Saturday, June 18, 2011

After Owning 300 Billion, Greece become the most powerful country in Europe. Holding Everyone Ramson

Spokes, meet stick. According to Reuters, Greece will seek approval from euro zone finance ministers on Sunday to agree to some changes in a mid-term austerity plan that parliament is expected to pass, the country's new finance minister said on Friday. And so the scramble for concessions begins. First Greece will demand a scrapping of all retirement age hike requirements, then public sector cuts, then everything else in the mid-term plan, until the second bailout is effectively without conditions. And now that Merkel has effectively thrown in the towel to her, and the CDU's, political reign by agreeing with the ECB's and France's demands, a move which will be brutalized by Der Spiegel in T minus 5 minutes, the fact that Europe blinked to Greece's bluff, just may mean that every demand out of Greece will be met. Or not. If the Troica tells Greece to go to hell, this could be the end of the bailout package.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Let Not forget about Joplin. Try to Help if you are nearby.

150 Economists Sign Letter Against Increase Of US Debt

Following last night's largely irrelevant and extremely theatrical vote for a clean debt ceiling hike, this morning 150 economists (of which those belonging to Ivy League institutions can be counted on one finger... the middle one) have signed a letter warning that "a debt limit increase without spending cuts and budget reform will destroy American jobs." Luckily, since a clean debt ceiling hike will have no impact on the BLS birth/death model, there is no reason to bother Paul Krugman with the fact that ever more of his peers think that those calling for endless fiscal largesse are now a part of the problem, and not the solution. From the letter: "An increase in the national debt limit that is not accompanied by significant spending cuts and budget reforms to address our government’s spending addiction will harm private- sector job creation in America. It is critical that any debt limit legislation enacted by Congress include spending cuts and reforms that are greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority being granted to the president. We will not succeed in balancing the federal budget and overcoming the challenges of our debt until we succeed in committing ourselves to government policies that allow our economy to grow. An increase in the national debt limit that is not accompanied by significant spending cuts and budget reforms would harm private-sector job growth and represent a tremendous setback in the effort to deal with our national debt." The full list of signatories is below. Among them are Nobel prize winner and Euro scourge Robert Mundell, John Taylor, Alan Meltzer, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, as well as former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and many more. Suddenly the idea of buying US CDS does not seem so outlandish.