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The Spanish Cross Of Forbearance
From Mark Grant, author of Out of the Box
The Cross Of Forbearance
“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures.”
-Miguel Cervantes
The wind picked up across the plains, the windmill began to turn and “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” rode out once more to do battle. The ever faithful Sancho Panza, not wishing to be left behind, was in attendance and the windmills were now the banks and the regional debt of the country.
You see, the Troubadour, Mariano Rajoy, does not wish the country to take any responsibility. It is to be the banks, not to injure the pride of the nation, that are the culprits and the banks, run by the empanada consortium, who are to be blamed. The IMF has released a statement claiming the banks need about $46bn which is the typical posture of the IMF these days; underestimating liabilities and then finding that more money is needed later; which they already knew of course. “Under estimate the liabilities and over estimate the assets” is the mantra sung at the IMF these days at the morning prayers as their credibility is as certain as the stature of the giants fought by Don Quixote.
The extra money, suggested in the IMF report to ring wall the banks, is another gust of wind as it is directed to the regional debts of course which no one wants to mention as the faceless Men in Black ride into Madrid to claim their latest victim. The beating of chests can be heard in Andalusia as there is no ESM; it does not yet exist regardless of the panderings of the savants that ride the airwaves. Germany has not even voted on it yet so that that ballyhoo that the ESM is the “Saving Grace” is the stuff and fluff from which nonsense is composed. There is the EFSF but it is no authority to issue money directly to the Spanish banks or any other banks for that matter. The ECB could issue directly to the Spanish banks but the screams would be loud in Belgium, France and Ireland as none of their banks were similarly helped so this path is effectively closed. No, it will be the EFSF lending money directly to Spain who will then re-deploy to its banks, and discreetly its regions, as the Cross of Forbearance is removed from the Cathedral in Madrid and replaced with a photo of Judas Iscariot who failed his Sovereign in the end.
The real number, if you look at the Regional debt, the needed aid for the banks, the contagion at the already infected two major banks is somewhere around $400 billion which is not present in the EFSF; there is not enough “promises to pay” left in this fund. Ring walls, contingent liabilities which are not counted in Europe is about to have to be funded and the thought of coming up with that amount of real cash will not be one of the pleasanter discussions when all of the European Finance Ministers converse by telephone later today. As these people do not have painful conversations without request it is reasonable to assume that Spain has already shouted “Uncle” which is why the meeting has been called. There has been no official admission of this of course because Spain knows that once the official announcement has been made that there is no way back as the hordes ride in once again and as the trumpets of the Goths echo one more time on the fortress walls of Barcelona and Valencia. With the addition of new debt, the decline in GDP and the factual counting of liabilities the actual debt to GDP ratio for Spain is somewhat north of 180% which Spain will decry as a false proclamation but which counts the Spanish sovereign debt, the Regional Government guarantees, the bank guarantees, the Spanish obligations at the EU and the ECB and is nothing more than simple addition divided by the official Gross Domestic Product.
The problems continue to multiply as Moodys threatens a Spanish sovereign downgrade and as the margin demands at the clearing houses will certainly be raised again soon. A Spanish bailout will also remove Spain’s ability to support other troubled periphery countries so that their 12% of any guarantees will have to be shifted to the other funding nations so that the dominos on the Continent keep falling one-by-one with the fallen tiles heading directly towards Rome. The tragedy so long feared is about to be the tragedy that has arrived and the dreams of a Euro glittering in the afternoon sun is about to be a very dark nightmare which no longer vanishes in the first moments of being roused and awake.
“Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.”
-Don Quixote
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Other than the fact that Greeks like anal sex, and spanish are cruel to animals and have better looking women, as nations they are both fucked.
Teeetering
#Tweetering
The tragedy so long feared is about to be the tragedy that has arrived and the dreams of a Euro glittering in the afternoon sun is about to be a very dark nightmare which no longer vanishes in the first moments of being roused and awake.
Game, set, match!
And yet this is the game that never seems to end.
of course it doesn't end!
How can it end? We scurried about and watched serial declarations of minimal credit default swap net notionals for Greece (while ZH cried in the wilderness about GROSS), but has ANYONE seen a measure for CDS exposure to Spain's banks or sovereigns? Anyone?
They are VERY CAREFULLY not talking about this.
It was only last week that Grant was targeting Germans. Now he’s targeting Spaniards. Isn’t he shooting the wrong targets?
The IMF, birthed by the Creature From Jekyll Island, owes its origination and loyalty to the central bankers. Who would expect the IMF to tell any story except the banker story?
The IMF sides with the bankers because it is the bankers.
Americans and Europeans didn’t sit down one day and say we should create the IMF; it was the bankers who created the IMF. Now, lo and behold, the bankers say we should bail out the banks.
John Wilmot earlier on ZH hit the bull’s eye: “The rulers of the EU...are completing what they started, building a European superstate, which has been the goal for a century or more."Germany" (read: the banker shills who make up Germany's government) is just playing the role assigned it by the bankers upstairs. Same with the rest of them. The nation v. nation death-match that's endlessly discussed in the press and regurgitated by the ignorati is just propaganda, distraction, cover-up, justification, etc. Like the Rep-Dem farce in the U.S.
Great post. +1 for the ignorati comment alone. +11111 for the meat.
Spanish Sovereign CDS: Gross $189 billion / Net $14.3 billion
Bank Santander CDS Gross $59 billion / Net $2.3 billion
Bankia CDS Gross $7 billion / Net 650 million
Because it's to scary to bring out their and once out people in the market will run, not wanting to be like the Greek creditors that took a 80% writedown even though they had insurance they paid for the CDS's but the EU wanted them to do this in order to not declare a default.
Only the financial system is f**ked.
Everyone must grab the rope and pull it back from the abyss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Ve2mgjgmY
"Je suis un chien Andalou"
The film and this farce have too much in common.
I sure wish I could walk into a bank and say, Listen mothefuckers, Im broke lend me money right fucking now, and as for the terms of this loan, fuck your terms, I dont need no stinkin terms.
but yet this is what spain and its banks are basically asking to do
And it's what Syriza will do in Greece.
We don't know what went on behind closed doors in Athens, but it seems reasonable to assume that PASOK played that card too and were outbluffed.
Syriza's guy is a grenade thrower and the EU would seem terrified of him in those same meetings.
Remember, there are no more banks involved in Greece. They already lost their money. It's all EU, ECB and IMF loans that Greece threatens to default on now.
It took 3 years for Syriza to rise up and say fuck you to loans. Do we really think it will take that long for Spain?
Largely a function of how many plane trips the lefty takes.
Just might be one too many if the IMF and their mafioso associates move to hard-ball.
Exactly.
Until the bankers and politicians are choked by the same rope as decent folk this theft and stupidity will grind on.
Deposits are leaving Spanish banks.
If deposits are going to German banks then German banks will buy out Spanish banks for cents on the dollar.
Hooooray!
The financial system is saved.
Let's hope they make enough to cover the massive losses incurred on their part by their new "acquisitions".
M&A is not growth, just big ego strokes and siphoned bonuses.
Let's promise not to pay
http://silvervigilante.com
I see that yu have been reading the customers postings, Mark, and have taken to actually adding quotations to buttress some of yur more outrageous non sequitors...
but fear not, some of us are actually so outraged by yur serial desecration of not just facts, but even fictions, that we will not desist until yu have indeed gone the way of El Don - at which point, please do not expect that we will shed as many tears, nor as sincere, for yu, as the much belabored Sancho shed for him....
with that in mind, let me share with yu some more interactive response that may have escaped yur attention as I posted in in a thread not bearing yur name - to whit:
The extraordinary irreverance of our currently reigning Krown-Prince Klown, Mark Grant, in managing to botch a simple reference to the epic European duo of Sancho Panzo and El Don affords the optimists amongst us access to the ever-available silver-lining....at this moment of epic struggle between the forces of paper windmills and the cold hard jingle of jangling silver spurs...
like the Don before them, the Spanish people are the inheritors of a tradition of irreverance to the obstacles that confront them...there really is no follow up in history to the peoples who, when confronted by the inevitablility of be-sieged defeat to the forces of the Pax Romana, killed their wives and children and burned themselves and their cities down to ashes, in preference to submitting to the 'reality' of superior force: theirs was a somehow greater reality...
a reality never better expressed than by that great product of the Iberian soul, Miguel de Unamuno:
The Spanish people have always been mad...mad with the joy of being born to die, with the need to savour every thing, every minute of being alive, the joys, and the pains of our mortal existence...and therefore immune to the small trials of the flesh. Spain is no Greece, you can take that to the bank! Too much Teuton blood mixed in with those Berber, Basque, Celt and Iberian genes.
There will be no suicides in the public squares of Hispania, there will be no mass twitterings or phony phalanx's of "activist"-led manufactured rebellion of the OWS type of Merika-lite. The Spanish earth is too red with the blood of rebellion to suffer mockery.
...they are not a people who indulge small, personal dramas. But there may be many who will gather, together, in those public places soon, tired enough at last, to say to the politicians, bankers, and other quislings in their midst....
go now, with safe passage, for if you stay, we will be the death of you.
When the latest generation of the Spanish people throw off the shackles of their "general education" and remember the poets and warriors of their past, it will indeed be nothing new under the Spanish sun. Viva El Don Pelayo!
....there's nothing I can add to that with reference to yur latest gaffe strewn gander through elysian fields...except to add that yu better hope to not meet any Spaniards in yur afterlife! I doubt that they will show yu much forbearance!
So, they're valiant mad warriors....who...can't even pay their bills or create jobs.
Right.
Behold, 30 wild donkeys approach!
We could say that about us Americans too.
The blame game is hollow; given a fair wage and decent conditions most people are happy to work.
Given bailouts and corporate legerdemain and banker theft and the duplicity of politicians it should come as no surprise that a majority of people of the world don't want to be someone else's donkey.
No blame implies no accountability, and while I think you and I agree with whom that should start (banksters), it does not obviate the requirement on non-banksters to stop enabling the fuckers and disintermediate.
Stop the dysfunctional enabling - roger that.
pay their bills. n create "jobs"....
yes. I believe that u have encapsulated the essence of the grand journey of life, and the purpose of our being....
resist?
what's the point> we were born as slaves, and who would be so mad as to wish themselves otherwise>
maybe, if I really apply myself to my fate, the man will give me a credit card to pay for it in installments.
Putting death on lay-away...a financed funeral plot (the last real-estate you'll ever need!).
"Slave" is a state of mind.
..."slavery is a state of mind"
interesting definition...
I suspect in will appear as a banner over the portals of the waiting Fema Camp Recreational Facilities, alongside "Freedom is Slavery"
Of course it is the fault of the banks.
Who else has the power to artificially inflate the costs of things with easy money?
Who else has the power to create money from nothing other than central banks?
Who else has the power to borrow money created from nothing at next to nothing (0.05%)? The banks.
Who else can gamble with the money created from nothing, lose, then have citizens bail them out via corrupt politicians? The banks.
Who else can steal the savings and investments of farmers and widows and not fear any prosecution or consequence? The bankers.
Don Quixote is too noble and deep a character to be used in this way.
The strain in Spain causes bankers to complain.
The pain in Spain falls mainly on the plain; an endless refrain at once profane, arcane, and inane.
Getting close to time for a ecological moment >>feed the ravens and crows decorate a lamp pole with hemp attached to a crooked banker and his servile politicians