Frogs stitched up by Greece.

[Park Life 71]

France, Shaking In Its Culottes, Demands Immediate Implementation Of Bailout

Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/28/2010 08:42 -0500

 

 

Gee, what a shock - the country which is most on the hook should Greece blow up is now issuing ultimatums. What is funnier is that the object of the ultimatum is none other than France wartime buddy Germany. From Reuters: "The European Union must immediately implement its previously agreed 30 billion euro ($39.96 billion) aid package for debt-stricken Greece, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Wednesday. "We must immediately put in place the 30 billion euros," Fillon told France's lower house of parliament. He added he had "no doubt" that German Chancellor Angela Merkel would adopt the same position as France, concerning Greece." France has about 75 billion reasons to be terrified that Germany will leave it in the dust. Hey Birnbaum: we are better buyers of French CDS in size. We don't care if Goldman is on the other side of the trade.

 

Wonder why France is so terrified?

 

Here is your answer: exposure by countries to Greece. Note the blue wedge.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/france-sh...ntation-bailout

Edited April 29, 2010 by Park Life

[AgentAxeman 199]

Looks like GB is in a good position (or at least better than normal) for once

[Park Life 71]

Let the fucker go down man. Or we're gonna get into a chain with Portugal coming cap in hand.

[Park Life 71]

Looks like GB is in a good position (or at least better than normal) for once

 

I wouldn't like to see one penny of OUR money go to the cheating thieving scum that are Greece. Fuck em.

[ChezGiven 0]

The truth behind this? Sarkozy wants the EU not the IMF to bail-out the Greeks. Why? Because the head of the IMF is going to be a rival for the next Presidential election and Sarkozy is desperate to be seen as the one who provided the solution, not his rival. Its all politics, got fuck all to do with finance.

[Park Life 71]

The General miasma however is wider and the impacts are deeper:

 

The Coming Pan-European Soverign Debt Crisis

 

Banks are the epicenter of the economic crises that face the developed and emerging nations over the last few years. Many appear to have allowed the media to carry the conversation away from the banks and into sovereign debt issues, social unrest etc., but the main issue still resides in the banks. Why, you ask? Well, because every single major country conducts its finances through the banks and when those finances become stressed, the banks will be the first to show it and usually show it in an aggrieved manner since most banks are still highly leveraged.

 

The fact that governments worldwide have made the (generally unwise) attempt to bailout their big banks by transferring bad debts and liabilities from the private sector and bank investors to the public sector and taxpayers doesn’t mean that the problem has been solved or even ameliorated. As a matter of fact, I believe the problem has now been amplified, for now we have effective increased the implicit leverage in the already excessively leveraged banking problems as well as removed the natural firewalls that may have been in place by having the problems in individual financial institution versus sitting on government balance sheets, able to affect all without the need of the “domino effect” that was feared from the Lehman collapse.

 

This leverage stems from the fact that most European sovereign nations are considerably “overbanked”. The levered assets of the banks in many Euro-sovereign nations easily outstrip those nations’ GDP’s. So when the nations’ banks get in trouble from bad banking practices (and a very large swath have), the nations themselves not only are helpless in attempting to truly save the banks (and instead only institute a bait and switch wherein private default risk/insolvency potential is swapped for public manifestations of the same), but are put at risk themselves for the bank is actually more of a sovereign entity than the sovereign is – at least from an economic footprint perspective. This is what happened in Iceland. If one were to take an empirical look at other nations in Europe, Iceland and Greece are merely the tip of the iceberg. I have warned about this over a year ago regarding Spain and the Spanish banks (see The Spanish Inquisition is About to Begin…), and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

 

As it stands now, we have the most developed nations suffering from indigestion after bailing out their oversized banking industry, with many of the allegedly balance sheet bailouts actually being illusory and liquidity-based in nature. The US is case in point here, since most banks still have untold hundreds of billions of dollars of losses still sitting on their balance sheets, and the US taxpayer is stuck with the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars in losses simultaneously. Accounting rules have been laxed to give the impression of record profits in lieu of what should be record losses.

 

We also have European countries such as the UK which has nationalized several of their largest banks, taking on significant losses on the taxpayer’s balance sheet, but still facing the drag of a poorly performing banking system that is still too big for the economy as a whole. Just the non-performing assets of just the top banks in the UK amount to nearly 9% of their GDP! That is a very big chunk of dead money floating around in the system that literally invalidates X% of reported GDP. The UK also has nearly $200 billion of exposure to Ireland, whose bank’s NPA’s are roughly 6% of that naion’s GDP, the second highest in all of Europe save the UK (who has the same problem)!

 

The smaller sovereign nations that failed to keep their hands on the fiscal and budget reigns during the global liquidity bubble are also facing issues. Greece is the current poster child for this scenario, having been downgraded by the ratings agencies, money and capital are fleeing from the country in a typical “run on the bank scenario”, their debt being shunned by the markets with CDS exploding and the big market makers in their debt refusing accept their bonds as collateral. This is Lehman Brothers, part deux, which actually makes plenty of sense since the solution to the banks failing was the government taking the failing asset risk onto the balance sheets, hence now the governments are being seen as at risk of failing versus the backstopped private sector.

The larger sovereign nations are at risk of either having to bailout their less fortunate brethren or facing the fallout of having the repercussions of a domino effect reverberate across the EU and its major markets/counterparties. This goes deeper than some may suspect. For instance, the weakest sovereigns in the Euro area are still the central and eastern European nations, and the stronger sovereigns are heavily leveraged into these countries through their “overbanked” system. If (or when) these companies start to publicly exhibit cracks, quite possibly due to the domino effect of Portugal, Greece and Spain finally tipping, then you will find the Nordics showing stress through their banking system (the biggest CEE lenders) at a level that the countries may be hard pressed to backstop, for their banking systems are literally multiples of their GDPs."

 

 

 

You can see the real desperation behind the bailouts rather than the spun idea of good Governance etc....Whoever wins the election will have hell on with 6 months is my prediction.

[Park Life 71]

German anger at paying for luxury Greek pensions

Mack,

Tue 27 April 2010, 11:11am

8

 

Bild on the Greek bailout -

 

It is only a matter of days until Germany starts handing out billions in aid to the Greeks, according to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

 

But for some experts, Greece is just a bottomless pit. And now anger is increasing in Germany, with many asking why they should pay for things like the luxury Greek pension system.

 

They highlight superior Greek pensions, that German workers will now be paying for -

 

The fact is that in Greece, the employee’s contribution is only 6.67 per cent of the gross wage compared to 9.95 per cent in Germany. The government contributes a subsidy from tax revenues.

 

That means that with a broke Athens seeking outside help, Germany and the rest of the EU aid givers must start pouring cash into the bottomless Greek pension pit…

 

And a handy table that breaks down the differences in detail -

Greece Germany

Years of work to earn full pension: 35 45

Proportion of wages as pension: 80 %* 46 %

Number of pension payments a year: 14 x 12 x

Pension increase 2004: 3 % 0 %

Pension increase 2005: 4 % 0 %

Pension increase 2006**: 4 % 0 %

Minimum payment (Euros): 445 ca. 600

Maximum payment (Euros): 2538 ca. 2100

Minimum pension age for men: 65 65–67

Minimum pension age for women: 60 65–67

Average pension entrance age: 62,4 63,2

* for insurance beginning before 1.1.1993, 70% after 1.1.1993, average earner;

** last available figures; sources: Eurostat, OECD, Dt. Rentenversicherung

[Renton 22445]

Don't these Mediterranean types live to be 150 as well? On account they barely do any work during their lives probably.

[Park Life 71]

Don't these Mediterranean types live to be 150 as well? On account they barely do any work during their lives probably.

 

That's the long and short of it. Cut the fuckers loose.

[Park Life 71]

Kick Greece out of the euro to warn other reprobates that they face swallowing the same humiliating medicine

 

It wasn’t very nice to liken the Greek debt crisis to the Ebola virus but, as a former Mexican finance minister, Angel Gurria knows a thing or two about contagion and financial sickness. “When you realise you have it,” he said, “you have to cut your leg off to survive.” As the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was standing next to Angela Merkel, Germany’s tough-minded chancellor, at the time, his message will surely have got through.

 

The message is that yet more promises of emergency loans to Greece, from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, are beside the point. Loans, whether the €45 billion already agreed or the rumoured €100 billion-plus soon to come, are just palliatives. They do not stop the virus from spreading. The only way to do that is to cut the euro’s Greek leg off: in other words, to expel it from the single currency.

 

This whole Greek tragedy must be galling to those Europeans who thought the post-Lehman recession was basically an American affair, one that showed the superiority of the continental way of doing things compared with those beastly Anglo-Saxons. Now America’s economy is rebounding strongly and it is Europe that looks like the world’s sickest continent. The European economy is weak, and a sovereign debt crisis that promises to spread from Greece to Spain, Portugal and, perhaps, Italy risks sending it back into another nasty recession.

 

Three painful truths lie behind the problems of Greece and the dangers of contagion. None is the issue most often cited by euro-fans — that Europe’s single currency faces these problems because monetary union was not combined with political union. No form of political union in Europe could have controlled Greek spending or accounting deceptions in the past decade, or prevented the economic troubles now being seen in Portugal and Spain; nor, now, would a European political union have been better at maintaining political stability than the Greek Government itself...

 

 

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle7112208.ece

[Guest alex]

More importantly, will this mean prices will go up or down? I'm off to Crete in a fortnight.

[Renton 22445]

More importantly, will this mean prices will go up or down? I'm off to Crete in a fortnight.

 

It's a good job you aren't German in any case.

[Park Life 71]

More importantly, will this mean prices will go up or down? I'm off to Crete in a fortnight.

 

Everything will probably be free.

[ChezGiven 0]

If he was German Rents, he wouldnt have to convert his Euros. So woulnt make any difference.

 

Pound is rising against the euro since the low earlier in the year. Given our debt situation and the Euro frailty, doubt the pound will be where forex investors selling euros will head. So probably neutral.

[Guest alex]

Yammas!

[Renton 22445]

If he was German Rents, he wouldnt have to convert his Euros. So woulnt make any difference.

 

Pound is rising against the euro since the low earlier in the year. Given our debt situation and the Euro frailty, doubt the pound will be where forex investors selling euros will head. So probably neutral.

 

I was referring to him getting lynched actually.

[Guest alex]

I knew what you meant anyway

[ChezGiven 0]

If he was German Rents, he wouldnt have to convert his Euros. So woulnt make any difference.

 

Pound is rising against the euro since the low earlier in the year. Given our debt situation and the Euro frailty, doubt the pound will be where forex investors selling euros will head. So probably neutral.

 

I was referring to him getting lynched actually.

 

 

If he grows a tache and wears those leather chaps he's so fond of, he could be in trouble.

[Park Life 71]

If he was German Rents, he wouldnt have to convert his Euros. So woulnt make any difference.

 

Pound is rising against the euro since the low earlier in the year. Given our debt situation and the Euro frailty, doubt the pound will be where forex investors selling euros will head. So probably neutral.

 

I was referring to him getting lynched actually.

 

 

If he grows a tache and wears those leather chaps he's so fond of, he could be in trouble.

 

[Guest alex]

If he was German Rents, he wouldnt have to convert his Euros. So woulnt make any difference.

 

Pound is rising against the euro since the low earlier in the year. Given our debt situation and the Euro frailty, doubt the pound will be where forex investors selling euros will head. So probably neutral.

 

I was referring to him getting lynched actually.

 

 

If he grows a tache and wears those leather chaps I'm so fond of, he could be in trouble.

FYP

[Park Life 71]

YAMMAS!

 

[Park Life 71]

German FinMin Capitulates, Says PIIGS, Global Moral Hazard Win

 

 

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/29/2010 10:51 -0500

 

Obious 101 from Reuters:

 

German Fin Min: Crisis Largely Over In Europe and Germany

German Fin Min: If Greek Budget Consolidation Succeeds, No Tax Money Will Be Lost

German Fin Min: Without Consolidation In Greece We Will Have Unforeseeable Market Consequences

German Fin Min: Failure With Greece Would Put Euro In Question

German Fin Min: Cannot Throw Greece Out Of Eurozone

 

It's over - the excess debt/GDP terrorists have won, and Moral Hazard is now a global phenomenon. There will be no more failures anywhere. In other words, all your stock profits will come straight from your taxes.

Edited April 30, 2010 by Park Life

[Park Life 71]

As I suspected this is another BANK BAILOUT BY STEALTH.

 

 

A full-scale default would also hammer other debt owners, including banks elsewhere in Europe. As of the end of 2009, European banks held $193-billion of Greek government debt, with most of it on the balance sheets of French and German lenders. That could create losses that eat into bank capital, reducing their ability to lend and slowing economic growth across the region, a prospect that could force governments to aid banks yet again."

[Park Life 71]

MAX KAISER drags Goldman Sachs in....Classic.

 

 

[ChezGiven 0]

I must look Max Kaiser up one day for afternoon tea.