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They've opened up a Poundland in Lewisham shopping centre. You know, one of those places where everything is a bit too cheap and the labels are close to a well-known brand name, but not quite there. Stuff like "Herbal Blessings" shampoo.
I wonder if shopping malls in Germany now have Euroland stores, where the same thing is happening. Greek debt going cheap. Buy now.
Just thought that I'd quote Marin Wolf again, because we are seeing more evidence that what the EC still thinks is a liquidity crisis is actually moving quicly from being a solvency crisis through an economic crisis to a full-blown political crisis. In the regional elections in Spain the Socialists got a kicking, mainly because they were in power when the shit hit the fan. The centre-right offer no solution that's amenable to the Spanish people (indeed, they offer less of a solution that's amenable to the Spanish people), and the net result in regions where there was an option was to follow the path of the Finns.
In the Basque country, Bildu, an organization that nearly wasn't allowed to stand because it was considered a bit to close to terrorist separatists, got 25% of the vote. This was shortly after a crowd symbolically refused to stop campaigning for the last 24 hours before the election. This wasn't a protest against the government; it was a protest against the system.
How long before people start saying "why don't we default?" The reply is "because that would be an economic disaster". To which the Spanish voter might well say "hell, how can it be any worse than it is now?".
The defenders of economic stability look to be fucked. Sooner or later the creditors will have to accept that they just ain't going to get paid. And that will mean that an awfully large number of savers will wake up to find that their savings were not as safe as they thought.
Economic and political crisis indeed. Systems (rather than governments) overthrown, savers ruined.
One of the most interesting numbers this morning came from Portugal's Espirito Santo Financial Group, which reported a significant rise in non-performing loans. This, remember, is not a country murdered by a property bubble. So these NPLs are more systemic.
It's possible that it will be a blow-up of the NPL numbers that will trigger the final euro apocalypse. The nearest parallel to this in modern times is China, when much of the rural banking system nearly collapsed in the 1990s when it became clear that most of the loans made to local Communiast Party officials were not going to get repaid.
China solved this by opening up to foreign investment -- financial institutions in the west were so keen to get into China that they bashed in vast amounts of money to make the banks solvent again.
So, could the solution this time round be the same, but in reverse? China gets into the Western banking system by bailing out an essentially insolvent system. About a decade of global imbalance is "solved" by selling a big chunk of our financial system to the Chinese.
Well, it's a plan. Possibly preferable to economic and political turmoil lasting for years.
__________
I wonder if shopping malls in Germany now have Euroland stores, where the same thing is happening. Greek debt going cheap. Buy now.
"The problem with the strategy of imposing the burden on taxpayers in borrowing countries is that it is not going to work."
Just thought that I'd quote Marin Wolf again, because we are seeing more evidence that what the EC still thinks is a liquidity crisis is actually moving quicly from being a solvency crisis through an economic crisis to a full-blown political crisis. In the regional elections in Spain the Socialists got a kicking, mainly because they were in power when the shit hit the fan. The centre-right offer no solution that's amenable to the Spanish people (indeed, they offer less of a solution that's amenable to the Spanish people), and the net result in regions where there was an option was to follow the path of the Finns.
In the Basque country, Bildu, an organization that nearly wasn't allowed to stand because it was considered a bit to close to terrorist separatists, got 25% of the vote. This was shortly after a crowd symbolically refused to stop campaigning for the last 24 hours before the election. This wasn't a protest against the government; it was a protest against the system.
How long before people start saying "why don't we default?" The reply is "because that would be an economic disaster". To which the Spanish voter might well say "hell, how can it be any worse than it is now?".
The defenders of economic stability look to be fucked. Sooner or later the creditors will have to accept that they just ain't going to get paid. And that will mean that an awfully large number of savers will wake up to find that their savings were not as safe as they thought.
Economic and political crisis indeed. Systems (rather than governments) overthrown, savers ruined.
One of the most interesting numbers this morning came from Portugal's Espirito Santo Financial Group, which reported a significant rise in non-performing loans. This, remember, is not a country murdered by a property bubble. So these NPLs are more systemic.
It's possible that it will be a blow-up of the NPL numbers that will trigger the final euro apocalypse. The nearest parallel to this in modern times is China, when much of the rural banking system nearly collapsed in the 1990s when it became clear that most of the loans made to local Communiast Party officials were not going to get repaid.
China solved this by opening up to foreign investment -- financial institutions in the west were so keen to get into China that they bashed in vast amounts of money to make the banks solvent again.
So, could the solution this time round be the same, but in reverse? China gets into the Western banking system by bailing out an essentially insolvent system. About a decade of global imbalance is "solved" by selling a big chunk of our financial system to the Chinese.
Well, it's a plan. Possibly preferable to economic and political turmoil lasting for years.
__________
