France

‘Plan B’ Needed As Euro One Recession Away From Implosion - David McWilliams

And so the 2015 season of the Greek drama is coming to a close following last night's vote in Greek parliament to vote the country into even more austerity than was the case before Syriza was voted into power with promises of removing all austerity, even with Europe - which formally admits Greece is unsustainable in its current debt configuration - now terminally split on how to proceed, with Germany's finmin still calling for a "temporary Grexit", the IMF demanding massive debt haircuts, while the rest of Europe (and not so happy if one is Finnish or Dutch) just happy to kick the can for the third time.

"What Europe Wants" - to use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

• environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance
• terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance
• global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)
• EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

As everyone knows by now, a nuclear 'deal' between Iran and the P5+1 (US, France, China, Germany, UK, Russia) was announced earlier this week. Under this agreement, Iran promises to limit its nuclear program in return for various international sanctions to be lifted. Republicans are not happy with the deal (Boehner: "Obama's deal will only embolden Iran"); Israel's PM Netanyahu warned it was "a stunning historical mistake," but we are sure President Obama will put everyone straight as he heads into the next 60 days of Congressional wrangling...

The real danger to the euro area probably doesn’t emanate from Greece, but from two of its heavyweights, namely France and Italy. If one thinks things properly through, Greece is really a side-show. The euro zone remains full of accidents waiting to happen and some of them have the potential to become truly gigantic accidents.

To all appearances, at least “a new Day has dawned” for Greece, the nations of the Rest of the World, and any other members/victims of the Corrupt West also seeking to reclaim their sovereignty, and find economic salvation for their people. Let’s hope that the reality which follows reflects these hopes for a better world.

The dollar has been a stalwart of international trade over the majority of the last century. Around the time of the formation of the Eurozone, it reached its recent peak at 71.0% of official foreign exchange reserves. Since then, its composition of global reserves has more recently dropped to a more modest 62.9% in 2014. However, the dollar is slowly losing its status as the world’s undisputed reserve currency.

While Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is busy figuring out how best to go about pushing the "deal" he reached on Monday morning in Brussels through parliament, EU finance ministers are scrambling to put together billions in bridge financing that will hold Athens over until the activation of the ESM program which is likely at least four months away. Although it's as yet unclear which "least bad" option is preferable for Greece's external debt, Wolfgang Schaeuble has an idea for how the country might pay public sector employees.

"Mr. Varoufakis, who kept reminding everyone that he is a professor of game theory, believed that the European leaders would prefer to make concessions now rather than manage the disruption of a Greek default. He must not be familiar with the Tyler Durden school of negotiation: the first rule of using game theory is you do not talk about using game theory. What’s more obvious is that Syriza didn’t understand what the game is."

It’s not just about Greece, it’s about the whole EU. The Troika thinks that by scaring the living daylights out of the periphery, its power will increase. Germany just killed its golden goose. And boy, is that ever stupid. The main thing here is that Don Corleone was not a psychopath or sociopath, and that’s more than you can say for Schäuble and Dijsselbloem and Juncker and their ilk. While brute force may look attractive and decisive and all, in the end it will be their undoing. The Italians and Spanish and French have noted every word of this, and more. Europe as it is, is already over. Everything from here on in is a mere death rattle.

Greece is saved!!! I mean BANKERS are saved!!! The market will celebrate the total capitulation of Greece to the EU bankers. Nothing has been resolved. The debt won’t be repaid. The can has been kicked again. Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland and even France are essentially insolvent. It’s all a ponzi scheme. The bankers win and the people lose. Hope is not a strategy. Hussman’s weekly tome shows how a crisis plays out. Bad shit happens and the powers that be react with bad solutions that keep their wealth and power protected. Their bad solutions lead to a worse crisis. More bad solutions. And so on, until complete collapse.

Similar to the US banks who funded home owners that shouldn’t have received mortgages and made a fortune doing so – at least initially, the Germans funded the periphery nations in an effort to drive output growth domestically. However, financing a large portion of ones’ customer purchases is a high risk endeavour. And the Germans are in the midst of this hard lesson.

"The idea was that with Greece out, Germany would be more likely to provide the financial support the eurozone needed because the German people would no longer perceive aid to Europe as a bailout for the Greeks. At the same time, a Grexit would be traumatic enough that it would help scare the rest of Europe into giving up more sovereignty to a stronger banking and fiscal union."

Peter the Great liked to confiscate successful businesses and put the owners to death... 

"In our view, there are two main factors keeping investors sidelined. One is the residual implementation risks involved in the latest arrangements...  The second, of much broader importance, is the accumulated evidence of the inadequacy of the Euro area's present fiscal governance, which takes up too many resources and exposes the whole system to collapse."