By Mark Grant, author of Out of the Box
Sitting at the Edge of the World
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
-Anne Rice.
I highly recommend hanging out in Norway at the edge of some fiord to find clarity. The snow capped mountains glisten in the afternoon sun and the blue-green water running through the long scratch marks in the earth brought about by the ice age sparkle with the light reflecting off of the mountain peaks. The air smells like some wintergreen forest high up in the protected positions where the snow does not reach. The sea birds dart this way and that way in the afternoon breeze and one cannot help but smile at the adventure of life. There is nothing else to do actually except smile and ponder the trivialities of man as we pass from the opening gate to the finish line leaving our descendents to take the reins. Yet, while here, we have the opportunity to play in the Great Game and thank what gods you hold dear but, for me, I offer thanks to those that may choose to listen.
One way or another, left or right, the funder or the funded; Greece is going. The situation is just not sustainable and $1.3 trillion in debt is going to be refuted and refuted with consequences that one only hopes the European Union acknowledges and is prepared for past the drivel that they spew out in the Press like Mount Vesuvius throwing up the phlegm of the world on some ashen afternoon in Rome. Sovereign debt, bank debt, municipal debt, $90 billion in derivatives, corporate debt and other obligations of the government left out to dry as Germany reeks with the stench of boars head gone bad. This is about to be the way of it.
The poor, the impoverished, line up for bread and Eurobonds and Berlin frowns and mumbles the appropriate phrases which all equate to the great finality, “We are not going to pay.” It would be amusing, I suppose, if France and the alms seeking nations somehow managed to pass Eurobonds while Germany was left fluttering in the wind and, if they did, one might see the Berliner Bear head back into its cave and if not directed by Frau Merkel then by someone else who would appear on the stage and demand some sort of religious conversion. Do not be mislead by the passage of time. What has been delayed, what has required ever larger amounts of money, has only caused the canker sore to grow in size so that when it bursts it will expel far more fluid that it would have had it been adequately dealt with at inception. Do not for one moment assume that the additional minutes that have transpired will do anything except to make matters worse; do not be fooled by those moments which have come and gone and solved nothing. The Barbarians will soon enough arrive at the gate.
“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend; legend became myth.”
-The Lord of the Rings
As the Prime Minister of Spain publically acknowledged today that he is going to personally ask the ECB to buy the bonds of his nation I note the stirrings of fear and the kind of desperation that was felt just prior to Greece, Ireland, Portugal unveiling their begging bowl and asking the rest of Europe for some type of fiscal porridge that is always served cold and with a certain amount of malice by those that still retain sustenance in their cupboard. If you listen carefully you can hear the tremors in the Spanish voices, the inflections of need, the beginnings of sentences not quite finished. Spain has arrived at the wall; now all that is left is the public announcement. There is no other conclusion now; addition and subtraction are still functioning elements of our grade school educations and the use of them will lead me, you, anyone, to the correct conclusions. The Spanish banks are in the redline, the regional governments are past the point of peril and the Federal government has neither the capital nor the ability to raise the amount of money that is required. In the greatest of Spanish traditions the Prime Minister is engaged in a fight to the death as he tells all who will listen that it is nothing but windmills. Now my steadfast eyes know windmills when I see them and they are not on this Spanish plain or any other plain in this realm for that matter. Let Poncho and Don Miguel pretend to joust with the winds if they must but a pine tree is just that regardless of the name used by those less informed.
It is to be Treasuries to higher prices, risk/credit assets widening against Treasuries. European debt/equities down precipitously and wider and then far wider against their American counterparts. Recession in Europe forthcoming to the American shores. The Euro down against the Dollar and bonds denominated in Euros gaping out against their counterparties in the United States so that “home law” spreads to “home currency” and the lessons learned must be applied one more time. It is to be risk off and then any sort of repellent to keep any sort of risk away. It will be cash and Grant’s Rules 1-10 “Preservation of Capital” that will stand as the golden orbs lighting the way so that keeping what has been obtained will be the mantra and the only mantra during the coming battles with the denizens of the dark as directed by the long ago songs of the sirens wailing about the end of an Empire. What cannot be seen by many will be uncovered once again as the old truths, the old adages, find practical use in the days ahead.
Whether it is the EU running to the G-20, nations in Asia, the IMF or Spain and Italy and their brethren calling for Eurobonds the distinction is easily made; you pay or you pay or you pay because I cannot. That is the cry in the wilderness as politely, very politely, quite politely everyone says, “No thank you.” The curtain is going down on the show and the normal pleas are being made to keep the spectacle in operation but the pocketbooks are closed and Germany and the rest are not going to bet the family farm when the final act draws nigh. The Elves in the boulders cackle and the “invisible people” move on and sigh as the ending of one more chapter is inscribed in the Book of Life.
“May God forgive you for what you've done...
Father, if God has issues, they won't be with what I've done. They will be with what I'm about to do.”
-Dan Brown, Angels and Demons