That 3 letter word resounds in my skull. Whats it good for? Absolutely nothing …except profits.
Guess what Ben Bernanke is giving Jean-Claude Trichet for Christmas this year?
https://nostradamus2012.com/Images/Dollar_crisis/printing_money_for_AIG.jpg
European Race To The Insolvency Bottom Round Two: Contestants - Spain, Portugal And Belgium → zerohedge.com/article/europe … nd-belgium
The round robin stage of the European championship to determine the most insolvent country ended with two very clear winners: Greece and Ireland. And with that stage over, we are now clearly entering the direct elimination rounds. Meet the first thre contestants, whose sovereign bond prices, after a healthy pick up in buying from the ECB, are once again hitting the skids. That said, it is difficult to determine who has a leading position: it appears that all three countries’ economies are just as shitty. And the coolest thing: the winner, takes the runner up with them, as one insolvency wipes out what little backstop capital is left to prevent the house of tilted dominoes from falling.
there is more
ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/12 … -increase/
Mystery, chicken, and the ECB’s capital increase
The European Central Bank made headlines on Thursday, with its request for a €5bn capital increase. The stated reason was all about covering volatility in fx, interest rates and gold prices “as well as credit risk” on other (SMP-bought) securities.
Nomura’s European rates team, however, are having none of it:
Later in the piece, Willem Buiter reckons that “the eurosystem as a whole has another €3,258bn worth of assets (based on a 2 per cent inflation rate, real GDP growth of 2 per cent and a discount rate of 4 per cent) that can be added to its balance sheet.”
That’s a lot of pain easing if required…
yoganmahew:
Later in the piece, Willem Buiter reckons that “the eurosystem as a whole has another €3,258bn worth of assets (based on a 2 per cent inflation rate, real GDP growth of 2 per cent and a discount rate of 4 per cent) that can be added to its balance sheet.”
That’s a lot of pain easing if required…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
Ever deeper union…
Faisal Islam via twitter…@faisalislam London(head) Manchester(heart)
More on the swap lines with the BoE:ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/12 … o-ireland/
And while it’s definitely the case that Irish banks will be finding it challenging to rollover their sterling funding liabilities in the current environment — and are thus undoubtedly in need of central-bank dispensed pound-notes — there’s also the case that UK banks with mounting exposure to Ireland (like Lloyds Banking Group and RBS, ahem) have their own very real need for euro funding as well.
We’ll scratch your back, you scratch ours et cetera.
zerohedge.com/article/ecb-pe … 11-billion
ECB Peripheral Bond Purchases In Sleepy Christmas Week Double To E1.1 Billion
That sneaky JC Trichet: while the rest of the banker world was preparing to hit the Telluride slopes to spend some of that hard earned taxpayer bailout cash, and otherwise leaving the fate of capital markets to Getco and two or three HFT traders, Trichet was once again busy bidding up every sovereign bond in the secondary market he could find. While in the week ended December 20, the ECB bought just E600 million, which in turn was the lowest since October and before Europe went bankrupt for the second time in a row, last week purchases jumped by nearly 100% to E1.1 billion, bringing the total to E73.5 billion. Which is surprising as there was very little on the surface to indicate that there was so much revulsion associated with sovereign exposures at least as determined by European stock bourses, meaning that equities and bonds even in Europe where there has been at least some tenuous linkage, have completely decoupled and joined their American cousins.
There is more.
onlyone
December 28, 2010, 2:22am
11
I’ll get my popcorn, but this time I a watcher, not a tax burdened particpant.
