Bun venit la o pagina socio-economico-politica!

Doua din componentele enuntate, politica si economia nu pot exista una fara de alta."Unde-i economie apare banul, langa ban apare politicul" Horea Mihaltan

Acumularea de cunostinte este primul pas spre orice reusita" Horea Mihaltan

Intelege ceea ce faci! " Horea Mihaltan

Un om interesat poate invata orice." Horea Mihaltan

Un popor cu mentalitate ignoranta va alege politicieni ignoranti, osandindu-se astfel la un trai ignorat" Horea Mihaltan

Mentalitatea este piatra de temelie a societatii" Horea Mihaltan

Nici o societate nu poate fi mai buna decat constructorii ei"
Horea Mihaltan

Lectura este un lucru benefic cu o conditie! Daca intelegi ceea ce citesti". Horea Mihaltan

A invata este o prestatie, a preda este o arta. Sublimul este cand ii faci pe altii sa inteleaga, ceea ce ai invatat." Horea Mihaltan

Oamenii nu-si schimba caracterul, isi schimba doar mastile cu care vor sa-l acopere. Horea Mihaltan

Daca schimbi felul in care privesti lucrurile, lucrurile se schimba". Wayne Dyer

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers." - Aristotle





joi, 30 iunie 2011

Sarbatorirea sfarsitului QE2

"FEDUL e-n toate, e-n cele ce sunt/ si-n cele ce maine vor rade la soare / E-n holda intreaga si bobul marunt/ E-n pruncul din leagan si-n omul carunt/ Si-n viata ce vesnic nu moare". Acest FED din tot ceea ce exista isi va sfarsi programul QE2 chiar azi daca nu ma insel. In plin QE, din 2 martie, bursele si totul legat de risc s-a depreciat. Acum cand QE2 se termina bursele par a fi din nou in extaz sarbatorind parca sfarsitul stimulului de care nu mai este nevoie. 

Euforia pare a fi invelita in folii de argint, exact ca inainte. Cca. 10% castig in doua zile nu e rau, si asta in pofida leverage-ului schimbat. Al aceluia care explica deprecierea metalului conform marilor experti. 

Nu ti se pare un pic straniu acest comportament? Mie din punct de vedere ciclic nu. Daca cauti explicatii fundamentale sper sa le poti primii de la cei care le agreaza. Eu vad deocamdata indicele Sp exact la un nivel de oferta. Interesant cum a ajuns aici chiar in ziua de azi. 

Va reusi oare euforia sarbatorii sa ridice indicele in slavi de la acest nivel? Vom trai si vom vedea, eu unul am insa niste dubii. Asta cu toate ca luna iulie obisnuieste sa fie o luna a raliurilor bursiere. Din aceasta cauza au si inceput de fapt aprecierile actuale dupa parerea mea. Oamenii stiu rutina si se baga. 

Vor fi oare rasplatiti si de aceasta data? Parerile mele privind perspectiva medie si chiar cea lunga de timp le stiti din analizele pe care le-am expus de o bucata buna de vreme. Vom afla cu siguranta pana in septembrie, daca ne mai ajuta si soarta, cat de bune sau cat de eronate au fost analizele pe care le-am facut.

Sa traiti o vacanta placuta! 

miercuri, 29 iunie 2011

"Strong vigilance"

Cuvintele magice care semnalizeaza o noua ridicare de dobanda de catre Trichet. Tot cea ce este considerat risc a saltat ca de obicei la auzul acestor cuvinte, inclusiv euro. Demonstrand inca o data faptul ca piata se misca exclusiv pe baza de perceptii si nicidecum pe baza datelor fundamentale. Eu nu cred ca poate exista cineva care sa poata afirma cu seriozitate ca datele fundamentale din Europa ar fi bune. Cu toate acestea aprecierile au inceput cu cateva zile inaintea jocului cu vigilenta, cuvintele lui Trichet nefacand altceva decat sa mai puna niste paie pe focul care mocnea.

Cata vigilenta poate oferii un om care este pe cale de-a distruge chiar banca in care lucreaza stie doar piata. Oricum, eu am spus ca euro se afla in zona neutra si fara Trichet. Spuneam de asemenea ca are toate sansele de-asi testa maxima pe care a facut-o. Acest lucru este deocamdata in curs de derulare, dar, perceptia pietei se poate schimba dupa cate ati putut vedea de la un moment la altul. Vigelenta pe care o vad eu la Trichet este una prin care isi va sapa o groapa si mai adinca dar si mai perfecta, pregatind astfel un faliment dezordonat si cu consecinte mult mai grave. 

Deocamdata insa ceea ce cred eu are mai putina importanta, din moment ce piata crede altceva. Ea pare sa-l creada pe Trichet, cel putin pentru moment, punand un accent exagerat in opinia mea si pe votul care urmeaza sa fie dat de catre parlamentul grecesc. Eu zic ca va vota cu hotii, neavand insa nici un dubiu fata de faptul ca banii vor veni oricum, indiferent de vot. La fel cum nu am nici un dubiu fata de faptul ca mortul nu se va mai trezi. Asta indiferent de cantitatea de oxigen pe care o va primii de la mascarici.

Observa asadar cat de mult conteaza perceptia. Ne uitam cu totii la aceleasi date precum si la efectele dezastruoase pe care le-au avut politicile aplicate pana acum. Aceleasi politici continua sa fie aplicate si in momentul de fata. Si, cu toate acestea, sunt convins ca exista foarte multi cititori, chiar al acetui site, poate chiar o majoritate, care cred in continuare in puterile divine ale lui Trichet. 

luni, 27 iunie 2011

Fuga fundamentala dupa cursul euro-leu

Eu nu mai comentez delecteaza-te singur! Romania este presarata si are multa nevoie de oameni ca cei care isi dau cu parerea in articol. Eu cred ca esti de acord atunci cand spun ca astia isi merita din plin salriile anuale de sute de mi de lei, sau chiar euro.

Imi place si jocul asta cu uite investitorul, nu e investitorul. O alta chestie draguta este cea cu Grecia. Criza a inceput exact o data cu deprecierea leului! Sau nu? In opinia mea transferurile de capital catre bancile mama nu au facut altceva decat sa intareasca noul trend nascut deja.

Ia te uita! Inca un pic de istorie din moment ce e la moda:

"In the Biggest Loser category, the award for the central bank that made the worst trade in history goes to Switzerland, with losses of 21 billion francs in 2010, trying to keep the value of the franc down against the euro. That’s about $25 billion at today’s valuation."

Premiul pentru banca centrala care a facut cea mai prosta afacere din istorie se acorda Bancii Centrale din Elvetia. A pierdut 21 de miliarde de euro in 2010 incercand sa meninta o valoare scazuta a francului fata de euro. Valoarea actuala a banilor topiti este de 25 de miliarde. 

Noi avem insa noroc! Nici BNR dar nici Isarescu nu au intrat inca in istorie. Poate-i va baga acolo viitorul presedinte, domnul: Ca-bat toti politica asta la nivel inalt. Cunosti probabil scena in care marele Ponta se ridica printr-o miscare la nivelul actualului presedinte. Vorbind elevat si ca un mare om de stat "care este" de o problema primordiala a tarii sale: cautarea sticlelor pe podelele teatrului Cotroceni.

Hai sa mai traim, daca ne-or lasa. 


duminică, 26 iunie 2011

"Hiperinflatia" care macina comoditatile

O singura data de cand am pornit acest blog am fost si eu de acord cu domnul Bernanke. Asta s-a intamplat atunci cand a spus "ca inflatia este trecatoare". Asta cu toate ca marii analisti, percum Peter Schiff il vedeau pe Mugabe ocupand America. 

Cei care l-au ascultat cumparand argint la 50 de dolari, speriati de hiperinflatia de tip Zimbabwe, stau azi cu buzele umflate, in timp ce iubitorii metalului galben au putut sa se mai spele pe dinti, chiar fara dureri, in tot acest timp. In data de 23 junie am venit totusi cu urmatoarea afirmatie facuta anapoda:

"Ba mai mult! Aurul lucreaza si el de zor la un top. Care, terminat, ar putea fi sub nivelul celui precedent. In cazul in care acest lucru se va intampla aurul va trebui sa inceapa un plonjon demn de bagat in seama speriindu-i in acelasi timp si pe arginatri. Cei din urma vor avea din nou cosmaruri cu dracusori amenintatori, de genul celora care sa hranesc exclusiv cu argint."

N-a trecut o zi si aurul a inceput s-o ia la vale facand un plonjon tot anapoda de cca. 60 de dolari, exact de la linia pe care o vezi pe grafic si spre care spuneam ca se va indrepta din nou. Spuneam asta acum cca. 6 saptamani. Faptul ca linia este cea mai anapoda structura afisata pe acelasi grafic nu mai trebuie sa surprinda pe nimeni. Ca un echilibru la ceea ce fac si la ceea ce zic eu anapoda exista din fericire stiri pertinete. Citeste-o cu atentie pe cea publicata de Reuter:

Gold cuts 4-day rally as Fed boosts dollar - Reuters

Po.. po.. po.. poftim? Pai nu avea cumva FED-ul ca tel suprem macelarirea dolarului? Conform acelorasi experti care au fabricat stirea de mai sus. Pai nu venea republica Weimar peste noi calare pe Mugabe din Zimbabwe? Nu era Fed o institutie la care lucrau numai roboti si care nu facea altceva decat sa tiparesca bani? Ce sa mai conteaze faptul ca aurul cade ciclic, pentru ca trebuia sa cada, atunci cand o stire bazata pe date fundamentale pertinente amesteca FED-ul in toate. Exact cum facea si Dan Desliu cu partidul in minunata sa poezie care purta celasi nume.

Dar de ce a cazut oare si argintul? Nu era el aurul omului sarac care trebuia sa intreaca in aprecieri chiar si aurul real? Dar titeiul de ce a cazut? Nu se bat aia ca orbii in Libia cu peak oil-ul in cap? Cerealeleor lovite de arsita, zaharului devenit ultradulce oare de ce le-a scazut pretul? Dar bursa ce face?

Nu trebuia sa se decupleze conform unor grafice inversate de comoditati? Se pare ca nu! Se pare ca graficele sed deocamdata bine in pozitiile lor reale dand semnale destul de credibile si exacte pentru cei care stiu sa le interpreteze. Ce spun oare aceste grafice despre aur de exemplu? Spun ca a dat un semnal urat de depreciere, nereusind in acelasi timp sa-si depaseasca maxima anterioara, exact asa cum am anticipat.


Dar despre petrol ce spun? Spun exact acelasi lucru pe care il spuneau si atunci cand a inceput razboiul care trebuia sa-i duca pretul spre 200 de dolari. De la 115$, maxima atinsa in timpul razboiului, la 90$, pretul de inchidre a titeiului de saptamana trecuta, sunt cam 25 de dolari, echivalnetul unei hiperinflatii de cca. minus 20%.

Dupa ce titeiul va perfora prima zona de cerere expusa pe grafic, urmatoarea "gara" a aurului negru ar trebui sa fie nivelul de 76$, adica o hiperinflatie de cca. minus 35%.

Nu avem decat sa asteptam si sa vedem daca analiza mea este sau nu corecta. Ar putea sa sfarseasca oare rahatul in care ne aflam cu o inflatie consistenta, chiar daca nu va fi hiperinflatie de tipul Zimbabwe sau Weimar? Sigur ca ar putea! Dar, de ce sa iei tu suba pe tine la 35 de grade in luna iulie? Doar pentru ca luna ianuarie ar putea sa-ti aduca temperaturi de minus 25.

vineri, 24 iunie 2011

Un brontozaur in lacrimi

Piesa suna a tragedie dar mincinosul Berlusconi o prezinta ca fiind o comedie. "Bancile italiene sunt bine capitalizate" a spus in stil junckerian premierul. Asta-i latin de-al nostru! De ce nu ar minti si el de sa crape pietrele daca marele Juncker made in Luxemburg si-a permis sa si recunoasca ca face acest lucru atunci cand situatia devine serioasa. In acelasi text publicat de Bloomberg, care vorbeste  de plonjonul bancilor din Italia de pe bursa, vei gasi si urmatoarea fraza:

"Italian banks are also seeking to raise money from investors to bolster capital"

Deci, ca atare, va sa zica, faptele bancilor urla asa de puternic incat eu unul nu mai pot auzi vorbele lui Berlusconi. Ba ma mai si intreb, asa prostetste ca intotdeauna: Daca bancile sunt asa de bine capitalizate precum spune domnisorul premier, de ce mama dracului mai cauta atunci in disperare capital? Va spun eu! Din cauza faptului ca sunt falimentare, ca si BCE de fapt. 

Sunt absolut constient ca am provocat zambete cu aceasta afirmatie acum cca. un an, dar astazi zambetele sunt cu siguranta mult mai putine. Concetrati asupra  peripetiilor grecesti oamenii au uitat de de tot de sarmanul brontozaur indatorat si el pana peste urechi. Este atat de mare incat mascaricii nu l-ar putea urni nici suiti in macarele.

In bazinul de pe langa scena pe care-si face numarul brontozaurul pleoscaie o balena. Pe spatele ei scrie Spania. Isi astepta si ea intrarea pe scena cu rabdare. Pleoscaie in lacrimile namilei. Tot decorul facand parte de fapt din tragedia jucata. Meteorologii anunta o vara lunga fierbinte, fara sa spuna insa o vorba despre sistemele de ventilatie defecte din banci. Napadita de atata caldura Romania merge insa inainte. Se pregateste sa infrunte arsita printr-un nou imprumut de 30 de miliarde de euro, care va fi luat de la Foame-i pentru racoritoare, desigur. Ca sa diversifice scenariul comediei romanesti presedintele l-a facut pe fostul rege al tarii noastre tradator, rostind in acelasi timp si o fraza pe care o consider de aur.

“Vedeti, noi inca nu ne asezam corect valorile”

Cat adevar intr-o fraza asa de scurta! Non-valorile, semidoctismul si mediocritatea sunt reprezentative pentru Romania post lovitura de stat. Ele au fost propulsate in ultimul timp la cele mai inalte culmi. Avand paradoxal in frunte chiar pe cel care le sesizeaza, presedintele.

Apropo aur. A inceput oare sa cada azi din cauza presedintelui nostru? Care a inceput in ultimul timp sa-l scuipe in cantitati industriale pe gura.


joi, 23 iunie 2011

Guvernul Papandreou a supravietuit! Ce face euro?

Cade! Nu, nu se poate. Pai nu crestea tocmai din cauza sperantelor de supravietuire ale guvernului grec? Ba da! Pentru fundamentalisti si pentru cei ce stateau cu sufletul la gura asteptand noi iprumuturi de la Foame-i, BCE si alti mascarici. Eu ii linistesc pe toti cei din urma. Imprumuturile vor veni, pentru ca sunt semnate de mult.

Tablitele pe care sunt scrise datorii de sute de mii de euro si care vor fi agatate de gatul micilor Papadopoulos, nenascuti inca, au fost deja fabricate.

Problema este insa piata. Ea isi face valurile cu un cascat nepasator, privind cu un zambet mascarada oferita de mascarici omului de rand. Ba uite ca au cazut si bursele! Cum? Cad si metalele si petrolul? Nu se poate! Ele trebuie sa se decupleze de bursa. Petrol nu mai este, hiperinflatia bate la usa... Si uite ca totusi piata face ce doreste miscand in valuri ca de obicei valoarea elementelor amintite. Euro, ca si bursa, impreuna cu alte zburatoare, au dat de nivele de oferta bine conturate.

Nici macar un om cu barba nu a putut sa induplece piata. Asta cu toate ca a dat asigurari in privinta revenirii economice, descriind ceea ce s-a intamplat pana acum ca fiind doar o "denivelare de drum". De viziunile domnului Barbachii nu mai trebuie sa vorbesc. S-au nimerit pana acum ca nuca in perete. Ca sa ma diversific  m-am uitat chiar ieri si la indicele Dax, rugat de un prieten austriac care traieste in Germania. Imi spunea ca "sasii" sunt numai in floare. Asa crestere economica nu au mai vazut de cand a plecat Hitler.

Pana si pretul caselor a inceput sa salte in unele zone, chiar destul de consistent. Nu! Nu in stil romanesc la treisute de mi de euro cocioba, dar, totusi, niste bulite pe alocuri, mai ales in anumite orase mari. Indicele din Germania, Dax, arata intr-adevar maiestuos, confirmand intocmai tot ceea ce mi-a povestit prietenul meu. Problema pe care o vad eu, este faptul ca pare beat de atata bunastare, dand impresia ca ar fi gata in oricare moment sa cada in cap. Am vazut ca am si cativa cititori din Germania. In cazul in care analiza mea este corecta tin sa-i anunt ca festivalul berii s-a terminat.

Ba mai mult! Aurul lucreaza si el de zor la un top. Care, terminat, ar putea fi sub nivelul celui precedent. In cazul in care acest lucru se va intampla aurul va trebui sa inceapa un plonjon demn de bagat in seama speriindu-i in acelasi timp si pe arginatri. Cei din urma vor avea din nou cosmaruri cu dracusori amenintatori, de genul celora care sa hranesc exclusiv cu argint. Am descris aici un scenariu de perspectiva putin mai lunga, unul pe care il vad eu in momentul de fata.

Intorcandu-ne la euro el "a luat-o in gura" exact ieri, la data sa ciclu, exact asa cum m-am asteptat. Caderea pe care a pornit-o se afla insa in continuare intr-o zona neutra. Iesirea din aceasta zona, intr-o directie sau alta, se va face intr-o buna zi, foarte probabil intr-una in care eu nu voi mai fi in Romania. In tot acest timp va trebui sa apelezi din pacate la Cabati. Nu fi insa disperat! Asculta cu atentie tot ceea ce vor spune ei si fa exact invers. Vei fi mai mult ca probabil pe drumul cel bun.


miercuri, 22 iunie 2011

Cu sufletul la gura

Daca ai fi citit cumva stirile din presa internationala ieri, ai fi simtit cu siguranta tensiunea pe care incercau s-o propage facatorii de stiri. Grecia si supravietuirea sau nu a guvernului "Mamandreou" acopereau peste tot primele pagini. Euro urca, bursele urcau, impinse de sperante, sperante care pentru orice om normal nu puteau fi altceva decat o certitudine.

Intanlnirea de la teatrul Cotroceni din Bucuresti a actorilor smecheri din Romania a ajuns parca pe plan secundar. Uitandu-te in jur ai putea constata totusi faptul ca traiesti intr-o noua era, cea a teatrului universal. Piesele jucate se desfasoara cu o rapiditate uimitoare pentru ca regizorii le-au incarcat voit cu evenimente. Daca incerci sa privesti mai relaxat si sa discerni, iti vei da insa seama ca piesele sunt complet lipsite de actiune si goale de continut.

Actorii dau din maini si din picioare, gesticuleaza paranoic de vazul lumii, dar in jurul lor nu se intampla de fapt nimic. Piesa pe care incearca s-o prezinte in forma de comedie, este de fapt aceeiasi tragedie pe care ai vazut-o de sute de ori. Regizorii schimba actorii ca sa nu borasti si pentru ca sa-ti poata sustrage atentia de la monotonia piesei. Sfarsitul il stii oricum asa ca distreaza-te si stai cu sufletul la gura in timpul actelor de la mijloc. 

Piata pare sa privesca tragedia mult mai detasata decat cei care o interpreteaza, urmandu-si fluxul normal. Indiferent de actorii care apar pe scena. Cu sau fara Grecia piata a dat de cateva zile un semnal de revenire, unul de care am vorbit chiar in postarea de ieri.

Azi avem o data de ciclu pentru euro si o zona buna de oferta chiar in jurul nivelelor actuale si pana la 1,4450. Ce a facut Papa sau Mamandreou conteaza asadar mai putin. Ceea ce conteaza este castigatorul luptei dintre vanzatori si cumparatori la nivelele amintite. Eu unul am presimtirea ca euro o va lua in gura, indiferent de ceea ce au facut sau n-au facut parintii Andreou.

In conditii normale sceneta iata imprumutul, nu-i imprumutul, m-ar face sa zambesc, din moment ce nu este altceva decat un zdranganit de pahare goale. Nu sunt insa in stare sa fac nici macar acest lucru, pentru ca petrec una din cele mai triste zile din viata. Mi-a disparut motanul pe care l-am luat langa mine dupa ce l-am gasit bolnav afara. Timp de doi ani mi-a demostrat ca un animal are deseori mai mult suflet decat un om. L-am gasit afara si i-a placut sa stea mai mult tot afara, fiind probabil lovit de masina unui idiot raliist. Asta dupa ce circulatia pe straduta noastra s-a intetit in urma unei devieri. Cei dintre voi care iubesc animalele imi inteleg cu siguranta sentimentele.

marți, 21 iunie 2011

Rolul nivelelor de oferta


Indiferent de Isaresu, BNR, Grecia etc. Am putea oare asista la un raly bursier in luna julie? Unul care sa rastoarne pe dos tot ce am vazut pana acum. In pofida "porcilor" si a altor guitatoare. Sigur ca am putea! Pentru ca piata face cum doreste. 

Din grafice reise chiar ca ar vrea sa pregateasca un scenariu precum cel de care vorbeam. Sa vedem daca va reusi si cat va reusi. Daca va reusi topurile vechi vor fi intrecute cu marginale minime, cred eu. In cazul in care ele nu vor mai putea sa fie atinse, semnalul il voi interpreta ca fiind unul de slabiciune. 

M-am referit la indicii bursieri si la tot ce s-a depreciat pana acum. Ce cred eu ca va face piata? In momentul de fata tind sa cred ca nu va reusi sa duca preturile peste topurile vechi. Ce va face leul? Se va intari nitel dand impresia Cabatilor ca Isarescu il cumpara dupa ce l-a vandut. Ce voi face eu? Plec peste 10 zile in Norvegia la lucru si plecat voi fi toata vara. Ce veti face voi? Habar nu am, dar sper sa va loviti doar de indeletniciri placute.

luni, 20 iunie 2011

"Hiperiflatia" dintr-o lunga vara fierbinte



Care va incepe cu o saptamana fierbinte, chiar de maine. Pagina economica a cotidianului suedez Svenska Dagbladet ne face cunostiinta cu profesorul in economie Yannis Stournaras un fost sfetnic sef pe probleme economice a guvernului de la Atena. Prin intermediul acestuia facem cunostinta in acelasi articol si cu societatea greceasca.

Mentaliteten är Greklands problem. Det säger den grekiska ekonomen Yannis Stournaras i en intervju med Svenska Dagbladet.

– Vi präglas fortfarande av vårt ottomanska arv. Vi har en ekonomi och ett samhälle som skulle kunna betecknas som ”post-sultanskt”. I detta frodas medelmåttan och brist på respekt för regler, säger Stournaras till SvD. 

Han är professor i nationalekonomi och numera chef för forskningsinstitutet Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE). Tidigare var Yannis Stournaras den grekiska regeringens chefsrådigvare i ekonomiska frågor.

Domnul Stournaras imi scoate parca vorbele din gura, aratand ca problema principala a tarii sale este mentalitatea. Aparent ai putea crede ca vorbeste despre Romania: "Suntem caracterizati in continuare de monestenirea otomana, avand astfel o societate si o economie pe care as putea-o numi "postsultanica". In acest mediu se cultiva si se ingrasa in continuare lipsa de respect pentru reguli precum si semidoctismul".

Ai mai auzit tu de vreo tara, una pe care o cunosti bine, in care bagatul picioarelor in orice regula si cultivarea semidoctismului si a mediocritatii au devenit sport national? O stare de fapte rezultata direct din mentalitatea feudalo-sclavagista a populatiei bastinase. Eu cred ca ai auzit, pentru ca locuiesti din pacate chiar aici in miezul ei. M-ai auzit si pe mine cu siguanta vorbind de rolul metalitatii si de efectele pe care aceasta le are supra societatii in care traiesti. Iata asadar oglinda economico-sociala a societatii tale. Se numeste Grecia si prezinta asa cum face o oglinda de obicei pe cel sau pe cea ce sta in fata ei. In cazul de fata societatea romaneasca, o societate presarata de minciuni, furt, lipsa de respect fata de reguli, si plina de semidocti pusi in pozitii de conducere.

Oglinda este gata sa cada in prapastia falimentului, dusa in acea directie de tocmai societatea pe care am desris-o. Unde crezi ca va putea ajunge individul din fata oglinzii? Romania. Tinand cont si de faptul ca mentalitatea si comportamentul civic din aceasta tara au mai mult un caracter sclavagist decat unul feudal. Observi cum ficare popor culege ceea ce a semanat? Mirosul fructului care creste in Grecia si Romania este asadar pentru papilele mele olfactive identic cu cel al rahatului. Vara asta va fi cu siguranta una fierbinte, cu precadere pe meleagurile amintite, facand dupa parerea mea si in cele din urma rahatul sa miroase a hoit. Bancile mari din Anglia au inceput  sa retraga capital in cantitati considerabile de pe pamanturile insamantate cu fecalii, deja in lunile trecute. Lasandu-le astfel secate de lichiditati. 

Lipsa de lichiditate se va face simtita in curand, aducand dupa sine mult trambitata hiperinflatie pentru fundamentalisti, pentru mine deflatia de care am vorbit tot timpul. Se vor distruge credite in mormane inspaimantatoare, asta chiar daca Trichet va incalca din nou legea si se va apuca de tiparit. Vei asista in perioda care vine, cred eu, la cea mai mare criza bancara pe care a vazut-o lumea vreodata, o criza provocata de societatile care au permis si tolerat calcarea in picioare a regulilor. Societati populate de  indivizi care au incurajat minciuna si avaritia, propulsand catre stele toate mediocritatile. Zarurile au fost aruncate. Piata va testa in opinia mea deja saptamana viitoare calcealmaua mascaricilor Trichet, Merkel si Sarkozy.

Acestia, impreuna cu domnul Junkers, care a declarat fara jena ca "atunci cand situatia devine serioasa trebuie sa mintesti", vor continua sa faca tocmai acest lucru. Demonstrand paradoxal nimic altceva decat realitatea: adica faptul ca situatia este foarte serioasa. Tocmai din aceasta cauza minciunile mascaricilor vor fi zadarnice. Cand e vorba de bani increderea pe care ai avut-o fata de cineva scade exponential cu fiecare minciuna a individului. Prelungirea agoniei nu va face altceva decat sa transforme moartea Greciei intr- una foarte dureroasa. 

Orice ar hotara sa faca, in fata celor trei Sisifi se afla un bolovan urias. Poporul grec! Care, va cere foarte probabil un referendum, asa cum am prevazut in postari precedente, prin care sa poata refuza in stil Islandez ajutorul de insclavire a nepotilor. Nepotii vor scapa foarte probabil in cazul in care acest lucru se va intampla, noi cei de azi nu. Noi vom iesi pe camp sa culegem ce am semanat. Tinand cont de mirosul recoltei, multi, chiar foarte multi dintre noi vor cadea asfixiati. Indiferent de cantitatea de deodoranti cu miros de balega pe care vor incerca sa-i foloseasca Sisifii mascarici.

In societatile fasciste care s-au conturat sub ochii nostrii vocea popoarelor se aude insa tot mai putin. Indiferent de cei care sunt la putere, politica dusa pare a fi aceeiasi: nationalizarea datoriilor provocate de cei puternici si privatizarea castigurilor facute de aceiasi indivizi. Din pacate o asemenea "democratie"  nu mai da celor ce voteaza nici o sansa, exceptand votul in sine. Unul fata de care nu mai exista nici un respect. Popoarele ar mai putea avea de aceea o singura optiune. Luarea bardei in mana.



duminică, 19 iunie 2011

Un pumn in ochi, unul in nas sau un picior in gura?

Sunt doar trei dintre cele 6 alternative mentionate de Nomura de care ne-am putea lovi in cazul unui faliment grecesc.Toate alternativele insirate de banca Japoneza le gasesti in pasajul urmator. Observa! Banca nu vorbeste de consecintele pe care le-ar putea avea pentru Romania alte falimente, precum unul al Irlandei, al Portugaliei etc. 


Despre contributia acestor eventuale falimente, foarte probabile si ele, va spun eu doua cuvinte; "Crestere economica". Le-am invatat de la Bochescu si Isaresu. De la Pontanescu am invatat ca vin salriile marite si locurile de munca, un milion cat ai clipi, restul dupa. 

- A new Vienna Initiative: Despite an event in the Greek banking system those same banks are still required to maintain capital exposure into Emerging Europe. EBRD and EU provide support and other incentives to make this happen. Such a move however would be difficult and impose additional burdens on an already highly stressed Greek banking sector.
- Business slowdown (least bad outcome): Greek banks severely constrain lending in domestic subsidiaries as parent company funding crowds out domestic business. This is anti-growth for Romania and Bulgaria, though arguably it has already started to occur.
- Greek bank consolidation (bad outcome): Greek banks are forced to consolidate, perhaps into some form of good bank/bad bank set-up. Consolidation causes asset sales in Bulgaria and Romania. With limited foreign interest likely, government or domestic money would be needed, meaning net currency outflow. If a sale was not possible capital withdrawal would then be likely.
- Capital withdrawal (very bad outcome): Greek banks are forced to draw down capital from subsidiary banks to shore up their own balance sheets. The capital flight causes balance of payments stress (requiring reserve utilisation and in Romania’s case potentially tapping the precautionary SBA).
- Subsidiary default threat (very bad outcome): Removal of parent company support causes domestic banks to default but EBRD and the Romanian/Bulgarian government step in and nationalise or cause consolidation within Romania to absorb the bank.
- Outright parent company default (worst outcome): Parent company support is removed, capital is withdrawn, there is a fire sale of Emerging Europe assets. (Even if Greek banks were nationalised or bailed out would the Greek government really want to support Romanian and Bulgarian subsidiaries?)
Observa de asemenea! Banca recomanda cumpararea de CDS-uri, pariuri de faliment pentru Bulgaria si Romania, tari cu datoria externa echivalenta cu cifrele expuse in graficul afisat. Sunt absolut de acord cu Nomura si, fiind vorba de Romania, tind sa vad ultimul scenariu ca fiind unul foarte probabil. Mi-ar face deosebita placere sa-i vad pe toti hotii crepand, dar, din pacate, oalelele sparte vor cadea ca intotdeauna in capul poporului. Asta in cazul in care cel din urma nu va lua sapa in mana si nu va sparge capete de hoti. 

Atentie! Nomura da si ea o explicatie partiala pe care ar fi dat-o orice om normal cu privinta la intarirea leului. Cererea creata de bancile subsidiare care au trimis bani bancilor mama. Nu trebuia sa fie oare invers? Ba trebuia! Dar Romania este o tara intoarsa pe dos chiar si atunci cand e vorba de tratate semnate, ca cel de la Viena. De aici poti lua cand vrei si cat vrei, pentru ca totul e permis in tara democratiei originale si al tuturor posibilitatilor. Exceptand un trai decent si civilizat.

Domnul Dragnea si altii ca el s-au apucat de furat, chiar fonduri europene. De ce nu ar putea cere atunci o banca mama bani unui "copilas"? Aici vei gasi la nevoie articolul tradus in limba romana! Chiar daca nu are aceeiasi structura, traducerea prezinta la fel de bine "cresterea economica" care ne asteapta. Spuneam in articole precedente ca cei ce vor vrea sa candideze la conducerea tarii in 2012, vor face prin aceasta un gest de sinucidere politica. Am gresit, ma caiesc si imi cer public iertare! Pentru ca oamenii care sunt in stare sa fure fonduri europene, au o talpa de bocanc atat de groasa pe obraz si pe tot corpul incat nimic nu-i poate omara.

Hai sa mai traim putin treziti bine!

Ps. Daca vrei sa-ti tii banii in banca cauta banci cu expunere minima la "porci". Dar, e bine sa intelegi si faptul ca garantii nu exista nicaieri. Sa nu-ti faci cumva iluzii ca cei ce au creat aceasta criza se vor apuca sa te plateasca doar pentru ca au semnat un tratat sau altul. Fii intotdeauna sceptic fata de mincinosi. Cel ce a mintit o data va mintii foarte probabil de mai multe ori, sau de cate ori crede el ca este nevoie, pentru a te fraierii. Vezi expunerea bancilor roamnesti la imobiliare. In cazul unei crize de lichiditate piata va fi umflata cu bunurile acestora scoase la vanzari.

Vanzari care nu vor reusi si care le vor pune saci grei pe umeri. Din cauza numarului mare de imobiliare din bilant. Cea mai sigura banca din Romania este probabil in ochii multora CEC banc, o banca care apartine statului. Gandeste-te totusi ca ca acest stat corupt pana in maduva oaselor, ca si cel grec de fapt, de unde si problemele actuale ale elenilor, ar putea sa-si dea duhul. Cauta pe net informatii despre bancile active in Romania. Cauta in primul rand expunerea lor la porci, mai apoi la imobiliare si in ultimul rand rating.  Ratingul se schimba dupa cate ai vazut in decurs de minute.

joi, 16 iunie 2011

BNR falimentara?

Ar fi cu siguranta daca ar avea specialististi (cu cata usurinta este folosit acest termen in aceasta tara) de teapa lui Cabat si al celor de la ING. Conform ultimilor banca a cheltuit intre 700 de milioane si un miliard ca sa influenteze cursul euro-leu (vezi postarea care dezbate acest subiect). 

Ce ar fi inseamnat acest lucru tradus in limba romana? Ar fi insemnat ca banca a cumparat lei ieftin ca mai apoi sa ii vanda scump. Ce ar insemna asemenea manevre traduse in limbaj economic? Ar insemna faliment sigur.

Din fericire insa BNR nu este condusa de idiotii "specialisti" de care vorbeam. La BNR, lucreaza tot din fericire si un domn Vasilescu. Un om care stie mult mai multe decat spune. Un alt noroc al Romaniei este in momentul de fata faptul ca tara noastra nu are valuta euro. 

Acest lucru nu va impiedica insa falimentul acolora care au luat credite in valuta ascultand de Cabati. Observa intervalul de depreciere euro intre cele doua sageti verzi: Valuta comunitara cade exact pana la rezistenta pe care a perforat-o si care prin aceasta perforare a devenit suport. 

Am vorbit despre acest lucru in ultima analiza pe care am facut-o perchii eur-leu. De franc ce sa mai vorbim? Merge si el ca si euro acolo unde il duce valul. Valuri la fel de mari, dar in podoaba capilara, fac si cei ce au sarit la a patra casa a lui Boc, luand credite in valuta. Romanul care astepata intr-una pomana de la stat sare de indata la asemenea oferte. Sa vedem acum cum se va simtii el cu parul valvoi.

Isarescu a luat la balet dolarul american

Si face cu el piruetele lui preferate in forma de V. Pana unde va dansa guvernatorul, foarte probabil, cu valuta americana? Pana in punctul expus pe graficul afisat. Observa marcat cu galben caderea dolarului de care vorbeam in analiza saptamanala. Este aproape la milimetru.

Inca o palma data fundamentalistilor

Ramasi cu gura cascata cat o sura susnumitii au fost luati din nou la palme de catre piata. Dobanzile americane cad dolarul creste un lucru pur si simplu imposibil pentru un fundamentalist. 

Ca sa-i scutesc pe cititorii acestui site de surprize am incercat sa ma ocup de mai multe ori de "muschii" yenului japonez valuta unei tari cu dobanda la zero. In zadar insa. Fundamentalistii au sarit ca arsi atunci cand faceam o paralela intre economia Japoniei si cea a SUA.

Spuneam atunci ca mi se pare normal ca americanii sa obtina aceleasi rezultate ca si japonezii atata timp cat vor folosi aceleasi proceduri. Aceasta afirmatie simpla nu intra insa in urechea oricui, cu atat mai putin in urechea unui fundamentalist. El le stie pe ale lui si cu asta basta. De ce am pornit eu acest site gratuit in limba Romana si nu in orice alta alta limba pe care o vorbesc?

Pentru ca mi-a pasat de romani. Pe ei i-am considerat ca fiind cei mai apropiati de sufletul meu. Iata insa o minune! Pe multi sunt aproape sigur ca i-am indepartat sau in cel mai bun caz i-am inervat. Nu as fi mirat daca mi-as fi facut chiar si niste dusmani. De ce? Pentru ca am demonstrat valabilitatea a cel putin doua maxime care imi apartin si pe care le-am pus pe aceasta pagina: "Intelege ceea ce faci" si "Un om interesat poate invata orice".

Am demonstrat ca nu diplomele si titlurile il duc pe om spre intelegere, ci pur si simplu doar setea lui de-a cunoaste si de-a intelege fenomenele care-l inconjoara.

Batut si invins nu ma pot sa zic insa ca m-as simtii . Sunt convins ca sunt multi dintre cititori care au avut ceva de castigat de pe urma acestui site, daca nu altceva, poate putin mai multa intelegere fata de fenomenele pe care am incercat sa le dezbat. M-ar fi bucurat mult daca pagina ar fi putut scuti pe toata lumea de pierderi si de decizii pripite, dar, din pacate, mai sunt inca foarte multi cititori care nu s-au sinchisit sa intelega, nici macar in momentul de fata, ceea ce pot vedea de fapt cu proprii lor ochi.

Articolele de pe aceasta pagina n-au fost scrise intr-o forma in care autorul ar fi incercat sa-si impuna parerea. Ele au fost insa destul de documentate, sper, pentru ca cititorul sa poata trage concluzii pertinente. Uneori insa omul nu crede nici ceea ce vede, un lucru pe l-ati constatat cu siguranta cu totii. Acest fenomen nu mai poate fi in opinia mea responsabilitatea unui autor de articole, ci, exclusiv responsabilitatea fiecarui individ in sine. Un autor nu poate face altceva decat sa prezinte ceea ce se stie si in cel mai bun caz sa si interpreteze cat mai logic inforamtiile primite. Logica este insa relativa.

Din aceasta cauza cititorul trebui sa se orienteze si sa compare cele citite cu rezultatele pe care le obtin in realitate ideile prezentate. In opinia mea, si cred ca si in opinia unui copil de clasa a cincea care gandeste cat de cat, cele mai apreciate articole, dintr-un domeniu sau altul, ar trebui sa fie acelea ale caror idei se reflecta cat mai exact in realitate.  Pentru ca din gura si degeaba poate da oricine.  

Aceasta regula nu pare insa a fi valabila in Romania, o tara in care oamenii se combat si lupta pana la sange pentru sustinerea unor idei care s-au dovedit a fi esuate si falimentare.


miercuri, 15 iunie 2011

Cicluri care "nu exista"

In data de 23 septembrie 2010 scriam:

"Veti asista in perioada care urmeaza, cred eu, la decaderea totala a unui cioban, care in Romania a fost numit om de afaceri. Gigi Becali si-a terminat trendul ascendent odata cu bursa. Tot ce va atinge acest om de acum in colo se va transforma in cenusa. Ciclul de 40 de ani al palamentarului nostru european a luat-o la vale, trebuind sa dea celui mentionat multe nopti nedormite de acum incolo. 

Am luat exemplul lui doar ca sa scot in evidenta existenta ciclurilor pana si in viata unui singur om."

Iata rezultatul
! Asta pe langa schimbarea antrenorilor de la Steaua de doua ori pe zi.  Cel mai hazliu episod mi s-a parut acela in care omul de desfaceri a iesit in presa informand lumea despre oferta irezistibila pe care i-a facut-o lui Boloni.

Se referea la bani desigur, crezand in acel moment ca totul se poate cumpara. Se poate cu siguranta aici in Romania, intr-o tara populata cu precadere de oameni fara pretentii de alt gen decat cele economice. Eram sigur atunci, la fel de sigur ca si azi cand stiu deznodamantul, de faptul ca Boloni nici macar nu va lua in considerare oferta.

Trebuie sa fi la nivelul omului de desfaceri pentru ca sa te poti simti bine in anturajul lui. Asta ca sa nu mai vorbim de faptul ca iti va fi sef. Ciclul descendent al ciobanasului va continua in opinia mea neabatut. Drumul acestuia trebuind sa se asemene pana la urma destul de mult cu cel al argintului. Inapoi spre punctul de plecare. O soarta impartasita de orice ascensiune in forma de parabola.

As dori sa clarific un lucru! Nu am nimic cu nici o meserie si sunt in continuare convins de faptul ca fiecare societate functionala si ajunsa la o maturitate civica trebuie sa-si trateze cetatenii in mod egal si cu respect. Nu am nici o obiectie asadar fata de emanciparea culturala sau chiar ierarhica al oricarui individ din societate, indiferent de punctul lui de plecare.

Asta doar atata timp cat urcusul este facut pe merite incontestabile rezultate din prestatii puse pe o baza morala solida. In cazul lui Gigel si ale multor altora ca el eu nu gasesc nici meritele si cu atat mai putin baza morala a urcusului pe care au reusit sa-l parcurga. Coborasul pe care l-a inceput mi se pare in schimb bine meritat.

marți, 14 iunie 2011

Dansand balet Isarescu canta aleluia creditelor in franci

Cristi ma intreba de-o bucata buna de vreme despre opinia pe care o aveam in legatura cu evolutia franc-leu. Era pe vremea cand Isarescu si BNR dansau conform expertilor actul de balet 7 lei un euro. Eu ma uitam atunci la un alt balet, la cel al pietei, unul care parea sa vrea sa duca leul spre 4,10. 


Ca o consecinta ii spuneam lui Cristi ca si francul va trebui sa cada, prezicand atunci o miscare lateral negativa pentru valuta elvetiana. 

Daca te uiti pe grafic vei vedea ca francul a facut tocmai ceea ce trebuia sa faca. A cazut ca si euro si ca si toate celelalte valute partenere de dans ale lui Isarescu (vezi elipsa ilustrativa. Iata insa ca, atunci cand expertii au inceput sa urmareasca actul de dans Isarescian numit 3,90-4 lei un euro, eu ma holbam tot la baletul pietei. Piruetele pe care le facea aceasta prevesteau un leu mai slab si ca intotdeauna fata de toate valutele principale. Problema publicului spectator din Romania este faptul ca el urmareste baletul pe care il urmaresc si "expertii". 

Nu intampaltor acest balet are si un act cu credite in franci elevetieni si euro. Uitandu-ma de pe "tuse" mie mi se pare mai mult un meci de lupte greco romane decat un dans. Un meci foarte special ale carui protagonisti au devenit chiar specatatorii. Isarescu pare sa fi intrat adanc in rolul sau de balerin sportiv, executandu-si miscarile de dans cu maiestria unui campion la lupte.  Ia cate un spectator la ficarea pirueta si, in cazul in care acesta are credite in valuta, cu precadere in franci, il tranteste fara mila de scena. 

Scena teatrului Valutashoi duduie ca economia lui Tariceanu la fiecare izbitura. Specatatorii invitati la dans gem si ei de durere de fiecare data cand sunt trantiti de scanduri. Isi dau seama ca  Isarescu a ales pirueta vanzarilor de lei fata de toate valutele. Baletul infernal greco roman in care s-a adancit guvernatorul devine echivalent cu pirueta mortii, pentru toti cei ce au credite in valuta si salariul platit in lei. Dar sa nu disperam! Vin investitorii. Stau deja la coada in forma de S de la granita asa cum am fost informati de catre guvernator. 

Ma uit spre punctul de frontierea si ii pot vedea si eu. Spre marea mea mirare stau cu fundul spre Romania avand toti cel putin cate un sac pe spate. Chior cum sunt nu pot deslusi 9 semne care par a fi pictate pe fiecare sac. Devin curios si fac eforturi holbandu-mi ochii cat pot de tare. Nici un rezultat. Imi aduc aminte ca am la mine ochelarii lui Mosu si ii pun repede pe ochi. Totul pare acum un rasarit de soare, printre a carui raze cele 9 semne lumineaza si mintea si cerul: Q...E...2 Good BY

Ma uit dupa aceea la un grafic franc- leu, pentru ca pentru mine "tine" si incep sa aud din nou duduituri. Nu pe cele economice pe care le-a auzit motociclistul ci pe cele pe care le face scena atunci cand balerinul da cu cate un specatator posesor de credite in franci de pamant. Investitorii nu se mai vad. Par acum doar niste puncte miscatoare. Graficul franc-leu se mai vede. Pana nu dispare si el ti-l pun pe pagina.

Hai sa mai traim o leaca treziti bine! Si mai bine ne vom trezi atunci cand balerinul acompaniat de acorduri scrise de Ceaikovski va pirueta francul peste nivelul de oferta expus de mine pe grafic.


luni, 13 iunie 2011

Drumul spre ruina

Atunci cand medicul, justitiarul, economistul sau oricine de fapt isi vede doar de proriile interese rezultatul nu poate fi altul decat ruina sitemului in care activeaza.



Iata deci cum au reusit bancile, inclusiv BCE, sa se autoruineze. Prin actiuni care se aseamana cu cele ale unui medic care a lipsit de la cursuri. Cunostinte ioc dar tentatie mare pentru bani cat mai multi si o poszitie sociala cat mai elevata. 

Breasla s-o ia dracu si in ceea ce il priveste pe bolnav el va muri oricum intr-o buna zi. Iata ca ziua bolnavilor a sosit, numai ca ei nu se numesc nici Ion Manipulescu si nici Gheorghe Mincinoiu ci pur si simplu banci. Banci care in tinerete si atunci cand erau sanatoase  zburdau cu capul pierdut pe plajele grecesti, portugheze, spaniole si italienesti, racorindu-se mai apoi cu o bere pe plaiurile irlandeze. 

Uitandu-te azi la ele constati insa ca lucrurile s-au schimbat. Bancile au imbatranit si au ajuns hidoase, fiind buntuite in marea lor majoritate de insolatie si de ciroza. Strigatul lor de panica devine astfel tot mai evident, din moment ce excesele se platesc intotdeauna, de multe ori chiar cu pretul vietii.

Bancile iubesc insa viata si nu ar precupetii nimic pentru a o mai putea prelungii. Azi transplantul de ficat nu mai este noutate si ficat tanar este destul. La tinerii de azi si la nevoie chiar si la generatiile care urmeaza, pentru ca bancile ar mai dori sa bea si azi asa cum faceau in tinerete. Si daca s-ar putea, absolut fara repercursiuni. Asa se face ca la o expunere pe care o au fata de "porci", un total de peste 2 trilioane de USD conform ultimului raport BIS ( Banc for International Settlement), bancile mai spera. 

Spera pentru ca la masa la care chefuiau in tinerete au fost invitati intotdeauna si politicieni. Politicieni care, cred ele, vor fi gata acum sa le ofere ficateii fragezi ale populatiilor pe care le conduc. Aceste populatii au fost anesteziate pana acum cu imprumuturi. Vom vedea insa in curand reactia pe care o vor avea atunci cand calaii pe care i-au votat chiar ei de fapt, vor scoate bisturiul pentru ca sa le taie ficatul. In Grecia procesul este in toi. Dupa asa numita salvare si ajutor financiar tara a raportat o "crestere" economica  de -5,5%. 

In momentul de fata se pregatesc noi "salvari" si "ajutoare" financiare, pentru ca hot la hot nu vrea sa scoata ochii. Hai sa extrapolam o singura data si noi liniar si sa ne intrebam: Va reusi oare Grecia sa "creasca" cu -10% in 2-3 ani? Eu cred ca nu! In 2-3 ani Grecia va fi deja o tara care a dat faliment, in timp ce hotii care au avut ochii atintiti asupra fiecateilor populatiilor, vor trebui sa si-i feresca cu grija de mania acestora.

Fiind roman nu trebuie sa ai insa nici o grija. Bancile noastre sunt foarte solide conform expertilor autohtoni. Conform acelora care n-au nimerit niciodata nimic. Continua sa-i asculti asadar ca stiu ce vorbesc, exact asa cum au stiut si pana acum. Investitorii din Grecia s-au aliniat deja si ei la granitele noastre. I-a vazut Isarescu atunci cand culegea struguri. Guvernatorul are ochi de vultur sa nu uitam. Nu-i scapa asadar nici o miscare. Cu atat mai putin codoiul de investitori in forma de S de la granita. S de la sink?(scufundare)

Nu! Nu se poate! Noi vorbim si gandim in aceasta tara cu precadere romaneste. Si, daca mai votam si cuplul siamez Ponta- Antonescu vin si locurile de munca. Un milion cat ai clipi, restul dupa. Cine le va va plati acestor noi angajati salariile? Cum cine? Investitorii greci si de alte nationalitati care stau la coada in forma de S de la granita, in frunte cu Pontanescu. Videanu si actualii baieti si fete de la guvernare, ca sa nu ramana mai prejos, le vor palti premiile lunare de 925 de euro de persoana.

Hai mai treziti-va fratilor! Si inca nu oricum ci bine. 

sâmbătă, 11 iunie 2011

Analiza saptamanala 11 junie


Tinand cont de ultimul grafic din film USDRON vreau sa precizez un lucru important. Euro ar mai trebui sa incerce a apreciere fata de dolar. Cum si cand? Vom vedea saptamana viitoare.

joi, 9 iunie 2011

Fundamentalisti cu gura cascata

Miscarile ciclice probabile si in perspectiva scurta ( grafic de o ora) le vezi expuse. De ce a cazut atunci euro? Ca de obicei pentru ca a atins un varf de ciclu independent de ceea ce a spus sau va face Trichet.

Daca Trichet spunea acelasi lucru apriori unui varf de ciclu euro ar fi urcat spre acel varf, dus conform fundamentalistilor de aceeasi stire.

Acum insa, din moment ce varful pe care l-am prezis si eu a fost atins inaintea stirii, valuta comunitatra nu a avut altceva de facut decat sa cada, exact asa cum a facut-o si argintul, atunci cand a s-a lovit de nivelul de oferta situat la cca. 50 de dolari. Caderea euro i-a lasat asadar din nou si ca intotdeauna pe fundamentalistii dobanzilor cu gura cascata. (Vezi rubrica de mai sus)

Miscarile pe care le-am schitat sunt in perspectiva foarte scurta de timp si nu e sigur ca se vor materialaza intocmai. Pana si in carte am recomandat semnalele date doar de graficele zilnice dar mai ales cele saptamanale. Asta pentru a evita sa fi scos din piata din cauza volatilitatii oferite de intervalele scurte de timp.

miercuri, 8 iunie 2011

Mosu regizor de balet?

Daca ar fi sa te iei dupa Cabati si ING poate, dar eu unul stiu ca nu e cazul. Mosu citeste grafice si atat. Oricum, Isarescu s-a ridicat azi pa varfuri. A facut cativa pasi marunti luand euro de par. Intr-o pirueta vijelioasa balerinul a reusit sa-si salte partenera peste zona firava de oferta pe care o vezi si ai mai vazut-o pe acelasi grafic, acum actualizat.

Pletele euro stau sigure in mainile balerinului, in timp ce parul acelora care au mai fost prostiti sa ia credite in valuta, ca sa-si realizeze visul cu prima, a doua, a treia, si a patra casa, se ridica foarte probabil spre cer.

"Sumele pe care debitorii le datoreaza bancilor insumeaza 6,23 miliarde de lei. Din total, creditele in lei sunt de aproape 3 miliarde, in timp ce creditele in euro ajung sa totalizeze restante de 2,3 miliarde lei. Restantele la creditele in dolari au cea mai mica pondere - 26,5 milioane de lei. Din pacate pentru cei care au astfel de imprumuturi, sumele restante au cunoscut cea mai agresiva evolutie, adica o crestere de aproape 65%, avand in vedere ca, in martie, totalul era de 15,6 milioane lei. Creditele in alte monede insumeaza 960 de milioane de lei. "(Sursa Ziare.com)

Cel mai probabil ultimul val de fraieri a raspuns la chemarea Cabatilor si a dezvoltatorilor imobiliari de partid si de stat. Chemarea trambita valuta comunitara la 3,90-4 lei, precum si fuga spre imobiliarele care se pregateau din nou de decolare.  Ba mai mult! Intr-un articol in care prezentam parerile asa numitilor analisti, o majoritate covarsitoare preziceau o renastere economica in 2012. Una rezultata din vise umede spuneam eu,  din repornirea creditarilor spuneau ei. Intr-o tara in care poporul  este deja inecat in imprumuturile pe care le-au luat pana acum. Chemarea amintita s-a nascut dupa ce specilaistii au analizat pasii de balet al BNR, Vezi mai jos parerea pe care o avea domnul Vasilescu despre cei in cauza.

"Unii analişti continuă seria de calcule fanteziste. Ei vin acum şi ne vând pe piaţă ideea că BNR ar fi pus în joc, în luna mai, între 700 de milioane şi un miliard de euro pentru a împiedica deprecierea monedei naţionale. Mai mult, chiar pentru a fixa cursul la 4,13 lei/euro", a comentat Vasilescu.

Balerinul cavaler, printr-un salt care l-a ridicat mult deasupra scenei, a vazut chiar si investitori la orizont. O gloata gata de invazie. Nu ma indoiesc! Poate i-o fi vazut pe cei ce vor sa investeasca in curatul bazinelor pline de romani inecati. Ce a fost pana acum a fost valul 1, cel cu pestisorii aruncati pe uscat al tsunamiului. Ce urmeaza de acum in colo este valul doi! Un val care va aduce cu sine deprecierea leului percum si o groaza de executari silite facute de bancile inebunite de lipsa de capital. Sa vezi atunci hiperinflatie si pe ultimii fraieriti cu imobiliare sarind in aceeasi barca cu arginatrii. Pentru ca, de ce a profitat romanul in timpul crizei? A profitat de pestisorii adusi de primul val, o afirmatie care suna cam asa in termeni de specialitate:

"Se pare ca romanii au profitat de pe urma crizei si au achizitionat locuinte in valoare de 3 miliade de lei, cel putin asa arata statisticile. Institutiile de creditare au dat imprumuturi imobiliare populatiei in valoare de 28, 26 miliarde de lei, in conditiile in care, cu un an mai devreme, in aprilie 2010, cuantumul acestora era de doar 25,12 miliarde. Majoritatea complesitoare a creditelor a fost acordata in euro, un rol important aici avand chiar programul guvernamental "Prima casa". (aceeiasi sursa)

In ce a continuat romanul "bine informat" sa ia credite? In valuta desigur, asta din moment ce salariul lui este in lei. Cine garanteaza pentru aceste credite de case numerotate cu 1,2,3,4? Statul falimentar roman. Ce vor vedea bancile pana la urma din aceste credite garantate de acelasi stat? Ce au vazut si cei luati de valul doi tsunami din Tailanda. In concluzie: Ignoranta umana pare sa nu aiba margini. Einstein o numea prostie. Observa! Zona depasita de euro din graficul afisat se transforma acum in suport impreuna cu vesnica linie trasa anapoda.

marți, 7 iunie 2011

Totul despre Grecia

Eu am tot scris si argumentat incercand sa prezint jaful la care suntem supusi prin intermediul societatilor fascisto-bancare. Nu e nevoie de sute de diplome cumparate la iarmaroc, asa cum crede romanul, ca sa intelegi mediul in care traiesti. Articolul pe care il expun este foarte lung dar merita citit, in cazul in care ai fi interesat de propria ta soarta. 

Dupa cate stiu traiesti in aceeiasi lume ca si mine, o lume care te influenteaza direct. Tu care nu posezi cunostintele de engleza necesare tradu articolul prin google sau alt translator online. Gasesti unul nu prea grozav chiar pe pagina mea. Faptul ca ne asteapta vremurile grele pe care le-am prezis, cu ciocniri populare intre oamenii treziti din somn si guverne manipulate de banci reiese si din acest articol. 

Observa similaritatile dintre Romania si Grecia chiar daca multi refuza sa le vada. Minciuna, coruptia, ascunderea averilor de la taxare, privilegierea celor bogati cu averi facute prin jaful contribuabilului, mita si manipularea cifrelor reale. Iti mai aduci aminte de cele trei propuneri simple pe care le-am avut pentru o redresare economica sanatoasa, propuneri care au fost cu siguranta luate in deradere de foarte multi? 

1) Nu fura 2) Nu mintii 3) Lasa piata libera sa-si urmeze legile, fara sa te amesteci in ceea ce face. Vezi acum ce efecte ar fi avut aceste propuneri de-o simplitate izbitoare?  Vezi mai apoi si efectul devastator pe care il are un sector de stat ineficient, birocratic, de care nimeni nu are nevoie, exstins la maximum doar pentru mentinerea unor salarii care aduc voturi. Am vorbit si despre asta aici.

Michael Hudson is a research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, which is a serious place, so this is no ill-informed screed. I generally like their stuff.

The Greek bailout provides an opportunity for privatization grab

When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. The hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards. Few saw that the stumbling point was tax policy. Greece was excluded from the eurozone the previous year as a result of failing to meet the 1992 Maastricht criteria for EU membership, limiting budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP, and government debt to 60 percent.

The euro also had other serious fiscal and monetary problems at the outset. There is little thought of wealthier EU economies helping bring less productive ones up to par, e.g. as the United States does with its depressed areas (as in the rescue of the auto industry in 2010) or when the federal government does declares a state of emergency for floods, tornados or other disruptions. As with the United States and indeed nearly all countries, EU “aid” is largely self-serving – a combination of export promotion and bailouts for debtor economies to pay banks in Europe’s main creditor nations: Germany, France and the Netherlands. The EU charter banned the European Central Bank (ECB) from financing government deficits, and prevents (indeed, “saves”) members from having to pay for the “fiscal irresponsibility” of countries running budget deficits. This “hard” tax policy was the price that lower-income countries had to sign onto when they joined the European Union.

Also unlike the United States (or almost any nation), Europe’s parliament was merely ceremonial. It had no power to set and administer EU-wide taxes. Politically, the continent remains a loose federation. Every member is expected to pay its own way. The central bank does not monetize deficits, and there is minimal federal sharing with member states. Public spending deficits – even for capital investment in infrastructure – must be financed by running into debt, at rising interest rates as countries running deficits become more risky.

This means that spending on transportation, power and other basic infrastructure that was publicly financed in North America and the leading European economies (providing services at subsidized rates) must be privatized. Prices for these services must be set high enough to cover interest and other financing charges, high salaries and bonuses, and be run for profit – indeed, for rent extraction as public regulatory authority is disabled.

This makes countries going this route less competitive. It also means they will run into debt to Germany, France and the Netherlands, causing the financial strains that now are leading to showdowns with democratically elected governments. At issue is whether Europe should succumb to centralized planning – on the right wing of the political spectrum, under the banner of “free markets” defined as economies free from public price regulation and oversight, free from consumer protection, and free from taxes on the rich.

The crisis for Greece – as for Iceland, Ireland and debt-plagued economies capped by the United States – is occurring as bank lobbyists demand that “taxpayers” pay for the bailouts of bad speculations and government debts stemming largely from tax cuts for the rich and for real estate, shifting the fiscal burden as well as the debt burden onto labor and industry. The financial sector’s growing power to achieve this tax favoritism is crippling economies, driving them further into reliance on yet more debt financing to remain solvent. Aid is conditional upon recipient countries reducing their wage levels (“internal devaluation”) and selling off public enterprises.

The tunnel vision that guides these policies is self-reinforcing. Europe, America and Japan draw their economic managers from the ranks of professionals sliding back and forth between the banks and finance ministries – what the Japanese call “descent from heaven” to the private sector where worldly rewards are greatest. It is not merely delayed payment for past service. Their government experience and contacts helps them influence the remaining public bureaucracy and lobby their equally opportunistic replacements to promote pro-financial fiscal and monetary policies – that is, to handcuff government and deter regulation and taxation of the financial sector and its real estate and monopoly clients, and to use the government’s taxing and money-creating power to provide bailouts when the inevitable financial collapse occurs as the economy shrinks below break-even levels into negative equity territory.

Regressive tax policies – shifting taxes off the rich and off property onto labor – cause budget deficits financed by public debt. When bondholders pull the plug, the resulting debt pressure forces governments to pay off debts by selling land and other public assets to private buyers (unless governments repudiate the debt or recover by restoring progressive taxation). Most such sales are done on credit. This benefits the banks by creating a loan market for the buyouts. Meanwhile, interest absorbs the earnings, depriving the government of tax revenue it formerly could have received as user fees. The tax gift to financiers is based on the bad policy of treating debt financing as a necessary cost of doing business, not as a policy choice – one that indeed is induced by the tax distortion of making interest payments tax-deductible.

Buyers borrow credit to appropriate “the commons” in the same way they bid for commercial real estate. The winner is whoever raises the largest buyout loan – by pledging the most revenue to pay the bank as interest. So the financial sector ends up with the revenue hitherto paid to governments as taxes or user fees. This is euphemized as a free market.

Promoting the financial sector at the economy’s expense

The resulting debt leveraging is not a solvable problem. It is a quandary from which economies can escape only by focusing on production and consumption rather than merely subsidizing the financial system to enable players to make money from money by inflating asset prices on free electronic keyboard credit. Austerity causes unemployment, which lowers wages and prevents labor from sharing in the surplus. It enables companies to force their employees to work overtime and harder in order to get or keep a job, but does not really raise productivity and living standards in the way envisioned a century ago. Increasing housing prices on credit – requiring larger debts for access to home ownership – is not real prosperity.

To contrast the “real” economy from the financial sector requires distinctions to be drawn between productive and unproductive credit and investment. One needs the concept of economic rent as an institutional and political return to privilege without a corresponding cost of production. Classical political economy was all about distinguishes earned from unearned income, cost-value from market price. But pro-financial lobbyists deny that any income or rentier wealth is unearned or parasitic. The national income and product accounts (NIPA) do not draw any such distinction. This blind spot is not accidental. It is the essence of post-classical economics. And it explains why Europe is so crippled.

The way in which the euro was created in 1999 reflects this shallow vision. The Maastricht fiscal and financial rules maximize the commercial loan market by preventing central banks from supplying governments (and hence, the economy) with credit to grow. Commercial banks are to be the sole source of financing budget deficits – defined to include infrastructure investment in transportation, communication, power and water. Privatization of these basic services blocks governments from supplying them at subsidized rates or freely. So roads are turned into toll roads, charging access fees that are readily monopolized. Economies are turned into sets of tollbooths, paying out their access charges as interest to creditors. These extractive rents make privatized economies high-cost. But to the financial sector that is “wealth creation.” It is enhanced by untaxing interest payments to banks and bondholders – aggravating fiscal deficits in the process, however.

The Greek budget crisis in perspective

A fiscal legacy of the colonels’ 1967-74 junta was tax evasion by the well to do. The “business-friendly” parties that followed were reluctant to tax the wealthy. A 2010 report stated that nearly a third of Greek income was undeclared, with “fewer than 15,000 Greeks declar[ing] incomes of over €100,000, despite tens of thousands living in opulent wealth on the outskirts of the capital. A new drive by the Socialists to track down swimming pool owners by deploying Google Earth was met with a virulent response as Greeks invested in fake grass, camouflage and asphalt to hide the tax liabilities from the spies in space.”

As a result of the military dictatorship depressing public spending below the European norm, infrastructure needed to be rebuilt – and this required budget deficits. The only way to avoid running them would have been to make the rich pay the taxes they were supposed to. But squeezing public spending to the level that wealthy Greeks were willing to pay in taxes did not seem politically feasible. (Almost no country since the 1980s has enacted Progressive Era tax policies.) The 3% Maastricht limit on budget deficits refused to count capital spending by government as capital formation, on the ideological assumption that all government spending is deadweight waste and only private investment is productive.

The path of least resistance was to engage in fiscal deception. Wall Street bankers helped the “conservative” (that is, fiscally regressive and financially profligate) parties conceal the extent of the public debt with the kind of junk accounting that financial engineers had pioneered for Enron. And as usual when financial deception in search of fees and profits is concerned, Goldman Sachs was in the middle. In February 2010, the German magazine Der Spiegel exposed how the firm had helped Greece conceal the rise in public debt, by mortgaging assets in a convoluted derivatives deal – legal but with the covert intent of circumventing the Maastricht limitation on deficits. “Eurostat’s reporting rules don’t comprehensively record transactions involving financial derivatives,” so Greece’s obligation appeared as a cross-currency swap rather than as a debt. The government used off-balance-sheet entities and derivatives similar to what Icelandic and Irish banks later would use to indulge in fictitious debt disappearance and an illusion of financial solvency.

The reality, of course, was a virtual debt. The government was obligated to pay Wall Street billions of euros out of future airport landing fees and the national lottery as “the so-called cross currency swaps … mature, and swell the country’s already bloated deficit.” Translated into straightforward terms, the deal left Greece’s public-sector budget deficit at 12 percent of GDP, four times the Maastricht limit.

Using derivatives to engineer Enron-style accounting enabled Greece to mask a debt as a market swap based on foreign currency options, to be unwound over ten to fifteen years . Goldman was paid some $300 million in fees and commissions for its aid orchestrating the 2001 scheme. “A similar deal in 2000 called Ariadne devoured the revenue that the government collected from its national lottery. Greece, however, classified those transactions as sales, not loans.” JPMorgan Chase and other banks helped orchestrate similar deals across Europe, providing “cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books.”

The financial sector has an interest in understating the debt burden – first, by using “mark to model” junk accounting, and second, by pretending that the debt burden can be paid without disrupting economic life. Financial spokesmen from Tim Geithner in the United States to Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF claimed that the post-2008 debt crisis is merely a short-term “liquidity problem” (lack of “confidence”), not insolvency reflecting an underlying inability to pay. Banks promise that everything will be all right when the economy “returns to normal” – if only the government will buy their junk mortgages and bad loans (“sound long-term investments”) for ready cash.

The intellectual deception at work

Financial lobbyists seek to distract voters and policy makers from realizing that “normalcy” cannot be restored without wiping out the debts that have made the economy abnormal. The larger the debt burden grows, the more economy-wide austerity is required to pay debts to banks and bondholders instead of investing in capital formation and real growth.

Austerity makes the problem worse, by intensifying debt deflation. To pretend that austerity helps economies rather than destroys them, bank lobbyists claim that shrinking markets will lower wage rates and “make the economy more competitive” by “squeezing out the fat.” But the actual “fat” is the debt overhead – the interest, amortization, financial fees and penalties built into the cost of doing business, the cost of living and the cost of government.

When difficulty arises in paying debts, the path of least resistance is to provide more credit – to enable debtors to pay. This keeps the system solvent by increasing the debt overhead – seemingly an oxymoron. As financial institutions see the point approaching where debts cannot be paid, they try to get “senior creditors” – the ECB and IMF – to lend governments enough money to pay, and ideally to shift risky debts onto the government (“taxpayers”). This gets them off the books of banks and other large financial institutions that otherwise would have to take losses on Greek government bonds, Irish bank obligations bonds, etc., just as these institutions lost on their holdings of junk mortgages. The banks use the resulting breathing room to try and dump their bond holdings and bad bets on the proverbial “greater fool.”

In the end the debts cannot be paid. For the economy’s high-financial managers the problem is how to postpone defaults for as long as possible – and then to bail out, leaving governments (“taxpayers”) holding the bag, taking over the obligations of insolvent debtors (such as A.I.G. in the United States). But to do this in the face of popular opposition, it is necessary to override democratic politics. So the divestment by erstwhile financial losers requires that economic policy be taken out of the hands of elected government bodies and transferred to those of financial planners. This is how financial oligarchy replaces democracy.

Paying higher interest for higher risk, while protecting banks from losses

The role of the ECB, IMF and other financial oversight agencies has been to make sure that bankers got paid. As the past decade of fiscal laxity and deceptive accounting came to light, bankers and speculators made fortunes jacking up the interest rate that Greece had to pay for its increasing risk of default. To make sure they did not lose, bankers shifted the risk onto the European “troika” empowered to demand payment from Greek taxpayers.

Banks that lent to the public sector (at above-market interest rates reflecting the risk), they were to be bailed out at public expense. (At the time of the spring 2010 bailout French banks held €31 billion of Greek bonds, compared to €23 billion by German banks. This helps explain why French President Nicolas Sarkozy sought to take major credit for the bailout, based on a May 7, 2010 discussions with EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet and Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker.)

Demanding that Greece not impose a “haircut” on creditors, the ECB and related EU bureaucracy demanded a better deal for European bondholders than creditors received from the Brady bonds that resolved Latin American and Third World debts in the 1980s. In an interview with the Financial Times, ECB executive board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi insisted:

First, the Brady bonds solution was a solution for American banks, which were basically allowed not to ‘mark to market’ the restructured bonds. There was regulatory forbearance, which was possible in the 1980 but would not be possible today.

Second, the Latin American crisis was a foreign debt crisis. The main problem in the Greek crisis is Greece, its banks and its own financial system. Latin America had borrowed in dollars and the lines of credit were mainly with foreigners. Here, a large part of the debt is with Greeks. If Greece defaulted, the Greek banking system would collapse. It would then need a huge recapitalization – but where would the money come from?

Third, after default the Latin American countries still had a central bank that could print money to pay for civil servants’ wages, pensions. They did this and created inflation. So they got out [of the crisis] through inflation, depreciation and so forth. In Greece you would not have a central bank that could finance the government, and it would have to partly shut down some of its operations, like the health system.

Mr. Bini Smaghi threatened that Europe would destroy the Greek economy if it tried to scale back its debts or even stretch out maturities to reflect the ability to pay. Greece’s choice was between or anarchy. Restructuring would not benefit “the Greek people. It would entail a major economic, social and even humanitarian disaster, within Europe. Orderly implies things go smoothly, but if you wipe out the banking system, how can it be smooth?” The ECB’s “position [is] based on principle … In the euro area debts have to be repaid and countries have to be solvent. That has to be the principle of a market-based economy.”

A creditor-oriented economy is not really a market-based, of course. The banks destroyed the market by their own central financial planning — using debt leverage to leave Greece with a bare choice: Either it would permit EU officials to come in and carve up its economy, selling its major tourist sites and monopolistic rent-extracting opportunities to foreign creditors in a gigantic national foreclosure movement, or it could bite the bullet and withdraw from the Eurozone. That was the deal Mr. Bini Smaghi offered: “if there are sufficient privatizations, and so forth – then the IMF can disburse and the Europeans will do their share. But the key lies in Athens, not elsewhere. The key element for the return of Greece to the market is to stop discussions about restructuring.”

One way or another, Greece would lose, he explained: “default or restructuring would not help solve the problems of the Greek economy, problems that can be solved only by adopting the kind of structural reforms and fiscal adjustment measures included in the programme. On the contrary it would push Greece into a major economic and social depression.” This leverage demanding to be paid or destroying the economy’s savings and monetary system is what central bankers call a “rescue,” or “restoring market forces.” Bankers claim that austerity will revive growth. But to accept as a realistic democratic alternative would be self-immolation.

Unless Greece signed onto this nonsense, neither the ECB nor the IMF would extend loans to save its banking system from insolvency. On May 31, 2011, Europe agreed to provide $86 billion in euros if Greece “puts off for the time being a restructuring, hard or soft, of Greece’s huge debt burden.” The pretense was a “hope that in another two years Greece will be in a better position to repay its debts in full.” Anticipation of the faux rescue led the euro to rebound against foreign currencies, and European stocks to jump by 2%. Yields on Greek 10-year bonds fell to “only” a 15.7 percent distress level, down one percentage point from the previous week’s high of 16.8 percent when a Greek official made the threatening announcement that “Restructuring is off the table. For now it is all about growth, growth, growth.”

How can austerity be about growth? This idea never has worked, but the pretense was on. The EU would provide enough money for the Greek government to save bondholders from having to suffer losses. The financial sector supports heavy taxpayer expense as long as the burden does not fall on itself or its main customers in the real estate sector or the infrastructure monopolies being privatized.

The loan-for-privatization tradeoff was called “aiding Greece” rather than bailing out German, French and other bondholders. But financial investors knew better. “Since the crisis began, 60 billion euros in deposits have been withdrawn from Greek banks, about a quarter of the country’s output.” These withdrawals, which were gaining momentum, were the precise size of the loan being offered!

Meanwhile, the shift of 60 billion euros off the balance sheets of banks onto the private sector threatened to raise the ratio of public debt to GDP over 150 percent. There was talk that another 100 billion euros would be needed to “socialize the losses” that otherwise would be suffered by German, French and other European bankers who had their eyes set on a windfall if heavily discounted Greek bonds were made risk-free by carving up Greece in much the same way that the Versailles Treaty did to Germany after World War I.

The Greek population certainly saw that the world was at financial war. Increasingly large crowds gathered each day to protest in Syntagma Square in front of the Parliament, much as Icelandic crowds had done earlier under similar threats by their Social Democrats to sell out the nation to European creditors. And just as Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigurdardottir held on arrogantly against public opinion, so did Greek Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou. This prompted EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki “to ‘speak openly’ about the dilemma facing her country,” warning: “The scenario of Greece’s exit from the euro is now on the table, as are ways to do this. Either we agree with our creditors on a programme of tough sacrifices and results … or we return to the drachma. Everything else is of secondary importance.” And former Dutch Finance Minister Willem Vermeend wrote in De Telegraaf that ‘Greece should leave the euro,’ given that it will never be able to pay back its debt.”

As in Iceland, the Greek austerity measures are to be put to a national referendum – with polls reporting that some 85 percent of Greeks reject the bank-bailout-cum-austerity plan. Its government is paying twice as much for credit as the Germans, despite seemingly having no foreign-exchange risk (using the euro). The upshot may be to help drive Greece out of the eurozone, not only by forcing default (the revenue is not there to pay) but by Newton’s Third Law of Political Motion: Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. The ECB’s attempt to make Greek labor –(“taxpayers”) pay foreign bondholders is leading to pressure for outright repudiation and the domestic “I won’t pay” movement. Greece’s labor movement always has been strong, and the debt crisis is further radicalizing it.

The aim of commercial banks is to replace governments in creating money, making the economy entirely dependent on them, with public borrowing creating an enormous risk-free “market” for interest-bearing loans. It was to overcome this situation that the Bank of England was created in 1694 – to free the country from reliance on Italian and Dutch credit. Likewise the U.S. Federal Reserve, for all its limitations, was founded to enable the government to create its own money. But European banks have hog-tied their governments, replacing Parliamentary democracy with dictatorship by the ECB, which is blocked constitutionally from creating credit for governments – until German and French banks found it in their own interest for it to do so. As UMKC Professor Bill Black summarizes the situation:

A nation that gives up its sovereign currency by joining the euro gives up the three most effective means of responding to a recession. It cannot devalue its currency to make its exports more competitive. It cannot undertake an expansive monetary policy. It does not have any monetary policy and the EU periphery nations have no meaningful influence on the ECB’s monetary policies. It cannot mount an appropriately expansive fiscal policy because of the restrictions of the EU’s growth and stability pact. The pact is a double oxymoron – preventing effective counter-cyclical fiscal policies harms growth and stability throughout the Eurozone.

Financial politics are now dominated by the drive to replace debt defaults by running a fiscal surplus to pay bankers and bondholders. The financial system wants to be paid. But mathematically this is impossible, because the “magic of compound interest” outruns the economy’s ability to pay – unless central banks flood asset markets with new bubble credit, as U.S. policy has done since 2008. When debtors cannot pay, and when the banks in turn cannot pay their depositors and other counterparties, the financial system turns to the government to extract the revenue from “taxpayers” (not the financial sector itself). The policy bails out insolvent banks by plunging domestic economies into debt deflation, making taxpayers bear the cost of banks gone bad.

These financial claims are virtually a demand for tribute. And since 2010 they have been applied to the PIIGS countries. The problem is that revenue used to pay creditors is not available for spending within the economy. So investment and employment shrink, and defaults spread. Something must give, politically as well as economically as society is brought back to the “Copernican problem”: Will the “real” economy of production and consumption revolve around finance, or will financial demands for interest devour the economic surplus and begin to eat into the economy?

Technological determinists believe that technology drives. If this were so, rising productivity would have made everybody in Europe and the United States wealthy by now, rich enough to be out of debt. But there is a Chicago School inquisition insisting that today’s needless suffering is perfectly natural and even necessary to rescue economies by saving their banks and debt overhead – as if all this is the economic core, not wrapped around the core.

Meanwhile, economies are falling deeper into debt, despite rising productivity measures. The seeming riddle has been explained many times, but is so counter-intuitive that it elicits a wall of cognitive dissonance. The natural view is to think that the world shouldn’t be this way, letting credit creation load down economies with debt without financing the means to pay it off. But this imbalance is the key dynamic defining whether economies will grow or shrink.

John Kenneth Galbraith explained that banking and credit creation is so simple a principle that the mind rejects it – because it is something for nothing, the proverbial free lunch stemming from the principle of banks creating deposits by making loans. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so most people abhor the idea that there is such a thing as a free lunch. But the financial free lunchers have taken over the political system.

They can hold onto their privilege and avert a debt write-down only as long as they can prevent widespread moral objection to the idea that the economy is all about saving creditor claims from being scaled back to the economy’s ability to pay – by claiming that the financial brake is actually the key to growth, not a free transfer payment.

The upcoming Greek referendum poses this question just as did Iceland’s earlier this spring. As Yves Smith recently commented regarding the ECB’s game of chicken as to whether Greece’s government would accept or reject its hard terms:

This is what debt slavery looks like on a national level. …

Greece looks to be on its way to be under the boot of bankers just as formerly free small Southern farmers were turned into “debtcroppers” after the US Civil War. Deflationary policies had left many with mortgage payments that were increasingly difficult to service. Many fell into “crop lien” peonage. Farmers were cash starved and pledged their crops to merchants who then acted in an abusive parental role, being given lists of goods needed to operate the farm and maintain the farmer’s family and doling out as they saw fit. The merchants not only applied interest to the loans, but further sold the goods to farmers at 30% or higher markups over cash prices. The system was operated, by design, so that the farmer’s crop would never pay him out of his debts (the merchant as the contracted buyer could pay whatever he felt like for the crop; the farmer could not market it to third parties). This debt servitude eventually led to rebellion in the form of the populist movement.

One would expect a similar political movement today. And as in the late 19th century, academic economics will be mobilized to reject it. Subsidized by the financial sector, today’s economic orthodoxy finds it natural to channel productivity gains to the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector and monopolies rather than to raise wages and living standards. Neoliberal lobbyists and their academic mascots dismiss sharing productivity gains with labor as being unproductive and not conducive to “wealth creation” financial style.

Making governments pay creditors when banks run aground

At issue is not only whether bank debts should be paid by taking them onto the public balance sheet at taxpayer expense, but whether they can reasonably be paid. If they cannot be, then trying to pay them will shrink economies further, making them even less viable. Many countries already have passed this financial limit. What is now in question is a political step – whether there is a limit to how much further creditor interests can push national populations into debt-dependency. Future generations may look back on our epoch as a great Social Experiment on how far the point may be deferred at which government – or parliaments – will draw a line against taking on public liability for debts beyond any reasonable capacity to pay without drastically slashing public spending on education, health care and other basic services?

Is a government – or economy – be said to be solvent as long as it has enough land and buildings, roads, railroads, phone systems and other infrastructure to sell off to pay interest on debts mounting exponentially? Or should we think of solvency as existing under existing proportions in our mixed public/private economies? If populations can be convinced of the latter definition – as those of the former Soviet Union were, and as the ECB, EU and IMF are now demanding – then the financial sector will proceed with buyouts and foreclosures until it possesses all the assets in the world, all the hitherto public assets, corporate assets and those of individuals and partnerships.

This is what today’s financial War of All against All is about. And it is what the Greeks gathering in Syntagma Square are demonstrating about. At issue is the relationship between the financial sector and the “real” economy. From the perspective of the “real” economy, the proper role of credit – that is, debt – is to fund productive capital investment and economic growth. After all, it is out of the economic surplus that interest is to be paid. This requires a tax system and financial regulatory system to maximize the growth. But that is precisely the fiscal policy that today’s financial sector is fighting against. It demands tax-deductibility for interest, encouraging debt financing rather than equity. It has disabled truth-in-lending laws and regulation keeping prices (the interest rate and fees) in line with costs of production. And it blocks governments from having central banks to freely finance their own operations and provide economies with money.

Banks and their financial lobbyists have not shown much interest in economy-wide wellbeing. It is easier and quicker to make money by being extractive and predatory. Fraud and crime pay, if you can disable the police and regulatory agencies. So that has become the financial agenda, eagerly endorsed by academic spokesmen and media ideologues who applaud bank managers and subprime mortgage brokers, corporate raiders and their bondholders, and the new breed of privatizers, using the one-dimensional measure of how much revenue can be squeezed out and capitalized into debt service. From this neoliberal perspective, an economy’s wealth is measured by the magnitude of debt obligations – mortgages, bonds and packaged bank loans – that capitalize income and even hoped-for capital gains at the going rate of interest.

Iceland belatedly decided that it was wrong to turn over its banking to a few domestic oligarchs without any real oversight or regulation over their self-dealing. From the vantage point of economic theory, was it not madness to imagine that Adam Smith’s quip about not relying on the benevolence of the butcher, brewer or baker for their products, but on their self-interest is applicable to bankers? Their “product” is not a tangible consumption good, but interest-bearing debt. These debts are a claim on output, revenue and wealth; they do not constitute real wealth.

This is what pro-financial neoliberals fail to understand. For them, debt creation is “wealth creation” (Alan Greenspan’s favorite euphemism) when credit – that is, debt – bids up prices for property, stocks and bonds and thus enhances financial balance sheets. The “equilibrium theory” that underlies academic orthodoxy treats asset prices (financialized wealth) as reflecting a capitalization of expected income. But in today’s Bubble Economy, asset prices reflect whatever bankers will lend. Rather than being based on rational calculation, their loans are based on what investment bankers are able to package and sell to frequently gullible financial institutions. This logic leads to attempts to pay pensions out of a “wealth creating” process that runs economies into debt.

It is not hard to statistically illustrate this. There amount of debt that an economy can pay is limited by the size of its surplus, defined as corporate profits and personal income for the private sector, and net fiscal revenue paid to the public sector. But neither today’s financial theory nor global practice recognizes a capacity-to-pay constraint. So debt service has been permitted to eat into capital formation and reduce living standards – and now, to demand privatization sell-offs.

As an alternative is to such financial demands, Iceland has provided a model for what Greece may do. Responding to British and Dutch demands that its government guarantee payment of the Icesave bailout, the Althing recently asserted the principle of sovereign debt:

The preconditions for the extension of government guarantee according to this Act are:

1. That … account shall be taken of the difficult and unprecedented circumstances with which Iceland is faced with and the necessity of deciding on measures which enable it to reconstruct its financial and economic system.

This implies among other things that the contracting parties will agree to a reasoned and objective request by Iceland for a review of the agreements in accordance with their provisions.

2. That Iceland’s position as a sovereign state precludes legal process against its assets which are necessary for it to discharge in an acceptable manner its functions as a sovereign state.

Instead of imposing the kind of austerity programs that devastated Third World countries from the 1970s to the 1990s and led them to avoid the IMF like a plague, the Althing is changing the rules of the financial system. It is subordinating Iceland’s reimbursement of Britain and Holland to the ability of Iceland’s economy to pay:

In evaluating the preconditions for a review of the agreements, account shall also be taken to the position of the national economy and government finances at any given time and the prospects in this respect, with special attention being given to foreign exchange issues, exchange rate developments and the balance on current account, economic growth and changes in gross domestic product as well as developments with respect to the size of the population and job market participation.

This is the Althing proposal to settle its Icesave bank claims that Britain and the Netherlands rejected so passionately as “unthinkable.” So Iceland said, “No, take us to court.” And that is where matters stand right now.

Greece is not in court. But there is talk of a “higher law,” much as was discussed in the United States before the Civil War regarding slavery. At issue today is the financial analogue, debt peonage.

Will it be enough to change the world’s financial environment? For the first time since the 1920s (as far as I know), Iceland made the capacity-to-pay principle the explicit legal basis for international debt service. The amount to be paid is to be limited to a specific proportion of the growth in its GDP (on the admittedly tenuous assumption that this can indeed be converted into export earnings). After Iceland recovers, the Treasury offered to guarantee payment for Britain for the period 2017-2023 up to 4% of the growth of GDP after 2008, plus another 2% for the Dutch. If there is no growth in GDP, there will be no debt service. This meant that if creditors took punitive actions whose effect is to strangle Iceland’s economy, they wouldn’t get paid.

No wonder the EU bureaucracy reacted with such anger. It was a would-be slave rebellion. Returning to the applicable of Newton’s Third Law of motion to politics and economics, it was natural enough for Iceland, as the most thoroughly neoliberalized disaster area, to be the first economy to push back. The past two years have seen its status plunge from having the West’s highest living standards (debt-financed, as matters turn out) to the most deeply debt-leveraged. In such circumstances it is natural for a population and its elected officials to experience a culture shock – in this case, an awareness of the destructive ideology of neoliberal “free market” euphemisms that led to privatization of the nation’s banks and the ensuing debt binge.

The Greeks gathering in Syntagma Square seem to need no culture shock to reject their Socialist government’s cave-in to European bankers. It looks like they may follow Iceland in leading the ideological pendulum back toward a classical awareness that in practice, this rhetoric turns out to be a junk economics favorable to banks and global creditors. Interest-bearing debt is the “product” that banks sell, after all. What seemed at first blush to be “wealth creation” was more accurately debt-creation, in which banks took no responsibility for the ability to pay. The resulting crash led the financial sector to suddenly believe that it did love centralized government control after all – to the extent of demanding public-sector bailouts that would reduce indebted economies to a generation of fiscal debt peonage and the resulting economic shrinkage.

As far as I am aware, this agreement is the first since the Young Plan for Germany’s reparations debt to subordinate international debt obligations to the capacity-to-pay principle. The Althing’s proposal spells this out in clear terms as an alternative to the neoliberal idea that economies must pay willy-nilly (as Keynes would say), sacrificing their future and driving their population to emigrate in a vain attempt to pay debts that, in the end, can’t be paid but merely leave debtor economies hopelessly dependent on their creditors. In the end, democratic nations are not willing to relinquish political planning authority to an emerging financial oligarchy.

No doubt the post-Soviet countries are watching, along with Latin American, African and other sovereign debtors whose growth has been stunted by predatory austerity programs imposed by IMF, World Bank and EU neoliberals in recent decades. We should all hope that the post-Bretton Woods era is over. But it won’t be until the Greek population follows that of Iceland in saying no – and Ireland finally wakes up.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf writes that the eurozone “has only two options: to go forwards towards a closer union or backwards towards at least partial dissolution. … either default and partial dissolution or open-ended official support.” But ECB intransigence leaves little alternative to breakup. Europe’s payments-surplus nations are waging financial war against the deficit countries. Without a common union based on mutual support within a mixed economy – one capable of checking financial aggression – the European Central Bank replaced the military high command. Its bold gamble is whether the Greeks will be as stupid as the Irish, not as smart as the Icelanders.