Gotta love the greeks! The Europeans do!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-27/greece-wins-easier-terms-on-debt-as-eu-hails-rescue-formula.html

European finance ministers eased the terms on emergency aid for Greece, declaring after three years of false starts that Europe has found the formula for nursing the debt-stricken country back to health.
In the latest bid to keep the 17-nation euro intact, the ministers cut the rates on bailout loans, suspended interest payments for a decade, gave Greece more time to repay and engineered a Greek bond buyback. The country was also cleared to receive a 34.4 billion-euro ($44.7 billion) loan installment in December. The euro rose to a three-week high on the agreement.


It seems the Europeans are doing everything to try and hold the Greeks in the Euro.

Bravo. They "found the formula"..."Defer and pretend" - don't try this at home.

QE has done it's job so far...

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/11/19_Turk_-_This_Is_The_Chart_That_Every_Investor_Needs_To_See.html

...to lift asset values to make the debts appear manageable...some stats though you can't manage as well...the number of people on food stamps trends higher (recently).

All looks great UNTIL it doesn't

The 3 years before the GFC and the two years after. The market participants missed the extent of the carnage that was to come. Complacency? Blindsided? Blackswanned?

What is not priced in now? And by how much?

IF the "solution" to a debt bubble is "inflation" why would you be holding government bonds now? Timing though can be a killer - You can be right and very early.

I suspect few see "runaway inflation". Yet inflation has been the standard since the creation of the Federal reserve...except for some deflation in the 1930s (under the gold standard)

As Kyle Bass said recently (in his letter to investors)

The fallacy of the belief that countries that print their own currency are immune to sovereign crisis will be disproven in the coming months and years. Those that treat this belief as axiomatic will most likely be the biggest losers. A handful of investors and asset managers have recently discussed an emerging school of thought, which postulates that countries, as the sole manufacturer of their currency, can never become insolvent, and in this sense, governments are not dependent on credit markets to remain fiscally operational. It is precisely this line of thinking which will ultimately lead the sheep to slaughter.



 

 

 

When we hear things we do not like, we shut off...

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Delays by design

you can get the banks to come clean OR you can allow the facade to to remain

the system has not been repaired...

Fed Delays Basel III Bank Capital Rules

By Ronald D. Orol

Published November 09, 2012

MarketWatch Pulse

WASHINGTON – U.S. regulators on Friday agreed to delay indefinitely the effective date of a global agreement on greater bank capital buffers known as Basel III. The Federal Reserve and two other bank regulators introduced a proposal in June to implement the global agreement that suggested an effective date for institutions to comply of Jan. 1. However, the regulators agreed that "due to the wide range of views" expressed by interested institutions and others that a delay was necessary. They did not provide a substitute effective date for the rules, arguing that they are "working as expeditiously as possible to complete" them. The agreement is being implemented in response to the financial crisis of 2008. Other international agencies have delayed implementation of bank rules.
Copyright © 2012 MarketWatch, Inc.

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2012/11/09/fed-delays-basel-iii-bank-capital-rules/#ixzz2C0IdCvs3

Greece - It's a GREAT Depression

Even if the EMU machine succeeds in keeping Greece in the system, is this any longer a remotely desirable goal? Has it not become a vicious and immoral policy in itself?

I agree with the IFO Institute’s Hans-Werner Sinn that upholding euro membership has by now become an act of cruelty. It not being done in the interests of Greeks. It is being done for the Project, by enforcers of the Project. Only by breaking free can Greece restore a minimum of economic vibrancy and national dignity.


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100021180/who-will-stop-the-sado-monetarists-as-jobless-youth-hits-58pc-in-greece/


Trapped in a currency they can't control.
Unemployment rate of youth at 50% plus.

Does this sound like a "good" plan for the greeks?

"It's a maths problem"

http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/i-apologize-for-what-youre-about-to-read-9397/

Simon Black summarises it well (above link)

It took just 286 days to accumulate the most recent trillion (from $15 trillion to $16 trillion).
Last month alone, the first full month of Fiscal Year 2013, the US government accumulated nearly $200 billion in new debt– 20% of the way to a fresh trillion in just 31 days.


The big issue about to hit is the "fiscal cliff" - that is the gap between what the government brings in and spends. Certain tax breaks are due to expire meaning greater taxes will come from the taxpayer. Taxing will not lead to growth - growth is the only option the US has to get over the debt binge and prevent the banks from further writedowns.

The printing press must continue...