Fail

The politics of the EU summit appear quite tense, and as JPMorgan's CIO Michael Cembalest notes, you have to wonder if this is how monetary unions are made or broken: by strong-arming the Chancellor of the country primarily expected to fund the Euro’s survival. In order to better comprehend the shenanigans, Michael provides an aerial view of the summit and how these maneuvers played out. The next move is Germany’s.

This scathing assessment of Obama’s economic policies is by no means an endorsement of Mitt Romney or his economic plan, since he has never provided a detailed economic plan. After four years of a Romney presidency, the national debt will also be $20 trillion as his war with Iran and handouts to his Wall Street brethren replace Obama’s food stamps and entitlement pork. There was only one presidential candidate whose proposals would have placed this country back on a sustainable path. The plutocracy controlled corporate mainstream media did their part in ignoring and then scorning Ron Paul during his truth telling campaign. The plutocracy wants to retain their wealth and power, while the willfully ignorant masses don’t want to think. The words of Ron Paul sum up what will occur over the coming years as the interchangeable pieces of this corporate fascist farce drive the country to ruin.  The politicians, bankers and corporate titans running this country are too corrupt and cowardly to reverse the course on our path to destruction. The debt will continue to accumulate until our Minsky Moment. At that point the U.S. dollar will be rejected and chaos will reign. The Great American Empire will be no more. At that time sides will need to be chosen and blood will begin to spill. Decades of bad decisions, corruption, cowardice, ignorance, greed and sloth will come to a head.

The verdict of history will not be kind to the once great American Empire.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that major commercial banks manipulate Libor submissions for their own benefit. As Jefferies David Zervos writes this weekend, money-center commercial banks did not want the “truth” of market prices to determine their loan rates. Rather, they wanted an oligopolistically controlled subjective survey rate to be the basis for their lending businesses. When there are only 16 players – a “gentlemen’s agreement” is relatively easy to formulate. That is the way business has been transacted in the broader OTC lending markets for nearly 30 years. The most bizarre thing to come out of the Barclays scandal, Zervos goes on to say, is the attack on the Bank of England and Paul Tucker. Is it really a scandal that central bank officials tried to affect interest rates? Absolutely NOT! That’s what they do for a living. Central bankers try to influence rates directly and indirectly EVERY day. That is their job. Congresses and Parliaments have given central banks monopoly power in the printing of money and the management of interest rate policy. These same law makers did not endow 16 commercial banks with oligopoly power to collude on the rate setting process in their privately created, over the counter, publicly backstopped marketplaces.

In an extended interview with Bloomberg TV, Nouriel Roubini lives up to his doom-saying reputation and goes where few have as he opines on Lieborgate that: "bankers are greedy and have been for 1000 years" and "nothing is going to change" unless there are criminal sanctions; to which he follows up - briefly silencing the interviewer, "If some people end up in jail, maybe that will teach a lesson to somebody - or somebody will hang in the streets". The professor goes on to note that the EU "summit was a failure" since markets were expecting much more and warns that without full debt mutualization, debt monetization by the ECB, or a quadrupling of the EFSF/ESM 'bazooka'; Italian and Spanish spreads will continue to blow out day after day - leading to a crisis "not in six months but in two weeks". The only entity capable of stopping this is the ECB which needs to do outright unsterilized monetization in unlimited amounts which is 'politically incorrect' to talk about and claimed to be constitutionally illegal. 2013 will be a very difficult year to find shelter as policy-makers ability to kick-the-can runs out of steam as he sees the possibility of a 'Global Perfect Storm' of a euro-zone collapse, a US double-dip, a China & EM hard-landing, and a war in the Middle East. Dr. Doom is back.

All 3 Libor Arguments Fail

Steve Forbes has a message for a nation dominated by increasingly short-term decisions made on Wall Street and in Washington D.C., and by ever greater economic, financial and currency instability.  As long as America continues moving away from sound money; away from sound financial and economic policies; and, ultimately, away from freedom, its future grows more dim.  The dot-com and housing bubbles followed by the 2008 financial crisis and the most severe economic decline since the Great Depression serve as powerful lessons.  A future of bigger government, higher taxes, more burdensome regulations, less consumer choice and more unrealistic government promises requires more and more Federal Reserve play money. Steve Forbes has a quintessentially American policy prescription rooted in American history.  The answer to America’s economic problems is—and has always been—new wealth creation.  New wealth creation doesn’t come from the government or from the Federal Reserve’s printing press.  New wealth creation is what happens naturally with stable money based on the gold standard, lower taxes on individuals, a simplified tax code, reduced bureaucracy and free markets.

“We are prepared for all scenarios, including abandoning the euro.”

"It's impossible to have a political solution to a balance sheet problem" says Paul Brodsky, bond market expert and co-founder of QB Asset Management. The world has simply gotten itself into too much debt. There are creditors that expect to be paid, and debtors that are having an increasingly difficult time making their coupon payments. No amount of political or policy intervention is going to change that reality. (Unless a global "debt jubilee" transpires, which Paul thinks is unlikely). Looking at the global monetary base, Paul sees it dwarfed by the staggering amount of debts that need to be repaid or serviced. The reckless use of leverage has resulted in a chasm between total credit and the money that can service it. So how will this debt overhang be resolved?

Central bank money printing -- and lots of it -- thinks Paul.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of additional potential legal liability, much of which likely borne by US banks, yet very few are paying attention. Here's how I see it...

So where does this leave us, knowing that despite all the exuberant highs and depressed lows, we had ended the previous week pretty much in unchanged matter?

Well, after a 10-day period that had not one but 2 bail-outs announced, a EU summit that initially seemed to good to be true, results-wise, and then ended up just being that, and a triplet of Central Bank cuts cum QE supportive measures, things don’t look much better…

Print, print, print as they may, central bankers will make no leeway until the true problem falls sway... ©2009-2012 the Lyrical Reggie Reg...

With the US closed, the afternoon simply dragged on with a light ROff feeling as the Periphery drifted slowly wider, France on stand-still and the Core squeezed tighter. Credit weaker with Financials giving back yesterday’s gains and more. Sudden change of mind in equities, paring morning losses loss ahead of tomorrow in very low volume.

Nothing strong, nor concrete, nor very firm, but Core EZ unease with the ESM discussions of last week, as seen by the South, is just seeping through. Opposition parties, Central Bankers, junior government partners, constitutional issues in the Northern part all seem via titbits and comments ready to sand in some of the discussions or to delay the processes. Give it another 2 weeks and everyone will have gone on holiday (despite the ECOFIN claiming to remain on stand-by).

Closing in unconvinced ROff mode and treading water ahead of tomorrow’s Spanish auction, ECB / BOE meetings and US claims numbers. EUR ticking down to low 25s Yet another not especially inspirational day to write about. Libor-gate turning into mudslinging contest, with possible further fall-outs on the industry.

• Most Germans Reject Ceding Sovereignty to EU, Stern Poll Shows (Bloomberg)
• How Stockton went broke: A 15-year spending binge (Reuters)
• Manchester United Shoots for $100 Million IPO (WSJ)... with 4x leverage and Jefferies as underwriter
• Iran says can destroy U.S. bases "minutes after attack" (Reuters)
• Poison claims spark call for Arafat exhumation  (FT)
• Diamond Would Be Catch for Investment, Private Equity (Bloomberg)
• Investors may shun big Libor lawsuit and go it alone (Reuters)
• New Particle Found, Consistent With Higgs Boson (WSJ)
• Chinese riot police clash with protesters  (FT)
• Euro-Area June Manufacturing, Services Output Contracts (Bloomberg)
• Utilities Struggle to Restore Power in East (WSJ)
• Dark economic clouds gather anew over Obama campaign (Reuters)

The gold exchange standard period, which followed WW2, was a period of unprecedented and unparalleled expansion, productivity growth, technological innovation, and financial stability. The Bank of England’s recent report on the gold standard periods concluded:

"Overall the gold standard appeared to perform reasonably well against its financial stability and allocative efficiency objectives."

The BBC concludes by quoting former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson:

"You can’t force a government to stay on gold, so therefore gold has no credibility."

Do you see the cognitive dissonance here? If we are to believe Lord Lawson, gold has no credibility, because governments have previously proven themselves untrue to their word. Surely the thing that has no credibility is not gold, but government promises? And that is the answer to the BBC’s initial question.

There are few options left.