It's Probably Nothing

I bet germany wishes it had one of those "reset" buttons now ....."that was easy " lol.!!!

bye bye europe, bye bye britain, welcome to sharia,and camel sh!t hut's!!!

People forget that the "Common Market" and the Euro were ALWAYS based on the French Socialists' utopian vision of a "United States of Europe " run by unelected bureaucrats as envisioned by its intellectual/political champion socialist Jean Monet. The theory/plan was that economic/monetary agreements, tariff treaties, etc., would, in the long-run, inevitably "spill forward" into forcing eventual political European union. Proving once again the truth of Orwell's statement that some ideas are so crazy that only intellectuals could possibly believe in them as "no ordinary person could ever BE such a fool!"

I has been reliably reported that there has been a run on Greek Banks......

paul,

That several European countries are in deep economic troubles is very clear. That this means imminent adoption of sharia law is much less clear. (In fact, the "sharia problem" is entirely a separate problem from the state bankruptcy problem.)

If it wasn't so predictable, so easily prevented, it would be funny.

This is just a terrible self inflicted mess about to ruin the lives of tens of millions of Europeans.

Gold may not be the most sophisticated "investment" strategy, but I'll bet there are more than a few Spaniards who wish that they weren't so "sophisticated" these days. Those electronic runs on banks are a real bitch.

The Germans, along with the other Northern Nations should go back to their currencies and let Southern Europe stabilize (deflate) to somewhere around a US $0.50 Euro. Since entitlement austerity won't be entered into voluntarily, with a more localized floating currency, they will have no choice.

There will be a resulting recession, particularly in Germany where their BMW's will have just doubled in price in what is left or their Southern EU market. The alternative is eventual civil collapse and Armageddon.

I suspect it's not only the Spanish banks that are hiding information about their exposure to bad debt loads. I believe the entire EU is conducting a massive coverup fearing the consequences when their socialist dream collapses and takes the rest of the world with it.

What to do, oh what to do? Party hearty before the deluge? Are precious metal investments the answer, or will governments confiscate them? Fiat currency seems a dubious proposition at best! GAG! WTF!

I'm 55 and been around the block enough to know that this ain't pretty!

Shhhh!
We're not supposed to talk about this until AFTER the November election!

Johan i Kanada said: "That several European countries are in deep economic troubles is very clear. That this means imminent adoption of sharia law is much less clear."

This is an interesting point. On the one hand, the many Muslims in Europe are a pretty big problem right now because of the load they put on Europe's welfare state.

On the other hand, for the most part the only reason those Muslims are there at all is Europe's lavish welfare benefits. It isn't like the average Eurotrash are nice to them, after all.

I greatly suspect that those lavish benefits will inevitably dry up, probably sometime next year when the American Bullsh!t System stops propping up all these financial institutions (election year, Wall St. Inc. is bending Heaven and Earth to make Barry look good). Greece is dropping out of the Euro, their welfare state is going to shrivel up and die the next morning when the welfare checks all bounce.

When the welfare stops,(and after the riots of course) all those Muslims are going to have no reason to stay living next to the objectionable Germans, French, Belgians, English and what have you. They are in large part going to go back home where everybody looks like them.

A silver lining in every cloud, they say.

What madness.

Spain has a youth unemployment rate of 50%, yet no one mentions the obvious solution - eliminating the minimum wage.

What a tragic waste of human resources.

I believe the entire EU is conducting a massive coverup fearing the consequences when their socialist dream collapses and takes the rest of the world with it.

Hah! This is their socialist dream! A few thousand servants of the Father of Lies, safe and sound in Switzerland and Singapore, will enjoy luxury beyond compare while the plain people of Christian Europe are starved to death to pay for it.

They are to be replaced, no doubt, by a Muslim rabble who give no more thought to living in liberty under Christian law than they do of visiting the moon. No prizes for guessing how little anyone has done to halt Muslim immigration, even now. Greece's Golden Dawn are called Nazis for daring to bring it up.

(Fun fact: Ceausescu's Romania imported Muslim immigrants while his people were starving to pay off his debts. Among them was Raed Arafat, today a junior minister for health in Romania's government, originally a Syrian quack brought in in 1981 to help replace the Jewish doctors the Israelis had managed to ransom out of Romania, and who should have been one of the first in line behind "Him" and "Her" on Christmas Day.)

The servants of the Father of Lies, of course, have forgotten that the Lord has moves in this game, and so do the plain people of Europe. Your move, brothers.

Next Christmas in Bucharest!

Phantom @1:54

Some of them will go home, but some others will come to Canada.

Phantom @1:54

Some of them will go home, but some others will come to Canada.

@johan i canada

I was meerly making an all encomassing staement about the cultural bankruptcy along side of the financial bankruptcy.
The lack of will to fight and live and defend what they own is purley eveident in both scenario's .
I was just simplifying it for yall!!

Nut if you wanna get techinical how much money do you think it cost's the taxpayer to bring immigants in teach them the culture (assimilate) , provide healthcare , and housing ?

Per immigrant just wondering...casue i know it has a big impact something that cannot be avoided . Not only that the third world throwbacks both sieks and muzies refuse to assimilate ,but continue to claim huge welfare payout's claiming it to be the jizea and that it is no longer british land it is now muslim land ..anywhere they have build a mosk it is considered to be a triumph and has been considered conquered in the name of allah ,and mohammad , and of course the core-an!!

Thank you .

@powell lucas. Read the book Too Big to Fail. It's not that these banks and countries are hiding their liabilities, it's that most of them (if not all) likely have no real idea of what their liabilities even are in a worst case scenario. The problem is that a banking collapse can't be isolated - if one goes down, it's like a line of dominoes and it just doesn't take out the banks but it takes out everyone who has deposits, companies that need operating lines for cash flow, real estate markets, etc. Everything goes boom. All at once.

Just remember it was all those Ivy Leaguers (and their European equivalents) who came up with the idea of spending your way out of economic trouble--the very same ones who "pooh-poohed" the tried and true method of spending less than you earn. It's sad how stuff that's worked for thousands of years, thrift, hard work, the marriage contract and the family (essentially, the underpinnings of a stable society) gets taken out in a couple of generations by some of the most learned men and women that society has produced.

ouch!

Spengler explains why Spain is going over the cliff and Germany isn't.

http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/05/28/lessons-from-europes-winners-and-losers/?singlepage=true

I think Kate should start a pool, just like a hockey pools for the European thud.

In the meantime I predict we don't get through the summer.

What madness.
Spain has a youth unemployment rate of 50%, yet no one mentions the obvious solution - eliminating the minimum wage.What a tragic waste of human resources.
Posted by: Sooke at May 29, 2012 1:57 PM

Astute observation Sooke. Your comment has special resonance for me after a recent re-reading of Murray Rothbard's definitive analysis of the Great Depression: America's Great Depression (5th edition) which I STRONGLY RECOMMEND if you're looking for a veritable laboratory experience!

Quibble: "running out of money". It's more accurate to say "running out of money substitutes".

Quibble #2: There's nothing unsophisticated about gold. Paper "money" backed by nothing at all is, however, unsophisticated as is Canadian Tire "money".

Note to Jim Flaherty.

Cut the Canadian taxpayers losses by sending no more money to the IMF.

We can send foreign aid directly to countries that need it, not to those who believe they can spend their way into prosperity.

The problem is that a banking collapse can't be isolated - if one goes down, it's like a line of dominoes and it just doesn't take out the banks but it takes out everyone who has deposits, companies that need operating lines for cash flow, real estate markets, etc. Everything goes boom. All at once.

That's what happens with a Ponzi scheme where banks can lend, and charge interest, on more than they have. Insurance schemes are the same way.

The short story on Spain is that it has by its own admission 184 billion Euros of non-performing loans. All of those are going to zero. Some of the so-called performing loans are having the real state of their reduced value hidden. Some of those are going to zero as well. And the Spanish government can't recapitalize its banks because of its own sovereign debt problems.

So, Germany can either write Spain a cheque for about three quarters of a trillion Euros, or Spain defaults, its banks largely all fail, and Spain is forced out of the Euro. And none of its businesses and industries will have access to credit, so even if they are healthy and viable right now, they fail too. You can't run any large business on a cash- or barter-only basis.

And who would give Spain a trillion Euros? Last time the ECB refinanced banks, they went out and bought more Greek bonds which are also all going to zero. If Europe had done like the US and flooded the system with government (German) credit, it would have brought the confidence crisis to a halt. They didn't; they're done.

But there's another follow-on. The EU has a massively expensive regulatory apparatus. As countries slide into depression, there's going to be enormous pressure on the governments to start dumping EU regulations. The Brussels bureaucracy can only be afforded by rich nations with lots of cash. That's going to go down the tubes along with the Euro.

Where the rubber hits the road is the turnover of Spanish sovereign debt this summer. Interest rates will go through the roof.

SYF, already done. Flaherty has indicated several times that Canada will not contribute to any IMF bailout in Europe. He's on record to both G8 finance ministers meetings and IMF meetings that there will be no Canadian funds for this.

No, fiddle, it happens when banks invest in securities that turn out to be worthless. No, fiddle, insurance schemes are not ponzis. It's called risk assessment, and when the actuarial assessment is done properly it's fine.

MND, gold is just another commodity. It's no more reliable as a store of value than any other commodity. And commodities have been taking a beating over the last six months or so.

Sooke, they should have done this a long time ago, but some EU regulatio undoubtedly prevents it. It doesn't matter at this point whether Spain eliminates the minimum wage or not. Its financial problems are so severe that nothing is going to stop a national bankruptcy. This is what depressions or recessions do. They force a real valuation of debt and credit, and both debtors and creditors in investments of no value get wiped out. Repealing minimum wage at this point would be like trying to mop up the Atlantic Ocean with a Kleenex.

The short story on Spain is that it has by its own admission 184 billion Euros of non-performing loans. All of those are going to zero. Some of the so-called performing loans are having the real state of their reduced value hidden. Some of those are going to zero as well. And the Spanish government can't recapitalize its banks because of its own sovereign debt problems.

So, Germany can either write Spain a cheque for about three quarters of a trillion Euros, or Spain defaults, its banks largely all fail, and Spain is forced out of the Euro. And none of its businesses and industries will have access to credit, so even if they are healthy and viable right now, they fail too. You can't run any large business on a cash- or barter-only basis.

And who would give Spain a trillion Euros? Last time the ECB refinanced banks, they went out and bought more Greek bonds which are also all going to zero. If Europe had done like the US and flooded the system with government (German) credit, it would have brought the confidence crisis to a halt. They didn't; they're done.

But there's another follow-on. The EU has a massively expensive regulatory apparatus. As countries slide into depression, there's going to be enormous pressure on the governments to start dumping EU regulations. The Brussels bureaucracy can only be afforded by rich nations with lots of cash. That's going to go down the tubes along with the Euro.

Where the rubber hits the road is the turnover of Spanish sovereign debt this summer. Interest rates will go through the roof.

SYF, already done. Flaherty has indicated several times that Canada will not contribute to any IMF bailout in Europe. He's on record to both G8 finance ministers meetings and IMF meetings that there will be no Canadian funds for this.

MND, gold is just another commodity. It's no more reliable as a store of value than any other commodity. And commodities have been taking a beating over the last six months or so.

Sooke, they should have done this a long time ago, but some EU regulatio undoubtedly prevents it. It doesn't matter at this point whether Spain eliminates the minimum wage or not. Its financial problems are so severe that nothing is going to stop a national bankruptcy. This is what depressions or recessions do. They force a real valuation of debt and credit, and both debtors and creditors in investments of no value get wiped out. Repealing minimum wage at this point would be like trying to mop up the Atlantic Ocean with a Kleenex.

Spain ran out of money a long time ago. What they've run out of now is credit.

As in Madrid, so shall it be in Toronto.

As in Madrid, so shall it be in Toronto.