks have
started buying government bonds, Germany's Bundesbank said on
Monday. "We confirm this," a Bundesbank spokesman said. From Reuters.

From Market News: "The Bank of France has begun buying eurozone government bonds, a spokeswoman confirmed Monday, without giving further details." Can't have those French banks face reality now can we. 65 years after France was saved from fascist rule, America has saved its financial system again from insolvency, and instituted something else. What that "something else" is, we are not quite sure yet, but gradually we are getting a sense.

The Latest US Taxpayer Bill To Save Europe, And Specifically The French Banks: $57 Billion

The latest (and certainly not last) IMF portion of the European bail out is E220 billion, or $287 billion at today's exchange rate. As the US and its taxpayers represent roughly 20% of total IMF funding, today's 3% loss in dollar purchasing power to the middle class will cost the middle class $57 billion. Paying for the privilege of being able to purchase less sure sounds like a squid-pro-quo type of deal for us here. Politicians everywhere applaud this most recent rape of America's working class, even as communism is now the global ideology. Who needs TheOnion.com when reality is now 10 times more surreal. And the direct recipients of taxpayer generosity: SocGen, AXA, Dexia, CA and all other French and German banks, which right now are all up ~20%.

Summary Of The Biggest Bail Out Ever: Even Keynes Is Spinning In His Grave

The race to the currency devaluation bottom is now in its final lap. And gold is the only alternative to the now imminent collapse of the fiat system: the world had a chance to take writedowns on losses, punish those who took risk and failed, and refused to do so. There is now no risk left, but it only means that eventually all the risk will come back and lead all capital markets to zero. The result will be the end of Keynesian economics as we know it. Do not trade in this broken market, do not hold your money in a bank as they are all now one hour away from a terminal bank run - buy and hold real, FASB mark-to-myth independent assets.

Don't Try This At Home Kids - EUR Traders Holding On For Dear Life As FX Vol At Never Before Seen Levels

More flags, more fun - 500 billion flags! A 50 pip move in an FX pair in a week is big. A 50 pip move in an FX pair in a minute is a several hundred sigma event. As all correlation algos are near unity, we believe the risk of Thursday's 2:40 pm festivities to recur in the afterhours session (either up or down) is frighteningly high.

Watch The EU Extraordinary Meeting Of Finance Ministers Live

With less than 2 hours before Asia opens, the EU is scrambling - on net, the newsflow this weekend has been far more negative than Europe had hoped, with just the token minimum provided so far by the IMF (thank you Joe Sixpack) which the political situation in the UK and Germany deteriorating substantially. The live webcast from the Counsil of the European Union, the Extraordinary meeting of finance ministers - press conference is starting imminently at the following link.

Breaking News: Angela Merkel Coalition Loses Majority In German State Vote According To Exit Polls

Political doctrine - meet Newton's third law. Headline from Reuters. This will serve as a huge setback to a consolidated European rescue of not only Greece but all PIIGS (and then all of Europe itself). Polls are now closed and the first preliminary read is as follows: 34.5 CDU, SPD 34.5, 12.5 Green, FDP 6.5 Left 5.5.And the biggest losers from this, aside from the line of willing bailout recipients may be German public utility: as Bloomberg notes: "Chancellor Angela Merkel’s parliamentary spokesman for economy and energy, Joachim Pfeiffer, said that the German government may not have to get approval from the federal parliament’s upper chamber to extend the operating life of nuclear power plants." EON, RWE and other utilities may not appricate their 10 year ultimatum in tomorrow's DAX.

Guest Post: A Tale Of Two Liquidity Measures

The story of financial markets in the past twelve months has not been one of organic growth. It has been a central bank accommodated liquidity story. This melt up will end in melt down when unsustainable liquidity policy is insufficient to address deleveraging and default. Macro trade positioning needs functional measures of liquidity. As has been said before, liquidity will always be around until you need it.
Given the explosion of financial product innovation, international capital flows, and leverage some measures of liquidity are not as informative as they once were. New ones are needed. Further, thinking through liquidity phenomena to their essence is really about understanding connections to market-maker and/or seller distress, manifested in the bid-ask. So measures that exhibit a myopic view on credit risk of market players in some ways serve as a function liquidity measures.