Euro banks are weak...but not collapsing! I say it's a sign of strength and some kind of relief rally is in the making.
Using archive.org there is not a single reference to even 'madoff securities' or 'madoff' prior to the discovery, this is clearly not complete
The extend and pretend policy might actually work(to prevent defaults). They are essentially guaranteeing the liquidity of any country for any length of time, meanwhile these countries are doing austerity which should result in a fiscal surplus, at that point the country can keep going without a default. This comes at a severe cost to the economy(which means ECB keeps rates low for years and years) but it can be done The question is wont the riots, revolt and unemployment make the politicians change their mind at some point, that would lead to defaults. But so far, there is little or no evidence of that, politicians if anything seem to be holding the belief that a default would lead to a Lehman style meltdown quite strongly(Perhaps correctly so)
Matter of fact the EU fund could provide some kind of relief to the PIGS by cutting the interest rate(maybe even the principal) later on as a bargaining tool against a government thinking about default. I'd say this is likely, its not a loan its a fiscal transfer. This might be what the 'greece will default 100% guaranteed' folks might be missing
This is not to say that the bets being placed by traders on default through CDS on the pigs aren't correctly priced but I no longer see this as a one way bet like some do. If this fiscal transfer is large enough the EU fund essentially would be wiping out the deficit of the pigs for several years while they are on the process of building a fiscal surplus, if they are generous enough any country could get out of trouble with that
I can't see how they won't. Its like when Paulson changed TARP from buying bad assets to injecting capital to prevent the collapse of the big banks, it was unpopular and against the stated intentions of the program but he did anyway. If the EU people are really scared of a Lehman event they will be willing to cut the interest rate and principal even though their taxpayer would lose money and they would lose votes. The 'no lehmans' policy seem to take over politics in times of big crises I'm trying to figure out how this would impact the EUR
That's the problem, you see... At th moment, there's no such thing as "the EU people". There's a bunch of organizations/politicians that, as of this moment, can't agree on anything. My hope is that the will get their act together at some point, but I am not holding my breath any more.
Weird, I was reading the Forbes articles about Wikileaks and Assange and they were all deleted out of nowhere(404 error now) I'm listening to the audiobook 'No One would Listen' by Harry Markopolos about his attempts to expose Madoff. Given that things he went through I'd be surprised if Assange is not assassinated in a few years