Category: Eurozone Debt Crisis
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Thursday, August 02, 2012
Angela Merkel Will NOT Lose Germany’s AAA Status Before Her Re-election / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Here’s a story you might not have heard… In some areas of Germany, you can once again use Deutsche Marks as legal tender:
Who Needs the Euro When You Can Pay With Deutsche Marks?
Shopping for pain reliever here on a recent sunny morning, Ulrike Berger giddily counted her coins and approached the pharmacy counter. She had just enough to make the purchase: 31.09 deutsche marks.
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Thursday, August 02, 2012
Euro-zone Quarantining PIIGS Against Catching Spanish Flu / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
The Greek crisis was merely the warm-up act for the main show: the default of Spain and its much-denied departure from the euro.
That departure will leave holders of Spanish bonds with IOUs in euros that will be paid interest in pesetas.
These bond-holders include French banks, German banks, and assorted pension funds. The owners of those institutions will take significant hits on their net worth.
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Looking at the Real Math's Behind Spain's Debt Crisis / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
As you know by now, I keep stating that Spain is going to be the straw that breaks the EU’s back. The country is facing a regional, banking, and soon to be sovereign crisis all at once.
Spain’s Catalonia suspends social service payments
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Mario Draghi Cannot Save the Euro / Currencies / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Martin Hutchinson writes: Of all the pyramid schemes that governments and banks have perpetrated in the last decade, the Eurozone debt crisis is the most damaging.
No amount of posturing by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi can change that fact.
The market may like what Draghi has to say about the fate of the euro, but tomorrow's big ECB meeting will change little.
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Euro-zone Economy Enters Twilight Zone / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
It is obvious to me that the world of economics has now fully entered the Twilight Zone. As evidence, last week, European Central Bank Head Mario Draghi pledged to quote, "Do whatever it takes preserve the Euro. And believe me, it will be enough." In this upside down world of phony Keynesian Economics, doing "whatever it takes to preserve the Euro" apparently now means promising to dilute the purchasing power of the currency into oblivion.
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Sunday, July 29, 2012
Euro-zone Crisis, What Germany is Doing Wrong / Currencies / Eurozone Debt Crisis
John Taylor, founder and CEO of the world's largest currency hedge fund FX Concepts, spoke with Bloomberg TV's Sara Eisen and said that Draghi's promise to do what's needed to preserve the euro will result in a weaker currency as the ECB prints more money than its counterparts. He said that Europe's crisis is in the "second or third inning...it's in the beginning. You've got a long way to go."
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Friday, July 27, 2012
Uncovering the Darkest Secret of the Financial System / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
As noted in yesterday’s piece concerning how and why Europe could bring about systemic risk, EU banks are likely leveraged at much, much more than 26 to 1.
Indeed, considering how leveraged and toxic US banks’ (especially the investment banks’) balance sheets became from the US housing bubble, the chart I showed you should give everyone pause when they consider the TRUE state of EU bank balance sheets.
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Thursday, July 26, 2012
Europe Can and Will Cause a Systemic Collapse… Are You Ready? / Stock-Markets / Eurozone Debt Crisis
A lot has been said about the European Crisis. I’m going to explain it all in simple terms.
In simple terms, today we are facing a Crisis that is far, far worse than 2008. Before it ends, it is quite possible that we will see the entire Western Financial System collapse and a new system put into place.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Project Europe is Over / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
I don't really know why it is, but as much as I see pundits and experts and everyone in between address the euro mudbath lately, nobody seems to have caught on to the two main events (inflexion points?!) that shape the latest reincarnation of said bath. So here's for them, and you, and anyone who's not yet tired of the story:
Event no. 1: it’s not so much that it's an entirely new notion, it's the realization that it has come to pass that is new. And even then it will take a while for most pundits and experts to understand the significance.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Eurozone Continues to Unravel / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Things continue to unravel in the Eurozone. Here is a quick overview of some of the events that have taken place over the past few days (in order of importance as I see things):
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Economic Austerity, Adjustment, and Social Genocide: Political Language and the European Debt Crisis / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
Political language functions through euphemism, by employing soft-sounding or simply meaningless words to describe otherwise monstrous and vicious policies and objectives. In the European debt crisis, political language employed by politicians, economists, technocrats and bankers is designed to make policies which create poverty and exploitation appear to be logical and reasonable. The language employed includes the words and phrases: fiscal austerity/consolidation, structural adjustment/reform, labour flexibility, competitiveness, and growth. To understand political language, one must translate it. This requires four steps: first, you look at the rhetoric itself as inherently meaningless; second, you examine the policies that are taken; third, you look at the effects of the policies. Finally, if the effects do not match the rhetoric, yet the same policies are pursued time and time again, one must translate the effects as the true meaning of the rhetoric. Thus, the rhetoric has meaning, but not at face value.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Social Media Panic in Italy: 'Enough of this Agony; Give Us Back the Lira' / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Black Monday messages on Facebook and Twitter have gone viral in Italy as people have had enough of austerity, job losses, and uncertainty. La Stampa reports on Panic in the Network.
What follows is a Mish-revised translation of select ideas and quotes from the article. My specific comments are in brackets.
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Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Spain's Molasses Jeopardizing Eurozone? / Politics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Spain's regional government debt is in focus again. Spanish 10-year government bond yields are trading near 7.5% as Spain's central government is expected to bail out its regions - and in return may ask for a bailout itself. Guarantees don't make a system safer, quite the opposite: everything is safe until the guarantor itself is deemed unsafe. While the failure of any one business of regional government is a tragedy, providing a guarantee puts the system as a whole at risk.
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Monday, July 23, 2012
Soaring Spanish Bond Yields Another Hit to Growing Eurozone Debt Crisis / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Diane Alter writes: Investors today (Monday) have been selling on news that Spain might need more bailouts as its 10-year yield reached a record high.
Spanish bond yields reached a record high of 7.56% and the latest unemployment rate sits at a miserable 24.6%.
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Monday, July 23, 2012
Eurozone Debt Crisis Won't Be Fixed by "Bailout Lite" / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Dr. Kent Moors writes: The market red ink this morning (Monday) around the globe is the result of a usual suspect - Spain.
These days, if someone even sneezes in Madrid, Barcelona, or Córdoba (one of my favorite places, actually), investors go into intensive care all over the world.
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Monday, July 23, 2012
Spain the Latest Domino to Fall Into the Eurozone Bailouts? / Stock-Markets / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Today's AM fix was USD 1,571.50, EUR 1,298.12, and GBP 1,011.91 per ounce.
Friday’s AM fix was USD 1,583.00, EUR 1,291.30and GBP 1,007.83 per ounce.
Silver is trading at $26.98/oz, €22.36/oz and £17.94/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,396.00/oz, palladium at $564.80/oz and rhodium at $1,190/oz.
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Monday, July 23, 2012
Euro-zone Economic Crisis Black Swan or Hidden Lion? / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
"In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
"There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
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Saturday, July 21, 2012
European Contagion Turns Into Domino / Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis
One day after the EU finally sanctioned the €100 billion bailout for Spain's banking system, for which the sovereign will remain on the hook, according to German finance minister Schäuble, who said there was no way the banks would be bailed out directly, developments were fast and furious.
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Friday, July 20, 2012
The Spanish Inquisition 2012 / Economics / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Our daughter studied in Spain, and our whole family fell in love with the country when we visited. Ever since, we’ve cheered for La Furia Roja, the wonderful national soccer team. Unfortunately, Spain is dealing with a much less pleasant Furia at the moment.
As the crisis in peripheral Europe spreads from smaller countries to larger ones, the consequences grow commensurately. Spain’s economy is about five times larger than Greece’s, and its commercial and financial linkages are proportionately deeper. While Spain has many of the same structural challenges that other countries have, its plight has been deepened by a property market crash that rivals the one in the U.S.
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Thursday, July 19, 2012
Germany Leaving the Euro as Germans Are Already Using Deutschemarks Again! / Currencies / Eurozone Debt Crisis
Since November 2011, I’ve been saying that Germany will leave the Euro, but NOT necessarily the EU. The reason? Well, for one thing Germany laid out legislation that would allow this happen. Then of course you have the following comments from Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schauble:
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