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Thin Ice
I’m not surprised that the halo effect of political changes in Italy and Greece had a very short half-life. Why would it? Nothing has changed.
I’m not surprised that the contagion has worked its way to France. After all, the ECB intervention policy insures that France becomes a target. “If you can't sell Italy, sell France”, is the market’s response.
But I’m absolutely blown out by the pace of things. France’s bonds are being devalued on a daily basis. Italy has been functionally shut out of the new issue market. Market liquidity has dried up. What were once routine transactions are now difficult to price. E100mm bond transactions for France and Italy were normal; today E25mm is a market amount.
What is becoming scarily clear is that there is no more announcements coming that are going to make a difference. All the news is out on expanding the EFSF. The only thing that could reverse this tide is an agreement to “federalize” the debts of Europe. This would leave Germany (massively) on the hook. There is zero chance of this happening.
The central question that the market will ask and answer in the next few weeks is whether France can withstand the onslaught. The ECB will not intervene in the French market. Will debt capital continue to move out of France? Two charts. One says France is probably okay. The other says we are headed for a hard landing.
These numbers (CIA) are a year old but they tell the story. Italy had $2.1T of public sector debt (119% of GDP) while France had only $1.8T of debt (82% of GDP). Looking at this it’s understandable why Italy is in trouble. But it does not explain why France should have a problem. This chart is the reason that there could be an issue:
On this basis France has double the debt of Italy. I call this the Money Center Bank Syndrome. The banks have debt outside their borders (they have assets too). This debt is getting sucked into the French government bond market as world investors trim exposure to the country (“If you can’t reduce exposure to the banks, sell government bonds”).
Italy and France have an average debt maturity of ~7 years. There is a total of $3T. The market value of this stock of debt has fallen by about $200b since October 1st. This is not a loss that will be recorded on anyone’s books (except the likes of MFG) but it does cause a strain on funding as the repo value has fallen.
Remember that all night conference by the EU deciders on October 26th? Central to that meeting was the commitment that the EU banks would undergo a recapitalization of E106b ($150b) by June 30 2012. The EU banks have had their assets impaired by at least that amount in just the past two months.
That all night meeting was just a joke! Anyone who trusts these people are making a mistake.
The Merkozy’s of Europe will be making “calming” statements over the next few days. We are dangerously close to a death spiral, and they know it. But they have nothing on their shelf but words. I don’t think this will prove to be enough.
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Europe can federalize its debts if Germany packs up and leaves the Euro, thus leaving the others to monetize their debt to their hearts content.
what can happen to values in the interim should that unfold...some pushing and shoving as the DM is re-launched and what is left of the euro suffers due to expected devaluation?
Amigo's.
I know that Club Med and the PIIGS are in a load of shit... but the real elephant in the room is the UK...
The ECB will intervene in the French market.
The only question left to be asked is:
What happens if the Northern lot figure out what's happening.
So whats wrong with Irland here ?
We only had $7 trillion when evil Bush was in the white hut. Not that I like RINO Bush. The Kenyan has been 100 times worse. Quite a few f**ktards posting here voted for the muslim.
Ok I read the whole thread through before pulling this dialogue out of it, just in order to see if there was, by chance, any ZHself-correcting mechanism here that would do the neccessary work for me. No such luck.
Guy gets up on the stage here, offers a few opinions that go contrary to the prevailing wind, and the fur starts to fly. Ok, well and good. But the invective employed in absence of (or in the case at hand, in addition to) a counter-argument is not to be confused with 'fight club' anymore than a kick to the groin is to be confused with the sport of boxing.
That's just my opinion, and I wouldn't be bothered to express it likely, until a red flag like that quote above is tacked on to the yelling and shouting. "Conforming to the culture"..that sounds vaguely familiar to a place I've been and done with...Sheepleville, and it's suburb Stepfordton. Knock the shit out of my argument, good on you, but to question the right of somebody to get up and say their piece, based on whether they wear identical markings to the rest of the pack? - sorry, it ain't on, unless you be 'diversity' challenged. And the hotter under the collar I see a guy get about somebody questioning their most sacred presumptions, the more I wonder what hidden doubts that party has about their own position. Troll, idiot, conformist, fucktard, lackey etc., is just spittle, not punching.
I come here to learn what I need to, teach what I can, and, - all for an incredibly low low price - to see where my built in prejudices may need to be refined or rethought, according to changes in events or the wisdom of others riding the same train with tickets marked "Freedom Road." I get the comic relief of a M$B post, the occasional link to something I've been looking for for years, a daily update on where people's heads are at...and that's just the comments, not even the posts themselves! Value proposition. What I don't look for, and don't need, is an echo chamber which operates to constantly reassure me that my own thoughts are sound. When I need reassurance, I read Big Jim Willie.
Silver and gold will be an essential part of getting out of the coming shitstorm alive. You can count on that. But you better also count on the fact that we are up against a bunch of pyschopaths whose goal is to strip everybody of everything they own, and who cannot abide the notion of hold-outs to the program...that means PM holders. Taking the full measure of the enemy means getting the widest range of opinions about what may go down, and building up alliances, not drooling over your stack and oiling your weapons daily while muttering curses under your breath at anyone outside the bunker.
They used to call boxing "the Noble Art." Before the rain of slings and arrows begins, I close with an example closer to what I understand a real 'fight club' to embody:
John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich: "Egad sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox."
John Wilkes: "That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Oh, and I'll save some of the less imaginative some time: 22 weeks & 4 days. Spit away.
Joyful-
Since it was my quote (about conformity) that you copy/pasted, I feel compelled to reply...
I, like you, actually appreciate ANY perpective that challenges my current point of view. However, like Akak, I can't abide (or tolerate) when invalid logic (Modus Tollens is rampant in the world today) and immature rhetoric should be allowed to permeate intellectual discussion. This is not a conceit on my part, nor a supposition that anyone else's First Amendment rights are any less important than my own.
When someone comes in and produces a bush-league argument, and is soundly rebuffed, and then comes back for more, I must applaud them for their tenacity, but I must also bring attention to their need to build more horsepower before the next race if they don't want to get smoked again.
I should hope that our friend Tidewater continues contributing to ZeroHedge, because one day he/she might actually drop an innocuous one-liner in a thread comment that manages to change the vector of the entire course of popular reasoning regarding how this whole fucked global financial situation is going to actually work itself out; but I'm pretty sure that fuel and ham sandwiches as money is not the pearl of wisdom that is gonna do it.
My crack about conformity was intended more in regard to behavior (ie: grow the fuck up, crybaby) than in regard to ideology (ie: We all think the same here and differing opinions are not welcome)
I enjoy reading and appreciate points of view that run counter to my own, as long as they are presented with an indication of refective thought and analysis.
Calling me(us) myopic for not coming to the glaringly obvious conclusion that energy and food are superior money to Gold (the best form of money for 6000 years and counting), and then doubling back to the "you guys are really mean" fallback position when Akak dishes up a healthy serving of pwned pie was simply more than I could take.
The financial and debt problems facing the world are innocuous. They could be fixed in a weekend.
The social and political problems we face, which are a result of trusting the same idiocracy that created the financial problems to subsequently solve them using the same exact methods (debt and leverage) that caused them in the first place, is the real issue.
We have a global people problem, not a global money problem.
Thanks for your feedback. Because of time zone issues, I am usually later for the party on these posts, but if you happen to catch this....
I got a different take on reading tidys' jabs at gold bugs, the sense I got was that this was a fellow "seeker" coming at things from a different angle... via his own experience... "what's it like to go without water for three days?"....I love those kind of provocative questions, so as to go back to my personal drawing board and challenge my current set up.
the major takeaway I got from threading through all these responses here was that there is a (probably less than conscious) entry barrier imposed on new arrivals/potentially valuable new contributors who read threads like this and bow out of ever making a statement for fear of being unleashed upon like what happens to the guy who Akak rightly or wrongly believes to be "insincere." Tidefighter comes on like a provocateur, admittedly; but I write that off to style rather than insincerity...you get too many guys talking about "the good ol days" here and suddenly the newcomer feels like an outsider rather than a welcome voice in the discussion. How's that going to increase our heft?
what matters most to me is that ZH has risen to the top of the heap in the blogosphere because, unlike a lot of goldbug sites I've seen, it's got a lot more going for it than just stackers congratulating themselves on their own prescience. I value that to the extreme of wanting to make a point to everybody who contributes here - it's our place, our rules, thanks to the wisdom of the site owners to leave the ring open...so let's treasure the opportunity to the max by raising the tone to the level where newcomers will feel compelled to join us instead of scared shitless to join in the fray!
Joyful, you bring up some valid points. Although admittedly I was the one throwing around the most and the strongest invective above, I too was somewhat unsettled by that particular comment regarding "conformity". But please note that my vitriol was reserved, as it always is, NOT for those who merely disagree with me (which many, many posters do, routinely, without calling down my wrath), nor for those who are unknowledgeable but honest in their participation here, but exclusively for those who ignorantly AND arrogantly AND disingenuously post idiotic, repetitious, and childishly illogical nonsense as "Tidefighter" did in this thread regarding gold. He did NOT offer "a few opinions that go contrary to the prevailing wind", he offered up nonsensical and intellectually insulting bullshit that any sixth-grader with a smidgen of historical knowledge would instantly recognize to be bunk, if not blatant falsehoods.
Not necessarily to challenge you here, but I am sick and tired of those who are too weak, whether intellectually or morally, to challenge and confront patently pro-Establishment lies, propaganda and misinformation, and who speciously try to defend the same as merely "differing opinion", which it is NOT. Despite the often heated rhetoric blithely cast about in this forum, it is a sad fact that far too many people nowadays are either too spineless or too morally bankrupt to confront evil, whether intentional or not, and to call it out for what it is. I believe you have discovered that, for better or worse, I myself have no such compunctions.
akak....good morning, doubt you will come back to read this but I found your post interesting for several reasons. Good to see someone explain their position and stand their ground....we can now read future posts without envisioning a drunk on a rant. Also, interesting you can use 'blithely' and 'speciously' in the same article but can't resist going off about what you consider the most insulting posts!! I read articles and comments here to learn 'where my own prejudices need work', which was so well said in the prior comment. Consider it an opportunity to take a good couple of swings at some truly feeble comments..............then push yourself to explain yet again, more creatively if needed.
I have been slapped around for commenting on things I know little about and ended up learning quite a bit in the process. I am just as disgusted with the entire economic situation as you and am constantly looking for scenarios to survive/profit from it. People are out of their fucking mind if they think everything will be ok or that the new, massive rule changes on the way from the govt will actually help them.
Twotraps,
Indeed, I did return to read your comment, and thank you for replying to mine.
I suppose I felt the need to expound on my reasons for sometimes responding as heatedly as I do here to certain posters because Joyful touched on a particularly aggravating issue for me, one of which I (and many others in online forums) have been unfairly accused: Criticizing or attacking the lies and disinformation of dishonest posters and trolls under the guise of "stifling differing opinions". NOTHING could be further from the truth! Furthermore, I am insulted every time this specious charge is leveled in my direction, as I know that that is simply not the case at all.
Again, there is a profound difference between honest, if uninformed or mistaken, commentary and obviously dishonest, disingenuous, misleading disinformation or lies. The latter does NOT, ever, constitute simply a "differing opinion". This would be akin to claiming that child and spousal abuse, or chronic kleptomania, or drug addiction, are merely "alternative lifestyles", and worthy of toleration. I see this refusal to confront and condemn that which is clearly wrong, this weak-kneed, supine submission to evil, as eminently representative of the moral decadence so abundantly on display in the Western world today, and it sickens me. I think this is in large part why the vast bulk of the sheepish American public refuses to deal with the rampant corruption and institutionalized theft going on all around them today: they have been so browbeaten by the propagandists of political correctness that they find themselves unable to confront these sociopaths, because they are unwilling even to judge them as the evil men that they are.
Thanks for the response. Agree with you 100%. Looking forward to reading more comments, I have much to learn about the PM mkt and it looks like you have some experience there.
Pain is good... we're here to help you learn.
Now bow down to your Senseis.
apologies bruce...fine work as always
floyd - thin ice
Very thin ice. Germany will not accept inflation, and Asia is slowing, you can see it in the trades. Bear markets are now starting in Asia before EZ/US opens. Re: Indonesia bond auction flopped a few days ago, HK unemployment up, Yuan selling etc etc. So if the ECB prints, Germany has a slowing export market so it won't offset an inflation wave, that and the EUR will sell, because the situation is so bad. Bond markets still may take yrs (after a massive ECB print) to stabilise. Europe is 100% doomed. A country will go from the EU and it will be Greece followed by Italy. And a crazed technocrat will ensure riots in Italy every Sat.
A total mess. Like i said the big worry is now Asia slowing, so the pain trade is ahead. Don't think this can be avoided.
WTF? … Economy of Luxembourg
GDP
$40.81 billion (2010 est.)
Public debt
16.2% of GDP (2010 est.)
Revenues
$20.88 billion (2010 est.)
Expenses
$22.11 billion (2010 est.)
we can inflate our way out of it. this is why the stock market does its best work on the worst news. i am not at all worried. as long as there are paper dollars of some kind to exchange. the only thing that can go wrong for THEM is if interest rates rise and the economy remains stuck on zero, but that doesn't bother the savers one bit, as they can reap the benefits. i am pretty sure someone sitting on cash is going to reap the benefits of their policies, if they just have some patience. hold cash and wait.
"We can inflate our way out of it"+
"i am pretty sure someone sitting on cash is going to reap the benefits of their policies, if they just have some patience. hold cash and wait" =
kernel panic.
rising interest rates and zero economic growth equals stagflation. the last time we had stagflation CDs were north of 10%. people with no mortgage or debt of any kind avoid most of the side effects of inflation. the law of unintended consequences states that whenever you deliberately punish one group (savers) through policy discrimination it comes back to bite you in spades. the savers have their day.
How much medium of exchange do we need anyway? Of course we've got physical & electronic. When we talk about loosing trillions, its all the electronic kind. When we talk about the top 1% having 90% of the wealth or what ever, is that medium of exchange or stuff? Because electronic medium of exchange is not wealth - stuff is. If most of what they own is some form of electronic medium of exchange all that is worth is what someone is willing to pay for it with more medium of exchange. And the more electronic medium of exchange the fed produces the more there is to buy other forms of electronic medium of exchange. But the real economy only produces so much stuff (actually not increasing much) so all this extra electronic medium of exchange isn't worth much. If the holders of all this extra electronic medium of exchange tried to buy some stuff with it there wouldn't be enough stuff to go around.
Like how many hamburgers would a million shares of Goldman Sachs buy you? Or how many Lamborghini's? More than there are? So what does that mean? Or the production of hamburgers for the next 10 years. So what?
All these currency units are claims on value. When we say the US 'owes' 14T in debt, it means there are people out there who can demand $14T worth of value from the US govt. The US govt can tell them to take a running jump (default), weaken the value of the currency unit (inflation), or confiscate the value from its citizens (and probably not stop with just its own citizens), or a combination of all three to pay off the debt.
The holders of all this electronic money don't have to 'buy' real wealth with it - the debt will be extinguished by the transfer of real wealth to the holders of that currency through loan default.
In any period of global economic difficulty, you'll see compression of relative "real wealth" levels. The poor will be more severely affected on a direct physical level, and the rich will be far more severely affect on a financial level.
Your point about a million shares of Sachs buying hamburgers is a good one, but how can there be a dollar equivalence between a boat you see twice a year and several years' worth of cooking gas?
Control of wealth has more to do with the ability to purchase the behavior of large numbers of people. This is just a competing idea for how to run the world. You can just as well use regions, or ethnicities, or religions, or in theory some kind of voluntary association.
According to this vision of the world, the global market (and thus global governance) depends on a universal exchange unit.
Time matters. It's not a so what.
Nice article Brucie
How's yor American regulation doing BTW?
Do you want some more of it in Europe and in particular, on Swiss Banks?
Or has enough regulators and regulations blown up in America itself (see 4 regulators with eggs on their faces on the MF'ing Global scandal alone) to convince you the error of your ways to want 'more, more, more'
There's a difference between having regulations, and said regulations being enforced. Perhaps if US banking sector regulations were enforced, and those who disregard them were bought to task for that, then there wouldn't be such a problem.
First thank you to all the Brucie Babe Fan Club members for junking me. Putting style (your hero worship) over content (the issue) is a human failing which you lot show in spades
And in answer to you FTW you and most people show similar blind faith in Rules
The fact the Constitution has failed, the 'Justice' System has failed and all the fuking warehouses full of legislation has failed teaches you lot of starry eyed rabbits precisely fuk all
1000's of Regulations and dozens of Regulators keep failing every day of the damn week and what do you lot of tossers do? ....you call for "More, More, More"
Not for you clueless herding sheep to realise the system of Law/Regulation will never (ever) work
Zombies R You
When will the penny drop?!!... in particular when will Brucie Baby address my issue and realise his call on Swiss Banks and any other call for more Law and more regulation is a systemic mistake of epic proportions
Freedom and the free market... you cannot beat it (1,000's of failing useless fuk Laws prove it convincingly)
That picture of Merkel has it looking like she is chewing on a heaping spoonful of dogshit, or she is one of those wooden toy puppets whos mouth moves by manipulation from behind.
Not surprising, Jethro Tull's "Skating Away" comes to mind here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFCtMvdWiXE&feature=related
This constant "level orange" from ZH permadoom editorialists is causing me False Panic Fatigue Syndrome. If you predict every single goddamned day that it's going to rain frogs, someday you're gonna be right, but at that point it doesn't count.
Can you all please refrain from warning of doom and implosions and collapses until we're at least remotely close to disaster?
Thanks!
"Are we there yet?"
Were you expecting explosions? Car chases? More riots? Zombies? Or something more concrete like a price target on a precious metal or something?
How many world leaders you want picked off this week? Would you prefer they be taken down by snipers instead of bankers? Would the Collapse (tm) be real then?
Frogs in a pot.
A very small number of the frogs have been saying 'It's getting a little warm in here' for a while now.
Now they're saying "It's getting bloody hot in here'.
The other frogs reply "Shut up, I'm trying to watch American Idol".
It is impolite to refer to the French as "frogs".
That's the point. I think we are close to a disaster.
Seriously, what are some scenarios here? Honestly I cannot imagine it dragging on but it has already for years. Is there some outcome or overlooked, neglected investment/strategy that we will look back on and wonder why were not all in it? Honestly looking for your opinion.
In case you hadn't noticed, we've been in the middle of a financial (but not monetary --- yet) disaster for the last four years. "Disaster" in this context is not necessarily a sudden, instantaneous event, but more of a process.
The thing is: we really are just seconds from a total disaster. Just no way to predict when it'll come. The sword of Damocles and all that. It's common to all lifeforms.
If you can't cope with the constant reminder of mortality, you might have to stay away. Some people watch teevee.
Nooo. Thank YOU Ben Franklin! No worries! You'll be on the 5 trillion dollar note when we print it, too!
As stated in the article these numbers are a year old. Take a good close look at the top of the list, the USA, public debt is 62% of GDP. But just about 15 short days ago we hit public debt as 100% of GDP. Which means that in a years time, give or take a few days, we increased our debt by a little over 60%. IN A YEAR'S TIME. WE ARE SO SCREWED.
The numbers in the chart from CIA exclude Intragovernmental debt. That may be misleading, but that is how it is done. The IG account is 4.6T. total debt is ~15T so current debt to public is 9.4t. That is 63%.
It is not as bad as you think. The rate of change is fairly small.
It is a mistake for the CIA or anyone else to exclude the IG debt. This is primarly the Social Security Trust Fund. Our debt a year ago (including IG) was 96% today it is 100%.
Can you say disaster?
The CIA. Yeah they are the "good" guys and they never lie.
The death spiral is already happening. Spain is feeling the rise in it's bonds along with France and Italy broke the 7% mark and it stayed over 7%. You don't hear to much in the media about the EFSF anymore do you. It's because they know that it couldn't work and the jaw boning of putting the word out there gave the market a 2 day bump then it's been down ever since.
Not only that, but remember that as officially (if illogically) calculated, government spending is part of GDP! If GDP were honestly calculated as solely the product of goods and services derived from the productive (i.e., non-governmental, i.e. shrinking) part of the economy, the figures would be much worse.
Much as I dislike the forced collectivism that government spending implies, some government spending is actually useful. Would such services be more efficiently provided by private institutions? In the vast majority of instances, yes, but just because government spending on (say) roads is 50% waste, doesn't mean that such spending is all waste and therefore shouldn't show up in GDP (which I agree is a thoroughly stupid way to assess how an economy is doing). After all, if government wasn't maintaining roads, then private citizens would be, and that would show up in GDP.
To me what's really amazing is that stuff purchased via debt shows up in GDP. So any slowdown in credit immediately looks like a contraction of economic activity.
"To me what's really amazing is that stuff purchased via debt shows up in GDP. So any slowdown in credit immediately looks like a contraction of economic activity."
You- Reka!
BigJim, as an extension to your viewpoint, I find it odd that unsold production is also counted as part of GDP
I mean, what economic good does a computer that spends a year sitting on a warehouse shelf do for society? and yet GPD counts the $400 or so that it took to manufacture that PC and chalks it up as real economic output.
I was telling my wife the other day that real economic contraction will be underway when we see nothing selling on Craigslist or Ebay.
Human economies never die, they simply shed like a snake... the old skin (ie: the old system) peels away, and exposes the fresh, new skin that has been underneath it all along.
The only trick is to make sure that the new order is enlightened with positive, constructive and creative energy (like the Renaissance following the Middle Ages) and not subverted by dark, destructive, and evil energy (like Nazi Germany following the Wiemar Republic)
The only people who will lose badly (ie: get snake-bit) in the coming years are all of those who burn all their time, effort and energy (ie: capital) trying to re-wrap the snake with it's old, brittle, worn out skin rather than simply using their eyes and saying " ooooh... the snake is so much more colorful and pretty now." and letting the snake peacefully go on its way.
TideFighter, I agree with you on food, water, energy. But it might be a good idea to do a little stacking, just in case you are wrong and they are right. It can't hurt.
The global economy had better get a good grip on it's shorts. This will be a sudden drop and a quicker awakening. There is no recovery for the debt plagued currencies.
http://georgesblogforum.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-daily-climb-2/
Why do some of you fuck-stains argue about the monetary value of gold? Did you fucking go to public school or something? Ever read the Bible or wonder why the fuck gold had been valued by pretty much every fucking society since recorded history?? What the fuck? Do you think that because now "we are all modern n' shit" that gold is somehow going to become worthless or irrelevant? Fellow "gold bugs"......please stop trying to educate the clueless and moronic. They are beyond hope. Let them place their destined-to-be-temporary faith in fiat currency systems. They don't want to learn from history, no problem. They will be living it shortly.
Love PMs but you need to be diversified - I also recommend Guns, Ammunition, Freeze-Dried food and water ;)