Iceland

Debate between Krugman and the CFR rages on in round 2 on whether currency devaluation created the Icelandic Miracle or Mirage.  

In the next days Greece will present her magic tricks at court and while the Dukes and Barons cheer in the wings it will be up to the Red Queen, this would be the bearer of the Holstein emblem, to decide if the tricks performed are worth the cost. There is a very good chance of the hand wave of dismissal here and then the theatrical event of the season, “Off with their Heads,” will begin. Then the savant of Madrid will be allowed in to show his wares claiming they are all of silk but coarse wool is closer to the truth. The money, if it comes, will be provided by the EFSF by the way because the ESM is not yet in existence. Then the plan is to transfer the loan to the ESM which will be senior to the holders of the Spanish sovereign debt. So this morning you must rush out and by the debt of Spain. You love to be subjugated; you delight in the masochism of the whip. Losing money is what you live for and why you breathe. Oh no; this is not you? Well then; maybe better not.

Greece's newly confident coalition party has issued a list of zee-demands, via Bloomberg:

• GREECE TO PRESS TROIKA ON NO JOB CUTS IN PUBLIC SECTOR
• GREEK COALITION PARTIES WANT TO RETRACT CUT TO MINIMUM WAGE
• GREECE TO PRESS TROIKA ON NO FURTHER WAGE CUTS FOR 2013-2014

And of course TROIKA will be happy to comply, in exchange for some of that shiny yellow stuff (as we noted here). Though we have a response already:

• DE JAGER: THERE WILL BE NO SOFTENING OF CONDITIONS FOR GREECE

Back in February 2010, in the aftermath of the discovery that none other than Goldman Sachs had facilitated for nearly a decade the masking of the true magnitude of non-Maastricht conforming Greek debt, Zero Hedge first identified the prospectus for a Goldman underwritten swap agreement securitization titled Titlos PLC. We titled the analysis "Is Titlos PLC The Downgrade Catalyst Trigger Which Will Destroy Greece?" because for all intents and purposes it was: at that time a rating agency downgrade of the country would lead to a chain of events which would make billions in assets ineligible for ECB collateral, forcing a massive margin call on the National Bank of Greece, which likely would have precipitated a Greek default there and then.  But that is irrelevant for the time being: what is relevant is Titlos itself, and what Bloomberg did after we posted the analysis. It appears that in following in the footsteps of Mark Pittman, Bloomberg sued the ECB under Freedom of Information rules requesting "access to two internal papers drafted for the central bank’s six-member Executive Board. They show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3, 2010, note attached to the papers and obtained by Bloomberg News. The first document is entitled “The impact on government deficit and debt from off-market swaps: the Greek case.” The second reviews Titlos Plc, a securitization that allowed National Bank of Greece SA, the country’s biggest lender, to exchange swaps on Greek government debt for funding from the ECB, the Executive Board said in the cover note. The ECB's response: "The European Central Bank said it can’t release files showing how Greece may have used derivatives to hide its borrowings because disclosure could still inflame the crisis threatening the future of the single currency." Maybe. But what is far more likely is that the reason why the ECB, headed by none other than former Goldmanite Mario Draghi, is desperate to keep these documents secret is for another reason. A very simple reason:

Mario Draghi - 2002-2005:  Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs International

What are capital controls? Simply, capital controls are policies which restrict the free flow of capital into, out of, through, and within a nation’s borders. They can take a variety of forms, including:

• Setting a fixed amount for bank withdrawals, or suspending them altogether
• Forcing citizens or banks to hold government debt
• Curtailing or suspending international bank transfers
• Curtailing or suspending foreign exchange transactions
• Criminalizing the purchase and ownership of precious metals
• Fixing an official exchange rate and criminalizing market-based transactions

Establishing capital controls is one of the worst forms of theft that a government can impose. It traps people’s hard earned savings and their future income within a nation’s borders. This trapped pool of capital allows the government to transfer wealth from the people to their own coffers through excessive taxation or rampant inflation… both of which soon follow.

Michael Hudson argues that Mr. Krugman is a conservative in disguise.

The latest gambit used by the Eurocrats is that should Greece dare to not follow their sage advice, and leave the EMU, it will burn in hell for perpetuity, where famine and pestilence will join in making Greeks regret they ever dared to not listen to their Keynesian overlords. The only problem is that despite what econo-pundits everywhere claim, the Argentina case study (as well as the Iceland and the Southeast Asian) is a rather optimistic one of what Greece can expect to occur after it finally "just says no" to the biggest vanity experiment in European history. And as JPM's Michael Cembalest shows without any doubt, "there is a morning after." The far bigger problem is that there will be a "mourning after" for all those who are threatening Greece will hell and damnation right about now. Which brings us to a very critical question: why is the IMF not doing what it should be doing, and promising to assist the Greek decision, even if it means exiting the Euro. As JPM's Cembalest says "If the IMF did what it is supposed to do and lend into a devaluation/ structural adjustment (instead of financing a German and French bank rescue), Greece just might have a shot. Within the Euro, they don’t." Which begs the question: just how many pieces of silver did it take for the IMF to join the bandwagon of sell out and rehypothecate its soul, and charter, to the highest bidder?

I am asked, from time-to-time, why I write about Europe with such frequency. The answer is quite simple; there is nothing more important, nothing that will have a greater impact upon the world’s financial system, nothing that will impact any and all markets more than what is transpiring on the Continent. It is a grand experiment gone bad, a Federalist’s dream floundering in the dust, a vision of Heaven that is being dragged through the narrow gates of Hades and there is no longer any painless way home if home is to be found at all. The notion that there is some sort of decoupling in the marketplace between America and Europe is an adage quoted by the village idiots for the fools listening in the town’s square; nothing more than that.

While our earlier discussion of the implications of Greece's exit from the Euro are critical reading to comprehend the real-time game of chicken occurring in front of our eyes, JPMorgan's somewhat more quantifiable estimates of the costs and contagion, given the results of the Greek election have raised market expectations of an exit of Greece from the Euro, also provide key indicators and flows that should be monitored. Identifying what has gone wrong with Greece's co-called 'adjustment' program, they go on to identify key transmission mechanisms to Spain and Italy, how it could potentially improve (Marshall-Plan-esque) and most critically, given the exponentially growing TARGET2 balances, if and when Germany throws in the towel. Immediate (cross-border claims) losses are estimate at around EUR400 billion, but the EUR1.4 trillion of Italian and EUR1.6 trillion of Spanish bank domestic deposits is the elephant in the room which a Greek exit and the introduction of capital controls by Greece has the potential to destabilize.

Trading in markets dominated by the Icelands and AIGs of 2012 can be very challenging. 

All yopu need to read.

By mainstream media accounts, the presidential election in France and parliamentary elections in Greece on May 6 were overwhelming verdicts against “austerity” measures being implemented in Europe. There is only one problem. It is a lie. First off, austerity was never really tried. Not really. In France for example, according to Eurostat, annual expenditures have actually increased from €1.095 trillion to €1.118 trillion in 2011. In fact spending has increased every single year for the past decade. The debt there increased too from €1.932 trillion €1.987 trillion last year, just as it did every year before. Real “austere”. The French spent more, and they borrowed more. The deficit in France did decrease by about €34 billion in 2011, but that was largely because of a €56.6 billion surge in tax revenues. Again, there were no spending cuts. Zero. Yet incoming socialist president François Hollande claimed after his victory over Nicolas Sarkozy that he would bring an end to this mythical austerity: “We will bring back Europe on a track for jobs, growth and the future… We’re no longer doomed to austerity.” This is just a willful, purposeful distortion. What the heck is he talking about? Certainly not France.

When the founder of the world's largest currency hedge fund FX Concepts says that Greece will be out of money by June and out of the Euro soon after, people should listen. While we disagree with the premise that Greece's exit will not be chaotic, his general thoughts on the situation in Europe, espoused in this Bloomberg TV interview, are summed up by his reply when asked if Europe is a sell "I do. I also feel passionately that the euro is effectively a break up." Taylor also points out that the stability of a post-Greece Euro landscape is really up to the ECB noting that "I think the ECB should let the Euro go down. To hell with Germany." Covering whether the Euro will crater, the contagion effects, and how the rest of Europe will behave, the non-Duran-Duran Taylor who readily admits his mistakes on misjudging the Fed's excess, sees the timeline for exit as soon after the next round of elections in Greece this summer.

The entire bogus recovery is again being driven by subprime auto loans being doled out by Ally Financial (85% owned by the U.S. government) and the other criminal Wall Street banks. The Federal Reserve and our government leaders will continue to steer the country on the same course of encouraging rampant speculation, deterring savings and investment, rewarding outrageous criminal behavior, purposefully generating inflation, and lying to the average American. It will work until we reach a tipping point. Dr. Krugman thinks another $4 trillion of debt and a debt to GDP ratio of 130% should get our economy back on track. When this charade is revealed to be the greatest fraud and theft in the history of mankind, Ben and Paul better have a backup plan, because there are going to be a few angry men looking for them.

Fraud ... What Fraud?