Speaking Greg Zuckerman, WSJ, on Wednesday 10P EST re the trouble in Greece and the euro, and how the lords of Europe have settled on blaming the speculators and bear raiders for the mess we're in. Actually, the mess they're in. The fun part is that they will now try to ban speculative credit default swaps, or CDSs, the genius derivatives that caused the small dust-up called the Panic of 2008. Memory serves that when the pols get to blaming the traders, or blaming the gods, and most especially blaming the big boss Zeus, we are getting back to the new normal of shakedowns, blame-shifts, NIMBY and bloviating. "Money goes where it is treated best" is the acorn that signifies. Ban the CDSs and you create conditions for another derivative creature to eat lunch under a new oak tree.
Brief
Blame Zeus
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I think we have a problem with our indiscriminate use of nomenclature here. I’m referring to the use of the word ‘trigger’. For the second time today this word has come up, first in connection with an event that would bring about civil strife here in the U.S., and now again in connection with something that would seal the financial collapse of a nation or currency. The problem as I see it is that by the use of the word ‘trigger’, you absolve all past sins while placing blame on a single specified (or unspecified) event. This is not fair or accurate.
Greece has been spending money like a drunken sailor for far too long. By doing so, they have managed to maintain the peace and tranquility that its socialist unions are forever threatening to disrupt. This has now reached a ‘tipping point’. Pouring more and more sugar into the weighing pan, the scale will lose its equilibrium and begin to tip. Increasing the weight on the other side will bring it back into balance. If that weight happens to be debt (or negative weight), the only option is to remove a portion of the sugar. The laws of economics are immutable. Gimmicks will only work as long as it is possible to confuse or distract the public.
We here in America are faced with a similar problem. Only here, it was the politicians who were pouring sugar onto the scales. We too have reached and (some say) surpassed our ‘tipping point’. Since our problem was politically driven – government corruption: buying votes, bribery, etc. – the blood you’re seeing is being (figuratively) spilled on the Senate and House floors (while in Greece, the blood is being spilled on the streets). It ultimately filters through and comes to one and the same: blood everywhere.
Time and time again, fancy financial accounting gimmicks were created to facilitate kicking the stink bomb farther on down the road. Well, we have reached a dead end. The damage done can no longer be masked by fancy arithmetic. Simply put, we’ve spent too much and don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever paying it back.
Lost in all the gimmickry is the willful ignorance of the value of money which is maintained only by hard work, prudent risk-taking and talent. If there is no appreciation of value, we might as well scrap the whole system and go back to bartering. But first, we are destined to endure a cycle of blame involving ‘triggers’, political pariahs, and even the trappings of success itself. Meanwhile the scale remains buried.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Charlie Rose did a very funny (to me not to him) interview with the Greek prime minister tonight. He is actually from Minneapolis.
The PM spent the whole interview gushing expressions of optimism that the EU would help Greece get the risk premium down on their bond issues lest they be reluctantly forced to fall back on the IMF who he noted are clearly ready to rush to Greece's aid though Greece doesn't really need aid just lower coupons on their new debt ... yadda yadda yadda.
and also it would be terrible if this situation forced them to reduce their (Greek) commitment to combating global warming which is really really serious for Greece because some of their islands will be underwater and the country will be turned into a desert and the Germans will have no where to go on vacation and and and ...
moral of the story - these clowns need to default - if they get funded the message will be clear- do whatever you need to do to get re-elected - someone else will pay for it.
Moral hazard? ROFL