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I was looking forward to chilling with family and friends in Sydney this New Years Day, but Phil Dobbieruined it for me with this tweet:

I had forgotten that this was the 20th anniversary of the start of the Euro. But the Eurocrats in Brussels hadn’t. Some hours before the New Year commenced, Juncker and friends put out a press release extoling the virtues of the Euro. Virtues such as “unity, sovereignty, and stability … prosperity”.

Well so much for New Year cheer. With this one tweet, the EU put 2019 on track to be even worse than 2018. Using anyof those words to describe the Euro—apart perhaps from “unity”, since the same currency is used across most of continental Europe now—is a travesty of fact that even Donald Trump might baulk at.

Sovereignty? Tell that to the Greeks, Italians or French, who have had their national economic policies overridden by Brussels. Stability? Economic growth has been far more unstable under the Euro than before it, and Europe today is riven with political instability which can be directly traced to the straitjacket the Euro and the Maastricht Treaty imposed. Prosperity? Let’s bring some facts into Juncker’s fact-free guff.

I’ll start with Phil’s point about Greece. Greece’s GDP has fallen at Great Depression rates since the Eurozone imposed its austerity policies on it, and nominal GDP today is more than 25% below its peak.

Figure 1: Greek GDP and economic growth rate

Now of course that could be blamed on the Greeks themselves, so let’s look compare economic growth in the entire Eurozone to the USA (minus Ireland and Luxembourg, since in the former case their data is massively distorted by data revisions, and the latter has highly volatile data as well, and is so small—under 600,000 people—that it can safely be ignored).

Figure 2: Real economic growth rates

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How a Fragile Euro May Not Survive the Next Crisis

November 25, 2018

How a Fragile Euro May Not Survive the Next Crisis

A big US monetary inflation bang brought the euro into existence. Here’s a prediction: It’s death will occur in response to a different type of US monetary bang — the sudden emergence of a “deflationary interlude.” And this could come sooner than many expect.

The explanation of this sphynx-like puzzle starts with Paul Volcker’s abandonment of the road to sound money in 1985/6. The defining moment came when the then Fed Chief joined with President Reagan’s new Treasury Secretary, James Baker, in a campaign to devalue the dollar. The so-called “Plaza Accord” of 1985 launched the offensive.

Volcker, the once notorious devaluation warrior of the Nixon Administration (as its Treasury under-secretary), never changed his spots, seeing large US trade deficits as dangerous. The alternative diagnosis — that in the early mid-1980s these were a transitory counterpart to increased US economic dynamism and a resurgent global demand for a now apparently hard dollar — just did not register with this top official.

Hence the opportunity to restore sound money. But this comes very rarely in history — only in fact, where high inflation has induced general political revulsion (as for example after the Civil War) — was inflation snuffed out. In the European context this meant the end of the brief hard-Deutsche-mark (DM) era and the birth of the soft euro.

The run-up of the DM in 1985-7 against other European currencies, as provoked by the US re-launch of monetary inflation, tipped the balance of political power inside Germany in favor of the European Monetary Union (EMU) project. The big exporting companies, the backbone of the ruling Christian Democrat Union (CDU) under Chancellor Kohl, won the day. The hard DM, an evident threat to their profits, had to go. The monetarist regime in Germany tottered towards a final collapse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

QR 3/2018: How the Eurozone breaks

September 27, 2018

QR 3/2018: How the Eurozone breaks

The Eurozone is a fragile financial mammoth. While its GDP lacks the US by around $3 trillion, assets of the banking sector are some 240 percent of GDP vs. around 90 percent in the US. It has been kept standing only through the large-scale asset purchase program (quantitative easing or QE) of the ECB. However, the ECB is about to phase-out its bond buying program, which will affect the debt dynamics and the likelihood of euro survival in a dramatic way.

The tragedy of the Eurozone in three acts

The Eurozone has been built on quicksand. The examples of more than 200 former currency unions suggests rather vividly that a currency union needs to be either backed by a political union or it needs to have an exit option. The eurozone, markedly, has neither.

It was erroneously assumed that when countries join the European Monetary Union (EMU), their economies would start to converge. This means that it was thought that the poorer countries would start to catch-up to the richer ones in well-being and, e.g., productivity. That never materialized. The convergence that was observable during the first years of the euro halted after the financial crisis hit (see the Figure below).

Figure 1. Real (constant) gross domestic product per capita in selected Eurozone countries. Source: GnS Economics, European Commission

After the crisis of 2008, capital started to flee from the weaker member countries of the EZ (see Figure 2 below). When the run on the capital account of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain started to accelerate in 2011, it pushed them on the verge of an default. Their sovereign defaults threatened to bring down major banks, especially in France and Germany. There was also a risk that defaulting countries would be forced to return to their own currency to support their banking system.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece – and nobody seems able to stop it

July 8, 2015

Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece – and nobody seems able to stop it

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday’s referendum. He is now trapped and hurtling towards Grexit

Like a tragedy from Euripides, the long struggle between Greece and Europe’s creditor powers is reaching a cataclysmic end that nobody planned, nobody seems able to escape, and that threatens to shatter the greater European order in the process.

Greek premier Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday’s referendum on EMU bail-out terms, let alone to preside over a blazing national revolt against foreign control.

He called the snap vote with the expectation – and intention – of losing it. The plan was to put up a good fight, accept honourable defeat, and hand over the keys of the Maximos Mansion, leaving it to others to implement the June 25 “ultimatum” and suffer the opprobrium.

• Greece crisis live on Wednesday

This ultimatum came as a shock to the Greek cabinet. They thought they were on the cusp of a deal, bad though it was. Mr Tsipras had already made the decision to acquiesce to austerity demands, recognizing that Syriza had failed to bring about a debtors’ cartel of southern EMU states and had seriously misjudged the mood across the eurozone.

Instead they were confronted with a text from the creditors that upped the ante, demanding a rise in VAT on tourist hotels from 7pc (de facto) to 23pc at a single stroke.

Creditors insisted on further pension cuts of 1pc of GDP by next year and a phase out of welfare assistance (EKAS) for poorer pensioners, even though pensions have already been cut by 44pc.

They insisted on fiscal tightening equal to 2pc of GDP in an economy reeling from six years of depression and devastating hysteresis. They offered no debt relief. The Europeans intervened behind the scenes to suppress a report by the International Monetary Fund validating Greece’s claim that its debt is “unsustainable”. The IMF concluded that the country not only needs a 30pc haircut to restore viability, but also €52bn of fresh money to claw its way out of crisis.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greece Fallout: Italy and Spain Have Funded a Massive Backdoor Bailout of French Banks

July 7, 2015

Greece Fallout: Italy and Spain Have Funded a Massive Backdoor Bailout of French Banks

Greece France Spain and Italy

In March 2010, two months before the announcement of the first Greek bailout, European banks had €134 billion worth ofclaims on Greece. French banks, as shown in the right-hand figure above, had by far the largest exposure: €52 billion – this was 1.6 times that of Germany, eleven times that of Italy, and sixty-two times that of Spain.

The €110 billion of loans provided to Greece by the IMF and Eurozone in May 2010 enabled Greece to avoid default on its obligations to these banks. In the absence of such loans, France would have been forced into a massive bailout of its banking system. Instead, French banks were able virtually to eliminate their exposure to Greece by selling bonds, allowing bonds to mature, and taking partial write-offs in 2012. The bailout effectively mutualized much of their exposure within the Eurozone.

The impact of this backdoor bailout of French banks is being felt now, with Greece on the precipice of an historic default. Whereas in March 2010 about 40% of total European lending to Greece was via French banks, today only 0.6% is. Governments have filled the breach, but not in proportion to their banks’ exposure in 2010. Rather, it is in proportion to their paid-up capital at the ECB – which in France’s case is only 20%.

In consequence, France has actually managed to reduce its total Greek exposure – sovereign and bank – by €8 billion, as seen in the main figure above. In contrast, Italy, which had virtually no exposure to Greece in 2010 now has a massive one: €39 billion. Total German exposure is up by a similar amount – €35 billion. Spain has also seen its exposure rocket from nearly nothing in 2009 to €25 billion today.

In short, France has managed to use the Greek bailout to offload €8 billion in junk debt onto its neighbors and burden them with tens of billions more in debt they could have avoided had Greece simply been allowed to default in 2010. The upshot is that Italy and Spain are much closer to financial crisis today than they should be.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Week of Crisis for Greece and Global Markets

June 29, 2015

A Week of Crisis for Greece and Global Markets

After years of false starts it appears that the ‘Grexit’ is finally in motion. Yet when the dust finally settles, this week will be remembered for its market volatility – not as the time when Greece kicked itself out of the euro zone.

Cooler Heads Not Prevailing

Shrewd negotiating is what brought us to this point. Both sides are in a difficult position, and both would rather salt their own fields than be seen as bending to their opponent’s demands.

Luckily it’s not totally up to the politicians. The Greek people are poised to be the ultimate deciders of this latest act of a seemingly unending drama. Early polling shows clear support for accepting the Eurogroup’s offer in the upcoming July 5 referendum. One poll conducted over the weekend by Alco, a Greek newspaper, found 57% in favor of a deal, and another conducted by Kapa Research found 47% in favor and 33% opposed.

As far as Prime Minister Tsipras is concerned it’s a win-win situation, and this is something that has undoubtedly influenced his negotiating style. Many believe that his Syriza party wanted to default and exit the euro zone from the very beginning, though it had to drop this unpopular platform in order to be voted in by a Greek electorate still largely in favor of remaining in the euro zone. Walking away from the table in the early rounds was never an option; Tsipras had to appear like he was negotiating in good faith. But by driving an exceedingly hard bargain on Greece’s bailout conditions, he could either break the cycle of austerity or induce a ‘Grexit’ under circumstances that would rally Greeks against a cruelly vindictive Brussels establishment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Euro Was Doomed From The Start—–And Still Is

June 21, 2015

The Euro Was Doomed From The Start—–And Still Is

Next week will be a momentous one for Europe, with a string of crucial meetings including the summit at which the PM will table his renegotiation demands. We may be focused on our renegotiation but it is Greece which will dominate. For some time it has looked as though the Greek drama must reach its final denouement. But the Greeks have become highly skilled at managing to push back deadlines ever further into the future. Whether Greece leaves the euro or stays in, a decision surely cannot be delayed much longer. So what will this mean for the EU?

I had the privilege of negotiating Britain’s opt-out from the then new European single currency in 1991. My abiding memory is how clear it was that the euro had nothing to do with economics and was a political project with a dubious rationale. Some representatives of other countries were openly sceptical, but their political masters were firmly in control.

The creation of the euro has been an error of historic dimensions and done great harm to the EU, which in its first 40 years had brought economic prosperity to the citizens of the Continent. Then the less well-off countries benefited from the lowering of tariffs and the increase in internal trade. After the creation of the euro, however, economic growth slowed markedly. Poorer countries fared worse than the more prosperous countries, like Germany, which benefited from the new, weaker currency.

The Greek crisis epitomises the complete mess that Europe has made of the single currency. Greece should never have been admitted in the first place, though it was not the only country – Belgium and Italy were two others – that didn’t meet the strict criteria for membership. From the beginning, the rules put in place for the euro, relating to bail-outs, monetary financing and deficit levels, have been ignored. Europe claims to be a rule-based organisation. But however else the eurozone is run, it is not run strictly according to its own rules.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Next Great European Financial Crisis Has Begun

June 17, 2015

The Next Great European Financial Crisis Has Begun

The Greek financial system is in the process of totally imploding, and the rest of Europe will soon follow. Neither the Greeks nor the Germans are willing to give in, and that means that there is very little chance that a debt deal is going to happen by the end of June. So that means that we will likely see a major Greek debt default and potentially even a Greek exit from the eurozone. At this point, credit default swaps on Greek debt have risen 456 percent in price since the beginning of this year, and the market has priced in a 75 percent chance that a Greek debt default will happen. Over the past month, the yield on two year Greek bonds has skyrocketed from 20 percent to more than 30 percent, and the Greek stock market has fallen by a total of 13 percent during the last three trading days alone. This is what a financial collapse looks like, and if Greece does leave the euro, we are going to see this kind of carnage happen all over Europe.

Officials over in Europe are now openly speaking of the need to prepare for a “state of emergency” now that negotiations have totally collapsed. At one time, it would have been unthinkable for Greece to leave the euro, but now it appears that this is precisely what will happen unless a miracle happens…

Greece is heading for a state of emergency and an exit from the euro following the collapse of talks to agree a bailout deal, senior EU officials warned last night.

Europe must be prepared to step in otherwise Greek society would face an unprecedented crisis with power blackouts, medicine shortages and no money to pay for police, they said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ECB Press Release this Wednesday Could End Extortion Racket over Greece – à la Cyprus 2013

June 15, 2015

ECB Press Release this Wednesday Could End Extortion Racket over Greece – à la Cyprus 2013

It was Greece’s “last chance,” again. But Sunday, it too fell apart, as they always do. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker broke off his attempts to mediate between Greece and its creditors. The differences were too large, a spokesperson said.

Now there’s a new “last chance” in this mutual extortion racket. The 19 finance ministers of the Euro Group will meet this Thursday in Luxembourg. The spokesman said that Juncker “remains convinced that with reinforced reform efforts on the Greek side and political will on all sides, a solution can be found by the end of the month.” So probably not.

“Last chance,” because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough time for the parliamentary processes required by other countries to approve the new bailout deal before the payments come due.

But even before this “last chance,” the ECB will meet to decide, once again, the fate of the Greek banks, and thereby Greece.

It doesn’t help that the financial markets aren’t swooning every time “Grexit” appears in the media. Greece has lost its negotiating power. The financial markets have other things to worry about. But the markets in Greece have crashed, and Greek banks have been reduced to penny stocks.

Even supporters of the Greek positions are losing patience with Greek game theory. In an interview published on Sunday, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi told the Corriere Della Sera: “We all want Greece in the Euro, but they have to want it too.”

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, head of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who has been largely supportive of Greece’s efforts, chimed in more forcefully via the tabloid Bild:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Gives Greece 24 Hours To Comply; Germany Draws Up Capital Control Plans

June 12, 2015

Europe Gives Greece 24 Hours To Comply; Germany Draws Up Capital Control Plans

EU officials turned up the heat on Athens Thursday after the IMF withdrew its team and sent its lead negotiators back to Washington.

In what can only be described as a half-hearted effort, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras submitted two three-page proposals earlier this week that were dismissed by creditors as “not serious.” We suggested that perhaps that was intentional as Tsipras, having bought Greece some time by opting for the “Zambian” IMF payment bundle, is simply keeping up appearances while the real negotiating is going on behind the scenes with Syriza party hardliners who Tsipras desperately needs to support any proposal before it goes to parliament in order to avoid what could quickly deteriorate into a political and social crisis.

One has to believe that Brussels understands this, but it could very well be that between Tsipras’ scathing op-ed (published two Sundays ago) and the PM’s fiery speech to parliament last Friday, creditors are becoming concerned that Tsipras might actually be starting to believe that he can effectively blackmail the EMU by threatening to prove, once and for all, that the currency bloc is in fact dissoluble no matter what manner of protestations one might hear in polite company.

So, with the IMF having thrown in the towel, and with German lawmakers set to rally behind the incorrigible FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble in what amounts to a mutiny on the SS Merkel, Europe appears to have finally had enough because by Thursday evening, reports indicated that EU officials have given Greece 24 hours to come back with a proposal that includes pension reform and VAT increases.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No Longer Quiet on the Eastern Front (Part 3)

April 12, 2015

No Longer Quiet on the Eastern Front (Part 3)

Writing a short series of articles about geopolitics carries some risks – namely, that current events can unfold faster than I can hit the ‘send’ button on my next edition. It appears that I am releasing this missive in the nick of time, as the coming days promise more dramatic developments in the Greek economic crisis and, of particular interest, that country’s growing closeness with Russia.

Let us quickly review what has been covered thus far in this series. In part one, we focused on economic tensions between the European Union and Greece, and how the past five years of austerity and hardship may compel the new Greek government to seek stronger ties with Russia. Part two reviewed last year’s disintegration of Ukraine, and the chain of events that sparked its ongoing civil war.

Civil unrest in Kiev. Photo courtesy: The Times of London

In this final segment, we will attempt to view both of these conflicts from the Russian perspective, and to provide some insight into (if not a defense of) the Greek point of view. I do not consider myself to be a “Kremlinologist”, or even an expert on Russian political affairs. That being said, I do believe that I can offer a relatively informed perspective that comes from living in both Athens and Moscow over the past ten years, at times when both countries were facing economic crises. I also believe that mainstream Western media outlets have thoroughly and utterly failed in their duty to provide a balanced perspective on the causes behind the growing chasm between Russia and the West.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Greece About to Play its Geopolitical Trump Card and Ignite a Chain Reaction Across Europe?

April 3, 2015

Is Greece About to Play its Geopolitical Trump Card and Ignite a Chain Reaction Across Europe?

If the EMU powers persist mechanically with their stale demands – even reverting to terms that the previous pro-EMU government in Athens rejected in December – they risk setting off a political chain-reaction that can only eviscerate the EU Project as a motivating ideology in Europe.

Forced Grexit would entrench a pervasive suspicion that EU bodies are ultimately agents of creditor enforcement. It would expose the Project’s post-war creed of solidarity as so much humbug.

Greece could not plausibly remain in Nato if ejected from EMU in acrimonious circumstances. It would drift into the Russian orbit, where Hungary’s Viktor Orban already lies. The southeastern flank of Europe’s security system would fall apart.

Mr Tsipras is now playing the Russian card with an icy ruthlessness, more or less threatening to veto fresh EU measures against the Kremlin as the old set expires. “We disagree with sanctions. The new European security architecture must include Russia,” he told the TASS news agency.

He offered to turn Greece into a strategic bridge, linking the two Orthodox nations. “Russian-Greek relations have very deep roots in history,” he said, hitting all the right notes before his trip to Moscow next week.

– From Ambrose Evans Pritchard’s article in the Telegraph: Greek Defiance Mounts as Alexis Tsipras Turns to Russia and China.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve at times been a strong critic of Greek leadership’s seeming unwillingness to demonstrate the courage necessary to flip the bird to EU bureaucrats and usher in paradigm level change for the long suffering nation. At the core of the problem seems the be the mandate under which Syriza was elected — namely to end austerity, but remain in the euro.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Euro’s Exponential Decay

February 10, 2015

The Euro’s Exponential Decay

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a ball reading up on the preparations for the Wednesday/Thursday talks between Greece and .. well, everybody else. German FinMin Schäuble proudly declares that it’s do what I tell you or you’re finished, Greek FinMin Varoufakis says prepare for a clash. Greek advisors Lazard say a $100 billion debt reduction sounds reasonable, and some anonymous EU official says Lazard are incompetent and counterproductive (not smart, that).

When will the Brussels luxury cubicles understand that the Greek people have voted down their approach fair and square? That they voted down the government that made deals with the Troika for the very and explicit reason that they made those deals in the first place, and that telling the newly elected government to stick by those deals regardless is a corruption of democracy? So far, all the EU has (anyone notice how silent the IMF has been?) is hubris, bluster and chest-thumping.

They play politicians, but Syriza plays real life. Tsipras and Varoufakis stand up for real people, while Schäuble and Dijsselbloem and their ilk stand up only for themselves. And then pretend, in front of their bathroom mirrors and the news cameras, that they protect their own people against the greedy Greeks. As for the 50%+ of young Greeks who have no future, or the countless elderly who go without basic health care, too bad and boo hoo hoo.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Behind The Global – Game Of – Thrones

February 9, 2015

Behind The Global – Game Of – Thrones

Greek PM Alexis Tsipras yesterday laid out Syriza’s stance, and from what I saw he didn’t pull even one punch. Despite all the suggestions from the financial press throughout the past week that Tsipras and Varoufakis reneged on campaign promises to seek debt write-downs, they didn’t, and never have – other than perhaps in semantics.

Which I don’t find the slightest bit surprising. I would have been very surprised if they had. The misinterpretation, and the faulty expectations, are easily explained through the fact that – most of – these guys are not politicians, which they very deliberately expressed in the way they dressed for their meetings with ‘Europe’s finest’.

They don’t see the ‘space’ career politicians see to negotiate away the mandate their voters have given them. For them it’s simple: we were elected on our program – which in this case happens to be to end the misery forced upon Greece by the European and Troika schemes -, and we’re not going to move away from that just because ‘the other side’ starts threatening us, or (a crucial difference in politics) because our voters may not vote for us again in a next election.

In their view, trying to scare Greece into even more submission, which is the overlying message emanating from Brussels and beyond, is entirely null and void because Greece can’t – and shouldn’t – sink any lower than it has. Very and refreshingly simple. No surprise there, but, at least on my part, just support and admiration. Syriza is fighting the fight many others don’t have the intellect, the chutzpah and/or the courage for.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UK Begins Preparations For Grexit

February 8, 2015

UK Begins Preparations For Grexit

As recently as two years ago, even the merest hint that any entity was preparing for what then was unthinkable, namely the Greek exit from the Eurozone, was enough to get one burned at the stake. After all, recall what happened when none other than the head of the ECB lied on the record to Zero Hedge, saying there is no Plan B for an ex-Greece Eurozone (even if he was technically right: Europe defined it as “Plan Z”).

Now, supposedly just because the ECB started monetizing about 100% of German gross Bund issuance two weeks ago (and monetizing debt all across the Eurozone for as long as said Eurozone exists: at this rate it may not be too long) “things are different“, and no longer is it taboo to either incite bank runs in Greece (in fact it is encouraged as both the ECB, Germany and S&P have tried to do in the past week), but outright discussions about preparation for a Grexit are a daily occurrence.

From the WSJ:

The U.K. government is stepping up contingency planning to prepare for a possible Greek exit from the eurozone and the market instability such a move would create, U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne said on Sunday.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury declined comment on the details of the contingency planning.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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