patrick.net

A currency union w/o political union? How's that working so far?
Eurobonds are a comin' I tell ya. United we stand, divided we fall.

ATK says

There hasn't been much in the news about Greece lately

1. They got a bailout
2. They restructured by swapping their old bonds for new ones with a much lower value

European headline risk will be back.

Europe is in recession right NOW.

Is it odd that no news about it?
That is because we have an election in November.

The problem is that the EU cannot be run like the USA.

12 years after independence the USA had a constitution. europe is still working on one.

Although there have been wars in both areas the idea of a loyalty to a state is dead in the USA (for the most part). States (except vermont) must balance their budgets...while in the EU that is not the case. It is hard to have a monetary union without a real political union.

Europe is simply too diverse. Of course they know more than one language but the expansion of the USA and EU differs dramatically. With the USA states became states when they had enough of a population (for the most part). In Europe many simply lied about their debts.

It can be argued that maybe German needs Greece. If Germany and France formed their own union the currency would have a high value due to the export nature of Germany. However, that would hurt their exports and thus in keeping it that would weigh down the Euro value.

The other problem in the EU is frankly the expansion was out to the former communist east. To expect the same level of standards when it is has only been 20 years is a bit of a joke. So under what grounds would any support go from the west to the east? What does the west get and what does the east get?

Thanks for the comments Mdovell, Xenbogear3.

Update on Spain...Things are not over yet there.

Spain's-economy-plunges-into-recession (rte.ie)

American in Japan says

Update on Spain...Things are not over yet there.

Yep, the country that followed the EU and ECB rules to a "T". Much closer than Germany did.

There is an almost surefire method that works, but it's not Irish austerity. However, it would require them to dump the Euro.

Greece has TEMPORARILY avoided calamity because they got a bailout in March but they still have a systemic problem which means that they will soon be right back where they were in Jan/Feb...staring down at another major crisis. They have elections in May which should stirr things around.

In my view a Greek exit of the Euro is all but certain, it's only a question of when. Also, the Euro itself is very much in question because the friction between Northern and Southern Europe just cannot be eliminated using a magic wand.

Infact, there is already talk of the exit...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303459004577363602072819094.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The results of some elections in Europe:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/french-greek-elections-rattle-global-markets-threaten-austerity-120249714.html

wthrfrk80 says

European headline risk will be back.

Market Watch reports $4 trillion has been printed to date (worldwide) and the Euro is once again backed into a corner. This battle is between central banks and the people. How long do the people allow banks to decide their destiny ? Bankers will lose their jobs if they do not force you to starve. Banks are in survival mode and will strangle the peasants, realizing those citizens can't fight back if they have no funding, food, or medical supplies. WHAT WOULD YOU DO ? The people won't fight back because, self promoting marketing paints those corporations into such wrighteous images.

Passifists thought Hitler to be a nice fellow. They said "Just leave him alone. Everything will be allright".

Glad Austerity was smacked down in France; it's about time. Austerity doesn't work, it only gets the bankers paid at the expense of everyone and everything else.

thunderlips11 says

Glad Austerity was smacked down in France; it's about time. Austerity doesn't work, it only gets the bankers paid at the expense of everyone and everything else.

But bankers are the hard-working folk that make America (and France) work! ;-)

wthrfrk80 says

European headline risk will be back.

About that juggernaut Germany:

from http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/low-paid-workers-struggle-despite-germany-s-booming-economy-a-832724.html

"...According to a DIW (German Institute for Economic Research) study published last year, wages fell in real terms for all but the top 10 percent of earners in Germany between 2005 and 2010. This had a particularly acute effect on those earning the least. "As a rule, the lowest earners spend the highest portion of their income," study co-author Karl Brenke explains.

"...Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.

"Increasingly, such wage disparity is leading to social inequality in Germany..."

Amazingly despite all of the bad news, the Euro is still worth around $1.27.

Interesting. Spiegel catalouge the spelling I'm not going to take the time. Sears etc. Germany is an interesting place. Not history just fact. The German empire was huge at one point. Including places like Barvaria. Ruled by a family called Hohenzollern. The bitch of England is a Hohenzollern. They changed their name twice. You can look it up if you want. I'm not going to type in all that in here. At one point it took the votes of the family to make the Royal in England. Of course all those votes came out of Germany. Then there was a big fucking power struggle called WW1. They don't say much bad about the ole Kaiser their inlaw. Hitler they really hated divided Germany in two and gave it to the Russians. Because the fucking Russians really came through. Forget the west side story and things that don't make sense the Russian were arming themselves and sending out code.

So that bitch is German. Hohenzollern is a family of usury. If you want to believe all the Jesus bullshit go ahead it more like they write the story to give them Biblical permanence in peoples minds of course until "God" decides to remove them. Just like the apocolypse. Just like the bomb and well Restored and Revarnished Israel which we know is bullshit.

The Hohenzollern family are some of the fastest swindlers to ever hit the planet. They talked everyone into living in the woods. Like tree people. Which Germany is heavly forested . I won't say Forrest Gump. But people food won't grow in trees.

Lazurus, Rockchild they are bullshit compared to what these people have in assets. They have there own assets. Just look at them like an Immelt. Of GE which Immelt looks nuclear anyway its good for a chuckle. Hohenzollern the Quack of England is buried under 700 tons of bullshit of course. They are known in Germany and England well however I am sure they have ways of handling that. They though division politics would work better over there of course. Its about the assets after all. Even Rockchild said give me the only legal means of trade in a country. Set up a monetary system that is nothing but lending and loans and let the politicians blow me. Who set fucking paper hustle up or who came up with the idea who the fuck knows. Deal is they can declare someones assets or even cash. However their holdings can be hidden in corporation after corporation and holding companies so that don't mean shit. Remeber they only tell you what they want you to believe. You want the controlling votes on the Federal Reserve look up possibly Hanover or Bank of NY. The Euro starts in England and ends there. Even though its set up to look another way. Don't believe me? That bitch has 58 nations with her hooks in them. It's called the Commonwealth. All controlled through a monetary system mostly lending and loans that was invented in England. Suprise same thing your lending system is. That might tell you something. It also might tell you the American goverment is a degenerate borrower. They will lick the quacks hinney for another loan. Tell you the opposite. They will do anything for a loan. Including invading people that aren't doing anything to build someone elses asset base. Get their people killed all for another loan. They love looking like big studs with their military rental equipment. When really once again all they are is, degenerate borrowers.

Plus were for Israel yea er duh yup. You get the idea.

I watch their lackeys on television sometimes. Those sociopaths move faster than lightning sometimes. Trying to make their little templates work. All for getting another wiff of their benefactors farts. Lying their faces off. Trying to get everyone to twist their minds into pretzels with their bullshit when all it comes down to really is a privately owned monetary system. Paper the only legal means of trade. With fixed prices no less. When its so obvious everything they do is to keep them and you at work for them for all their life. What kind of fools are those? It's like watching Festus from Bonanza the all time lackey looking for a sandwich walking behind the horses carrying a shovel. All the time their benefactors laughing at the integrity they advertise for them. Because they know all they really are is fools with a shit shovel. A backstop for them just like the "Government" thats in debt to them. Want a job in either learn to play the game. They get to work in the "Big house". I wouldn't be suprised if they had to make the "pancakes" and clean the toilets. Shut up honey we goin sizzlin remember the newsjockey tells his wife. I'm the most reliable name in cleaning the crapper. Scrub faster where would we be without them? What your really looking at are a bunch of weasels with no pride very little of what a man is either.

And the European headline risk is back.

Cramer soundboard: "The house of pain!"

TMAC54 says

Passifists thought Hitler to be a nice fellow. They said "Just leave him alone. Everything will be allright".

Put it in context. Something like 1 in 6 Frenchmen aged 16-30 died in WW1, and about a quarter of the country ruined.

THAT explains the hesitation to engage in another war.

Grandpas who lose a couple of grandkids and see their house demolished by artillery and lose all their possessions tend not to growl about killing the "bad guys" from under their blue CVN-65 Eisenhower caps.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ADA88QlizrU

This got my attention: "Austerity works when combined with growth initiatives. I am a big believer in Britain exiting their programs in much stronger shape and being better set for the next bull market. Progress is being made but Greece is the anchor holding back the EU.

The problem is Germany took a bitter pill for the better part of a decade when they integrated East Germany and emerged an economic powerhouse.

They see Greece as a basket case which wants to be a part of the EU but take none of the necessary medicine required to get well. It is no wonder they have no sympathy for the Greeks. Have the Greeks reformed their tax code or competitiveness? Let's not forget that the Greek's fudged the books to get into the EU. "
--David Urban

For what it's worth:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/greece-tearing-europe-apart-politically-socially-economically-william-131234803.html

Morgan Stanley raised its odds of a euro breakup to 35%...

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/europe-vicious-cycle-continues-132927347.html

American in Japan says

This got my attention: "Austerity works when combined with growth initiatives. I am a big believer in Britain exiting their programs in much stronger shape and being better set for the next bull market. Progress is being made but Greece is the anchor holding back the EU.

Translation: Austerity works if we can cut wages, worker protections, immigration controls, pensions, lower taxes on the 1% and raise fees and taxes on the 99%... Let's not let a good crisis go to waste; even though this crisis was started at perpetuated by financial shenanigans and the subsequent bailouts, let's pretend it's because of maternity leave and overtime.

Germany spent money like water to integrate East Germany, update the infrastructure, fix the ed system, raise wages, provide housing subs, etc.

thunderlips11 says

Translation: Austerity works if we can cut wages, worker protections, immigration controls, pensions, lower taxes on the 1% and raise fees and taxes on the 99%... Let's not let a good crisis go to waste; even though this crisis was started at perpetuated by financial shenanigans and the subsequent bailouts, let's pretend it's because of maternity leave and overtime.

Don't you just love how the financial sector rules everyone? 30 years ago the smart kids were going into engineering and medicine. Now they're going into "finance."

Thanks Thunderlips!

And now the Greek elections!

Greek elections could be the start of something bigger

Greek Election Results: New Democracy Party got the most seats

Spain pays record for medium-term debt.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/spain-pays-record-medium-term-102929921.html

One of my friends says that things are now looking up in Europe and that they will only get better from here. I just can't believe it...

Asuterity... Again?

Spain to unveil austerity steps...soon (Yahoo)

I have one friend who says Europe has solved its problems and is on its way up from here. I just can't believe him...

American in Japan says

I have one friend who says Europe has solved its problems and s on its way up from here. I just can't believe him...

People can be blindly optimistic.

It is clear to me that they solved one of the many structural problems, however they are still not on equal footing as the United States.

Here's part of the (present) state of Europe, as told by a European Parliamentarian

What follows is a snippet. Here's a link to his full address to Americans: http://www.geertwilders.nl/index.php/component/content/article/87-news/1795-speech-geert-wilders-at-the-western-conservative-summit-denver-30-june-2012)

Certain parts of our inner cities no longer look like Europe. They look like suburbs of Cairo, Rabat, Algiers, Damascus or Mecca.

As the Muslim population is concentrated in urban areas, many European cities have very large Islamic concentrations. We are confronted with headscarves and burkas, polygamy, female genital mutilation, honor-killings.

During the past three decades, Europe made a fatal mistake. It allowed millions of people from Islamic countries to immigrate into Europe. So many people rooted in a culture entirely different from our own Judeo-Christian and humanist tradition have entered Europe that our heritage, our freedoms, our prosperity and our culture are in danger.

Perhaps, many Americans still believe that Europe is the place they know from a tourist trip or from their grandparents' stories. This Europe is on the verge of disappearing.

"In each one of our cities" wrote the Italian author Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, "there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran." – End of quote.

"The Islamic Republic of Europe" - it's only a matter of demography and time.

B.A.C.A.H. says

"In each one of our cities" wrote the Italian author Oriana Fallaci shortly before her death in 2006, "there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran." – End of quote.

God Bless...er...Allah Bless Europe.

From the "what's a strong currency to do files":
I almost did a spit take on the paper last week when I read that the Danes and Swiss are now offering negative rates on their short term bonds.

A not so optimistic view of Europe from Charles Hugh Smith...

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly12/EU-death-spiral6-12.html

Yikes it's almost like there's no free lunch or something.

Another good article:

http://www.cfr.org/europerussia/europe-waiting-next-shoe-drop/p28294

Those articles are hilarious, because like so many others penned by elites who focus too much on the palace potentiates they're ignoring the big picture.

Demographics is the big picture, not the economic tides.

You don't think so? Just ask Native Americans who faced the demographic changes in their continent during various and sundry nineteenth century USA economic crises.

John Mauldin wrote last week in his economics web site that while, ahem, Europeans are no longer a religious people, he reckons that they are finding a new secular religion, a religion of some kind of federated/integrated European entity.

In the context of the trends and changes that are much larger than "Euro-this, sovereign debt - that", I suppose he is partly right, though missing the main point. There is a vibrant and growing demographic in Europe which in time will allow "the Europeans" to grow out of their problems, and they are religious Europeans, too. But the religion is not the "secular" religion for a united Europe, unless you mean for a "united" European Islamic Republic. No telling what may come of those sovereign debt notes in the decades to come under sharia law.