Monday, June 18, 2012

The ship is sinking more bail buckets Capt.


While all the eagle eyes of Wall Street are sharply focused on Greece a bigger elephant is hiding in plan sight yet the diversion has been well orchestrated. Termed the "Spailout" by Greeks and others is the debt problem in Spain. Greeces' financial problems pale by comparison. But let's step back to Greece once again and examine the problem. Financially Greece got the reputation as being a smaller and weaker country of the newly formed Euro zone. Exactly how they were even permitted entry in the first place is questionable as they had recently restructured their debt by none other than Goldman Sachs that bastion of honesty. If you know anything about credit default swaps then you'll know why this all happened. In an effort to lower interest rates on their national debt they took the bait. From what's been read and heard even those pushing these credit time bombs weren't exactly sure how they worked. Rocket science would have been child's play by comparison.

All of these instruments of financial mass destruction were based on the idea that the markets and housing would continue to hit the stratosphere and beyond. But when the bubble burst there was no way Greece could alter its' situation. Being tied to the Euro it couldn't change the value of its' currency. You will note that nearly every country in the world did just that after the meltdown of 2008 by cranking up the money presses. As has been stated before much of Greeces' wealth is off shore and untaxed which hasn't helped the situation. But the losses in real estate and contracts tied to it have been the final blow. Austerity and tax increases have done nothing but make the problem worse. With lowered incomes and higher taxes prices of necessities like food have gone up as well. And with a banking system close to gridlock this has been no picnic for business that relies on the capital to function. So with shrinking tax revenues it takes no genius to figure that a collapse is evident. It's only a matter of time. Some predicting three months while others six.

The Spailout - The easiest explanation would be from this gentleman as follows:

Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz pointed out the Ponzi scheme nature of the whole bailout discussion:

Europe’s plan to lend money to Spain to heal some of its banks may not work because the government and the country’s lenders will in effect be propping each other up, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

“The system … is the Spanish government bails out Spanish banks, and Spanish banks bail out the Spanish government,” Stiglitz said in an interview.

***
“It’s voodoo economics,” Stiglitz said in an interview on Friday, before the weekend deal to help Spain and its banks was sealed. “It is not going to work and it’s not working.”

Several other economists and financial gurus point out that there isn't enough money in the world to fix this problem, Spain's being some $2 trillion dollars worth. A little perspective from an article in 2005:
According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history.

As you can see while financial Rome burns Wall Street fiddles cheering on the next bail out and hoping the game won't end until they have cashed out their chips. But we all know how Ponzi schemes work and what happens in the end. Unfortunately we are the suckers in the scheme whether we like it or not.

So how are those in the know reporting that this will all go down? By this example:

Greece → Ireland → Portugal → Spain → Italy → UK

I would add the U.S. and Canada when the UK takes a dump.

Prosperity isn't just around the corner and happy days sure aren't here again either. If you remember those little ditties then you're old.

2 comments:

BBC said...

I don't give a shit if they all go broke, then they'll be on the same ship I'm on.

And I'll start tossing the fucking whiners overboard.

Randal Graves said...

Be sure to root for Greece against the Sgt. Schultzs on Friday.