It indeed looks more like Merkel's Götterdämmerung is approaching. But I doubt that politicians in Southern Europe would be happy to meet her most likely succesor: Wolfgang Schäuble. Then again this could be an opportunity, if the the Debt crisis reemerges Schäuble could use it to smooth over the fallout of Merkel's fall and implement the necessary steps for the Euro to survive. As much as I admire Merkel's negotiation skills, it is becoming more and more obvious that her soft stance on Greece might have been wrong in the long run. If there is one man who can bring those who dream of German tax money to heel, it is Schäuble.
Or we could dump the failed zombie project that is the euro until Europe is prepared to engage in greater political solidarity.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Nobody is forced to stay, the Euro remains as long as countries choose to participate.
Really? That's not what was said when the possibility of a Greek exit was bandied about.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Schäuble was in favour of a Grexit (or more specifically, Greece should voluntarily suspend its membership in the Euro for a few years), something Tsipras (and luckily for him) Merkel opposed.
The problem is that the Greeks want their cake and eat it, they apparently still want to retain te Euro but to their conditions which is unacceptable. But they are not forced to continue using it.
Well, the one good thing most people can agree on is that, at least, we won't be suffering the kind of things Greece suffered when Syriza dared to speak out. For now.
Anyway, the motion of rejection has been approved in the Parliament (123 votes in favour, 107 against). The government coalition of these previous years has fallen. We're now gonna have to wait for the President's future choice and statement.
This is the shortest government/mandate of the current Republic ever - 12 days.
edited 10th Nov '15 1:05:23 PM by Quag15
Yeah as much as I admire trying to fix a broken system the Euro fundamentally does not work with the countries that form it, when you realise that the inmates are running the asylum you leave.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ CyranGermany gives Greece names of 10,000 citizens suspected of dodging taxes
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.Finnish Foreign Minister says Finland should of never joined the Euro.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. - Douglas AdamsIndeed, Finland is getting hammered by its fiscal hogties to the euro, even though it literally did nothing that could even be considered slightly irresponsible by the standards of Brussels. All that happened was that demand for its exports fell. That is the core problem with the EZ: it has no mechanism to deal with transient instability — asymmetric demand shocks, in technical parlance.
edited 22nd Dec '15 7:28:08 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I guess the demand shock was due to sanctions against Russia?
Keep Rolling OnThe collapse of Nokia was apparently a major contributor. There's a moral there about putting all your eggs in one basket, but it was the recipient of great praise before it showed signs of weakness. Stories need to be gotten straight there.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It also doesn't help that its' paper industry, is suffering from declining global demand.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-04/10/c_134138231.htm
edited 22nd Dec '15 11:02:05 AM by Zarastro
Yep, Nokia declined and its paper exports declined. If it had a floating currency, the natural outcome would be for it to depreciate, maintaining its net trade balance. Of course, it does not have a floating currency, so is forced now to undergo completely gratuitous internal devaluation... or exit the Eurozone.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Not sure how reliable this is, but anyway:
Italy’s Banking Crisis Spirals Elegantly Out of Control:
“If the ECB continues like this, it will soon buy old bicycles and pay for them with new paper money.”
This is now coming to pass.
Italy, the Eurozone’s third largest economy, is in a full-blown banking crisis. Four small banks were rescued late last year. The big ones are teetering. Their stocks have crashed. They’re saddled with non-performing loans (defined as in default or approaching default). We’re not sure that the full extent of these NP Ls is even known.
The number officially tossed around is €201 billion. But even the ECB seems to doubt that number. Its new bank regulator, the Single Supervisory Mechanism, is now seeking additional information about NP Ls to get a handle on them.
Other numbers tossed around are over €300 billion, or 18% of total loans outstanding.
The IMF shed an even harsher light on this fiasco. It reported last year that over 80% of the NP Ls are corporate loans. Of all corporate loans, 30% were non-performing, with large regional differences, ranging from 17% in some of the northern regions to over 50% in some of the southern regions. The report:
High corporate NP Ls reflect both weak profitability in a severe recession as well the heavy indebtedness of many Italian firms, especially SM Es, which are among the highest in the Euro Area. This picture is consistent with corporate survey data which shows nearly 30% of corporate debt is owed by firms whose earnings (before interest and taxes) are insufficient to cover their interest payments.
The reason these NP Ls piled up over the years is because banks have been slow to, or have refused to, write them off or sell them to third parties at market rates. Recognizing the losses would have eaten up the banks’ scarce capital. Reality would have been too ugly to behold.
The study found that the average time for writing off bad loans has jumped to over six years by 2014. And this:
In 2013, on average less than 10% of bad debt, despite already being in a state of insolvency, was written off or sold. The bad debt write-off rate varies significantly across the major banks, with banks with the highest NPL ratios featuring the lowest write-off rates. The slow pace of write-offs is an important factor in the rapid buildup of NP Ls.
Now, to keep the banks from toppling, the ECB has an ingenious plan: it’s going to buy these toxic assets or accept them as collateral in return for cash.
That’s what the Italian Treasury told reporters, according to Reuters. Oh, but the ECB is not going to buy them directly. That would violate the rules; it can only buy assets that sport a relatively high credit rating. And this stuff is toxic.
So these loans are going to get bundled into structured Asset Backed Securities (ABS) and sliced into different tranches. The top tranches will be the last ones to absorb losses. A high credit rating will then be stamped on these senior tranches to make them eligible for ECB purchases, though they’re still backed by the same toxic loans, most of which won’t ever be repaid.
The ECB then buys these senior tranches of the ABS as part of its €62.4-billion per-month QE program that already includes about €2.2 billion for ABS (though it has been buying less). Alternatively, the ECB can accept these highly rated, toxic-loan-backed securities as collateral for cash via so-called repurchase agreements.
But buying even these senior tranches would violate the ECB’s own rules, which specify:
At the time of inclusion in the securitisation, a loan should not be in dispute, default, or unlikely to pay. The borrower associated with the loan should not be deemed credit-impaired (as defined in IAS 36).
Hilariously, the NP Ls, by definition, are either already in “default” or “unlikely to pay,” most of them have been so for years, and the borrower is already “deemed credit impaired” if the entity even still exists.
(...)
To sell lower-rated tranches to the ECB, the banks can dolly up the credit rating of these toxic-loan-backed securities by purchasing a guarantee from the Italian government, which, thanks to the ECB’s de-facto guarantee of Italian government debt, has a credit rating of BBB-, barely above junk, thus “investment grade.”
That’s good enough for the ECB. A guarantee by the Italian government would transfer Italy’s BBB- credit rating to even the lower tranches of these toxic-loan-backed securities.
Reuters got in touch with Standard & Poor’s, which wants to rate these securities because that’s how it makes its money. And then Reuters reported on this exchange about the “Italian scheme”:
“Standard & Poor’s evaluation of previous deals secured by NPL collateral have typically depended on numerous factors, as different collateral types may pose unique risks,” the rating agency wrote in about the Italian scheme.
“Generally, our credit analysis has focused on ascertaining the expected timing of cash flows and net proceeds from the liquidation of the assets.”
Reuters also cited an ECB source who’d said last November that buying re-bundled NP Ls could be an extreme option if the Eurozone’s economic situation became “really bad.”
So now, the situation has gotten “really bad.”
As the Italian banking crisis is elegantly spiraling out of control, the ECB is trying to get a grip on it by buying “old bicycles,” namely structured toxic-loan-backed securities whose underlying loans defaulted, on average, six years ago. In the process, the financial middlemen will extract a ton of money. The public in other countries will get to eat the toxic loans plus the money extracted by the middlemen. And the cherished bondholders of Italian banks are a step closer to their own personal bailout.
ECB's doing what it can here, they're just constrained by so many silly rules that the solutions they come up with have to look as bizarre as they do.
Quite. Anything more radical is in the hands of politicians — who have their hands full at the moment, with amongst other problems the Refugee Crisis.
edited 24th Feb '16 6:47:26 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnIMF is asking Greece's creditors to give Athens more debt relief.
Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...Interestingly the IMF also states that more pension cuts are necessary. Greece could start with that and then ask for debt reduction.
Either way there won't be any talks about Greek debt reduction until the elections in France and Germany next year.
Yes, because that crisis is clearly something that can wait while France and Germany decide to decide to do something about it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Nothing urgent, no. It is also in Greece's interest that their problems are not part of the domestic election campaign in France and Germany. Because all the politicians would talk about how tough they would treat the Greeks in case they are elected.
edited 23rd Sep '16 8:32:54 AM by Zarastro
Or in the case of Le Pen, how she'd use it as reason for withdrawing France from the EU?
edited 23rd Sep '16 9:04:54 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
I don't see that as a meaningful question. The treaties that form the Eurozone are built atop the treaties that form the European Union; the former would have to dissolve before the latter could. There's nothing stopping non-EU nations from pegging their currencies to the euro, of course, but I have strong doubts that the ECB would be able to act, legally, as their currency issuer.
edited 10th Nov '15 11:36:28 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"