Wall Street Food Chain

Plankton Disappearing, Food Chain at Risk

By William H. Gross

The whales of our current economic society swim mainly in financial market oceans. Innovators such as Jobs and Gates are as rare within the privileged 1% as giant squid are to sharks, because the 1% feed primarily off of money, not invention. They would have you believe that stocks, bonds and real estate move higher because of their wisdom, when in fact, prices float on an ocean of credit, a sea in which all fish and mammals are now increasingly at risk because of high debt and its delevering consequences. Still, as the system delevers, there are winners and losers, a Wall Street food chain in effect.

These economic and/or financial food chains depend on lots of little fishes in the sea for their longevity. Decades ago, one of my first Investment Outlooks introduced “The Plankton Theory” which hypothesized that the mighty whale depends on the lowly plankton for its survival. The same applies in my view to Wall, or even Main Street. When examining the well-known wealth distribution triangle of land/labor/capital, the Wall Street food chain segregates capital between the haves and have-nots: The Fed and its member banks are the metaphorical whales, the small investors earning .01% on their money market funds are the plankton. Yet similar comparisons can be drawn between capital and labor. 

6 reasons Spain will leave the euro first

Spain is too big to rescue, and doesn’t want it anyway

By MATTHEW LYNN

The euro debt crisis, like any really spectacular geoeconomic event, is spawning its own special vocabulary.

We’ve already had Merkozy, now relegated to the footnotes, and are slowly getting used to the clunkier Merlande or Merkellande, as the oddly matched pairing of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Francois Hollande has been dubbed. The Grexit, short for Greece finally giving up on the single currency, has been trending for the last few weeks. And coming up next: the Spexit.

What’s that? It’s shorthand for Spain quitting the euro — and we’re going to hear a lot of it over what promises to be a turbulent summer.

The Spanish are a lot more likely to pull out of the euro than the Greeks, or indeed any of the peripheral countries. They are too big to rescue, they have no political hang-ups about rupturing their relations with the European Union, they are already fed up with austerity, and there is a bigger Spanish-speaking world for them to grow into. There are few good reasons for the country to stay in the euro — and little sign it has the will to endure the sacrifices the currency will demand of them.

No one has any idea what will happen next

On Europe: "A Willing Lender Of Last Resort May Not Be Enough"

It is becoming clearer and clearer that some new policy option is required in Europe - but as JPMorgan's Michael Cembalest excellent cartoon description of the never-ending circular arguments among European leaders would put it - you would have to be a wide-eyed optimist to believe it will be a decisive one. Comparing the progress of the European Monetary Union with structural changes in the US around the end of the 19th century, it is arguable that more time is needed before judgment is passed but they may not get the chance.

The resolution of a staggering EUR10 trillion in peripheral sovereign, household, and corporate debt may not wait. Durable unions are signaled by signs of wage convergence and unilateral transfers of wealth to smooth regional income difference - while a lender of last resort appears to be most people's solution, it likely will not be enough given the competitive divergences.

"How long can this farce go on? It feels like a new policy option is needed (particularly in Spain, which looks terrible), but you would have to be a wide-eyed optimist to believe it will be a decisive one. Over the weekend, I reread an influential paper from the 1949 US Quarterly Journal of Economics which looked at how the US survived the Great Depression. A critical factor: US regional transfers undertaken by the US Treasury which were “unilateral in nature, akin to a capital movement, a gift or an indemnity in international trade”.

Green Requiem

Spain Ejects Clean-Power Industry 

By Alex Morales and Ben Sills

Spanish renewable-energy companies that once got Europe’s biggest subsidies are deserting the nation after the government shut off aid, pushing project developers and equipment-makers to work abroad or perish.

From wind-turbine maker Gamesa Corp. Tecnologica SA (GAM) to solar park developer T-Solar Global SA, companies are locked out of their home market for new business. These are the same suppliers that spearheaded more than $69 billion of wind and solar projects since 2004 that today supply more than 50 percent of Spain’s power demand on the most breezy and sunny days.

Saddled with a budget deficit more than twice the European Union limit and a ballooning gap between income and costs in its power system, Spain halted subsidies for new renewable-energy projects in January. The surprise move by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy one month after taking office helped pierce investor confidence in stable aid for clean energy across Europe.

Rockefellers and Rothschilds unite

172 years of combined experience 

By Daniel Schäfer

Two of the best-known business dynasties in Europe and the US will come together after Lord Jacob Rothschild’s listed investment trust and Rockefeller Financial Services agreed to form a strategic partnership.

RIT Capital Partners is to buy a 37 per cent stake in the Rockefeller’s wealth advisory and asset management group for an undisclosed sum, giving Lord Rothschild’s London-listed trust a much sought-after foothold in the US.

The transatlantic union brings together David Rockefeller, 96, and Lord Rothschild, 76 – two family patriarchs whose personal relationship spans five decades.

The Rockefeller group traces its roots back to 1882 when John D. Rockefeller established one of the world’s first family offices dedicated to investing his wealth. It has since developed into a provider of wealth and asset management services to other families, foundations and institutions. It is majority-owned by the 19th century oil magnate’s family and has $34bn of assets under administration.

The partnership with RIT will focus on setting up investment funds, eyeing joint acquisitions of wealth and asset managers and granting each other non-executive directorships.

U.S.A. 2012. A nation of liars and thieves.

Is This What We've Become?

"Incentivize victimhood, fraudulent accounting of income/collateral and gaming the system, and guess what you get? A nation of liars and thieves"

By Charles Smith

Memorial Day is traditionally a day to speak of sacrifices made in combat. Like much of the rest of life in America, it has largely become artificial, a hurried "celebration" of frenzied Memorial Day marketing that is quickly forgotten the next day.

Instead of participating in this rote (and thus insincere) "thank you for your sacrifice" pantomime, perhaps we should ask what else has been sacrificed in America without our acknowledgement. Perhaps we should look at the sacrifices that need to be made but which are cast aside in our mad rush to secure "what we deserve."

The unvarnished reality is that most Americans have no idea what service members experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they don't want to know. When 4,488 white crosses were erected on a hillside to remind us of all those who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, people didn't like it, labeling it "unpatriotic."

Why The ECB Will Print

Never underestimate a desperate central bank’s willingness to print

By Jeff Harding

There is a lot of chatter about the eurozone, Greece, Spain, Germany, and the European Central Bank (ECB). And rightly so since we appear to be reaching a critical stage there. Some have raised the point that there is nothing the ECB can do to solve their problems. That is correct in the long run. But in the short run, never underestimate a desperate central bank’s willingness to print.

This morning I was referred to an article from Phoenix Capital Research that posited that “THERE IS NO ENTITY ON EARTH THAT CAN BAILOUT EUROPE.” I suggest you read it; it’s not long. It shows the complexity of the situation for a system that was born to fail. Phoenix has another article today on this topic on their web site. 

Their first point was:

Why Moral “Don’ts” Matter Most

Social harmony is directly related to the existence of clear standards for behavior
By David C. Rose

How important are moral values for the development and operation of a free-market economy? What follows is an explanation for why some moral values—the moral “don’ts”—are important to the conduct of economic activity, while other moral values—the moral “do’s”—can actually act as impediments. This distinction was first proposed in my book, The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior. An interesting byproduct of this exercise is that it sheds light on what a moral framework that comports with libertarianism might look like.

“Moral do’s” are exhortations that tell us what to do if we are to be moral. Since the positive moral action they encourage is often a matter of degree, they tend not to be specific. For example, the moral exhortation “be generous” may induce you to give a beggar money, but it does not tell you how much to give in any given circumstance. Moral exhortations leave unanswered the question of how generous is generous enough to be moral. There are different degrees of generosity, and what you might think is appropriately generous in a given circumstance I might find inadequate.

Etan Patz: the case that changed America

The time has come to let the climate of fear go and to let Etan Patz rest in peace

Thirty-three years on, a man has been arrested for the murder of six-year-old Etan. But America is still reeling from that abduction.

by Nancy McDermott 

On 25 May 1979, a six-year-old boy named Etan Patz went missing on his first solo journey to school. Last week, almost 33 years to the day, New York police announced the arrest of Pedro Hernandez for Etan’s murder.

New Yorkers are greeting the news cautiously and with something like bewilderment. We’ve been down this road before. Thirty-three years of false leads and wild speculation have rendered this event so much larger than life. The disappearance of Etan haunted a generation. This was the story that changed everything. It was the abduction that came to define childhood in the years to follow. It seems almost impossible to imagine that it could, finally, be over.

It’s still possible to visit the corner of Prince and Broom where Etan disappeared so many years ago. Today the area is gentrified, with restaurants and expensive boutiques; barely a trace remains of the New York of the 1970s. Looking at the city today, it’s hard to imagine how different things were then, before its rise to become the de facto financial centre of the world.

The austerity that wasn't.

The Myths of the Interventionists

by Steven Horwitz

One of the most pernicious myths in the economic history of the twentieth century is the belief that the Great Depression was caused, or at least worsened, by Herbert Hoover’s dogmatic commitment to a “do nothing” laissez-faire policy in the aftermath of the stock market crash. This argument is part and parcel of the set of beliefs about the Great Depression that I have dubbed the “high school history” version of that event. (It includes the claims that laissez faire caused it, Hoover’s inaction worsened it, the New Deal did wonders, and World War II got us all the way out.) This claim about Hoover’s dedication to laissez faire is, as I have suggested, utterly false.

"Let’s teach these darkies about the rule of law"

The racial bias in international criminal justice

by Tim Black 

We’re midway through a debate on the future of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Courtenay Griffiths QC is almost bristling. An audience member at the London conference has questioned whether Griffiths’ criticism of the international criminal-justice system is tantamount to defending impunity. ‘My critique is based on my love and respect for the law’, counters Griffiths, ‘and my disgust at the way in which international criminal justice is currently being practised’.

‘Africa has suffered enough’, he continues, ‘from the atrocities committed by its own people -  and I’m old enough to remember Emperor Bokassa. So yes, there is a need for an end to impunity. But in my mind, the push against impunity has to come from African people themselves, from the bottom up. The idea that the white man comes to Africa as he did during the nineteenth century - bearing the White Man’s Burden - to bring the benefits of international justice to black people… I reject that totally. It’s for black people to do it for themselves in Africa. That’s the start [of an end to impunity].’

Approaching the point of no return

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

By Walter E. Williams

Our nation is rapidly approaching a point from which there's little chance to avoid a financial collapse. The heart of our problem can be seen as a tragedy of the commons. That's a set of circumstances when something is commonly owned and individuals acting rationally in their own self-interest produce a set of results that's inimical to everyone's long-term interest. Let's look at an example of the tragedy of the commons phenomenon and then apply it to our national problem.

Imagine there are 100 cattlemen all having an equal right to graze their herds on 1,000 acres of commonly owned grassland. The rational self-interested response of each cattleman is to have the largest herd that he can afford. Each cattleman pursing similar self-interests will produce results not in any of the cattlemen's long-term interest -- overgrazing, soil erosion and destruction of the land's usefulness.

Perestroika and Soviet Economic Reforms

An Inside Perspective

By Yuri N. Maltsev, March 1990

The crisis in the Soviet economy is now apparent to both Soviet and Western observers. The causes and manifestations of this crisis have been cogently described elsewhere. The response of the Soviet ruling class to the deteriorating economy and growing societal alienation was the program of reforms known as perestroika, which was initiated in 1985 and significantly amended in 1987 and 1989.

A number of scholars have provided interesting analyses of the perestroika reforms, drawing on the history of past attempts (in 1957, 1965, 1974, and 1979) to restructure and reform the Soviet economic system. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the problems involved in making the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market system. Understanding the challenges of this task is of crucial importance both for assessing the prospects for reform in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and for shaping a coherent policy toward events and reforms in these parts of the world.

Fast-moving events in the Soviet bloc hold out the promise of a possible end or amelioration of the decades- long conflict between East and West. In light of the stakes involved, it is urgent to understand accurately the nature of the declared reforms and prospects for their success.

The European nations have nailed themselves to the cross

The Buyers Have Left The House

“We are on strike against the morality of cannibals.”

                                                                                -Ayn Rand
by Mark J. Grant

Slowly, surely the largest investors in the world are no longer buying the debt of Europe. Recently the Chinese sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp., said that they were done and would no longer be buying European debt. The institutional readers of “Out of the Box” number somewhat more than 5,000 money managers and I can report that one after another they are either seriously pairing back on their holdings or exiting Europe.

Two sentences and the French ego balloon just got popped

Merkel Strikes Back Against Hollande

By Tyler Durden

Some thought that German chancellor Angela Merkel would quietly take the abuse heaped on her, and her program of "austerity" (or deleveraging as we call it, but that just does not have quite the negative connotations of a word that has become symbolic for all that is wrong with a massively over levered world) by the new French president and Germany's increasingly more insolvent "partners", without much of a fuss.

Greeks Are Europe's Hardest Working People According To... The Greeks

Pretty much any commentary here is pointless

Friendly Societies

Voluntary Social Security and More

By John Chodes

In his retirement speech as Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill contrasted the world of small government in the 1930s, when he entered politics, with today’s big government emphasis on social services, which he helped cre ate: “Health insurance was out of the question. For the elderly, life was filled with uncertainty, dependency and horror. Only the lucky few had pensions. There was no such thing as social security.”

O’Neill was wrong. Working class families had a “safety net” long before Uncle Sam became involved. Our grandparents and even great-grand-parents had benefit plans that protected them when they were sick, injured, out of work, or too old to work. Millions of workers belonged to “friendly societies.”

Allegory and Political Economy

Communication and Cooperation

By Daniel B. Klein

“We must look at the price system,” wrote Friedrich Hayek, “as . . . a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function.” Hayek’s talk of communication was a great advance in economic thinking. Talk of communication is common among market-oriented economists. In their textbook Tyler Cowen and Alexander Tabarrok write: “[P]rice signals and the accompanying profits and losses tell entrepreneurs what areas of the economy consumers want expanded and what areas they want contracted.” Such talk is both illuminating and beautiful.

But the price of eggs communicates, in a literal sense, nothing more than: Yours for $1.89. If we are to be literal, we must mind the element of communion, or community, in communication. Literally, communication is a meeting of minds. The knowledge communicated passes through us as commonly experienced ideas, images, or notions.

Ditch College for All

The obsessive faith in college has backfired

By Robert Samuelson

The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good. It looms as the largest mistake in educational policy since World War II, even though higher education's expansion also ranks as one of America's great postwar triumphs.

Consider. In 1940, fewer than 5 percent of Americans had a college degree. Going to college was "a privilege reserved for the brightest or the most affluent" high-school graduates, wrote Diane Ravitch in her history of U.S. education, "The Troubled Crusade." No more. At last count, roughly 40 percent of Americans had some sort of college degree: about 30 percent a bachelor's degree from a four-year institution; the rest associate degrees from community colleges.

Too Big for Comfort

Why we need to break up the banks

BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS

America needs to break up its biggest banks, but not for reasons likely to give a tingle to Occupy Wall Street’s remnant rabble (or its Great Everywhere Spirit, Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts). This isn’t about some political exercise in election-year demonization. Bankers, as a class, aren’t villains. They’re not “banksters” grifting money from middle-income pockets. And they’re certainly not vampire squids on the collective face of humanity, as Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi has infamously described Goldman Sachs. And while it might be rhetorical overkill to say they’re “doing God’s work,” as Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein has put it, bankers do fulfill a critical economic function. Bankers, not bureaucrats, are supposed to be the efficient allocators of capital in America’s market-based economy. They connect people who have spare dough to those who need a bit of spare dough, such as entrepreneurs looking to start a business or companies looking to grow one. We need lots of successful banks, and we need smart folks to run them.

'Meaningful Work'

Many people work "just for the money"

By Thomas Sowell

"Education" is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.

When I saw signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour.

We are each on our own.

The End Of The Euro: A Survivor’s Guide

By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson

In every economic crisis there comes a moment of clarity.  In Europe soon, millions of people will wake up to realize that the euro-as-we-know-it is gone.  Economic chaos awaits them.

To understand why, first strip away your illusions.  Europe’s crisis to date is a series of supposedly “decisive” turning points that each turned out to be just another step down a steep hill.  Greece’s upcoming election on June 17 is another such moment.  While the so-called “pro-bailout” forces may prevail in terms of parliamentary seats, some form of new currency will soon flood the streets of Athens.  It is already nearly impossible to save Greek membership in the euro area: depositors flee banks, taxpayers delay tax payments, and companies postpone paying their suppliers – either because they can’t pay or because they expect soon to be able to pay in cheap drachma.

Bread, Circuses, Debasement & Decline

This road leads to a dead end

"We are following the exact path of the Roman Empire and every empire that has existed in human history. Our decline is well under way. The only question is how long before the final collapse. I can guarantee you it won’t be centuries. History moves more rapidly and the weapons at the disposal of war pigs are much more lethal. First there will be financial collapse, then world war. In the meantime, enjoy the bread and circuses while your dollars are debased by the minute."

                                               - Rome Didn’t Fall In A Day

By  Chris Sullivan

Back in the ’70s, I used to expect the government to suffer a financial collapse at which time it would have to quit doing most of the things it’s doing because it would run out of money. That isn’t what has happened. Instead of  cutting spending it has printed more money and tried to increase taxes on various things. 

Greece Through the Looking Glass

We're Not In Wonderland Anymore, Alice!

"You may call it ‘nonsense’ if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"

                                                      -The Red Queen

By Mark Grant

With all of the talk of Greece leaving the Eurozone and forfeiting the Euro as its currency; what if it does not? That, my friends, is now the question. The current estimation of Greece’s GDP is $308.3 billion. All of the debt of Greece, direct, derivatives and guaranteed is $1.3 trillion giving the country an actual debt to GDP ratio of 421.67%. You may recall all of the talk, all of the pandering words spit out by the IMF and the European Union that the new austerity measures would take the Greek debt to 120%; all nonsensical and a nonfactual expression of a very fantastic and fairy tale imagination. If someone has actually stepped through the looking glass I suspect it is Christine Lagarde. Perhaps she is Alice’s granddaughter? In my estimation she must have eaten some of the cake because her reputation has dwindled as she and Greece fell down the rabbit’s hole.

Nazis from the Moon

Beware the rise of EU anti-populists

The EU elites’ fear of an imminent Fourth Reich reveals a great deal about their loathing of the European mob.

by Patrick Hayes 

Earlier this month, the sci-fi comedy Iron Sky was released in Britain, featuring the return to Earth of a band of vicious Nazis in flying saucers. ‘In 1945 the Nazis went to the moon’, goes the movie trailer, which shows a giant swastika-shaped base on the moon. ‘In 2018, they are coming back.’

You have to wonder, given his recent comments regarding the rise of the right across Europe, whether Britain’s deputy prime minister Nick Clegg thinks he is inhabiting the same fantasy world as Iron Sky. In an interview with Der Spiegel, where he reaffirmed the Lib-Con coalition’s commitment to the EU, Clegg claimed that there could be ‘a whole range of nationalist, xenophobic and extreme movements increasing across the European Union’. Warning of an imminent ‘disaster’, he implied that lessons need to be learnt from Europe’s history: ‘We know this much from our continent: the combination of economic insecurity and political paralysis is the ideal recipe for an increase in extremism and xenophobia.’

The Systemic Siesta

Pricing Labor Out of the Market

by Carolina Carmenes Cavia and David Howden

With victories over the Germans in the 2008 European Football Championship and during the 2010 World Cup, there is little doubt that the Spaniards have the upper hand on the soccer field. Yet while Spaniards have had much to cheer about in the soccer world over the last five years, the economic situation is a world removed.

Spanish unemployment is now hovering around 23 percent, with over 50 percent of youths jobless. Only around 6 percent of Germans are without work, almost the lowest level in the country since reunification. This divide solidifies Spain's position among the worst-performing economies of the continent, and Germany's vaunted position as among the best.

The "Race to the Bottom"

Value in Devaluation?

by Patrick Barron

The euro is in trouble. That is not news. What is news is that people with deep pockets are willing to pay for economists to provide a solution. Lord Wolfson has offered a £250,000 prize for the best way a country can exit the European Monetary Union (EMU). Five finalists for the prize were announced in March. The winner will be announced in June.

None of the five finalists — Neil Record, Jens Nordvig, Jonathan Tepper, Catherine Dobbs, and Roger Bootle — advocates a return to sound money; all assume that new, national fiat currencies will float; and all assume that unproductive countries will benefit from devalued new currencies. The theory is that a devalued currency will spur export-driven economic growth. Furthermore, they have little confidence that economic reforms — which they all, by the way, do recommend — will be achieved in the near term and see devaluation as a quicker alternative. But will this work? First a word about devaluation itself.

A Case For The Individual

The Case of Sherlock Holmes

By Maura Pennington,

For a character obsessed with details, Sherlock Holmes would be pleased with the ones that were preserved in the BBC modern adaptation whose second series concluded airing in America this past Sunday.  My favorite is John Watson’s puzzled amusement at the gaps in his friend’s prodigious knowledge. 

In the first novel, A Study in Scarlet, before he learns that Holmes is the world’s only consulting detective, Watson tries to make a list to determine his roommate’s occupation based on his apparent areas of expertise.  He finds that Holmes has only a feeble grasp on politics and no understanding of astronomy, the latter made evident by his ignorance of the fact that the earth revolves around the sun.  Both the literary and televised versions of Holmes give the excuse that it only makes sense to retain knowledge that is applicable to one’s own pursuits in life.  For him, the earth’s position in the universe has no bearing on the observation of the idiosyncrasies of men in order to outwit them.

Coming Together or Flying Apart?

The “Greek fatigue.”

By John Mauldin

The debate among very knowledgeable individuals and institutions as to the future of Europe is intense. There are those who argue that the cost of breaking up the eurozone, even allowing Greece to leave, is so high that it will not be permitted to happen. Estimates abound of a cost of €1 trillion to European banks, governments, and businesses, just for the exit of Greece. And that does not include the cost of contagion as the markets wonder who is next. Keeping Spanish and Italian interest-rate costs at levels that can be sustained will cost even more trillions, as not just government debt but the entire banking system is at stake. Not to mention the pension and insurance funds. If the cost of Greece leaving is €1 trillion, then who can guess the cost of Spain or Italy?

A total Greek default wipes out more than twice the ECB balance sheet. That means the remaining countries will have to put twice as much into the ECB as their present commitment, just to get the ECB back to where it technically stands today (because the assumption is still that Greek debt is good, and so the ECB is still lending money to the Greek Central Bank).

Europe continues to fight the wrong battle

Damned if You do, Damned if You Don’t

by Peter Tchir

It is clear that Greece has had a solvency issue now for over 2 years.  The ECB and Troika chose to treat it as a liquidity problem.  Maybe, they could have argued that in early 2010, but by the summer of 2011 it was obvious to any credit observer that the problem was solvency, yet they continued to treat it as one of liquidity.  That is scary because if they fail to see the problem correctly now, they will fail miserably.  Not only is the problem clearly solvency, but now forced currency conversion has been added to the mix. Any “solution” from the EU must now address that risk, and it is not the same as solvency.  Programs that can protect against solvency may do nothing for the redenomination risk.

'Greece is a Failed Corrupt State

From Head of Deutsche Bank - Purposely Inflammatory Statements to Force Greece Exit

By Mike Shedlock

Strong messages from the head or the IMF, the head of Deutsche Bank, and the president of the Bundesbank are highly likely to drive Greek voters away from New Democracy and Pasok in the June 17 elections.

The Guardian writes It's payback time: don't expect sympathy - Lagarde to Greeks.

The International Monetary Fund has ratcheted up the pressure on crisis-hit Greece after its managing director, Christine Lagarde, said she has more sympathy for children deprived of decent schooling in sub-Saharan Africa than for many of those facing poverty in Athens.

The last public intellectual?

The disillusion of the brightest of this generation.

by Neil Davenport 

Twenty-one years ago, an American-Japanese academic, Francis Fukuyama, wrote an essay called ‘The End of History’. His argument was that the collapse of Stalinist communism in Eastern Europe vindicated the supremacy of liberal-capitalist democracies. For Fukuyama, ‘this was it’ for human progress. Capitalist triumphalism, however, barely lasted 12 months, let alone a lifetime, as Western political elites ended up as disorientated and as demoralised as radical left-wingers. Incredibly, by the mid-1990s, Marx’s political economy was back in academic vogue in the United States, while Western politicians often flattered the moral grandstanding of ‘anti-capitalist’ protesters. From that point on, a consensus has emerged that says economic growth isn’t all its cracked up to be and the state is to be cherished and worshipped. In 2012, who would have thought that ‘The End of History’ would look like Sweden?

It is clear that Germany is already being placed on the hook

The Separation of Bank and State

By David Zervos

The euro monetary system is flawed. It is a system that was cobbled together for political purposes; and sadly it was set up in such a way that each member state retained significant sovereign powers – most importantly the ability to exit the system and default on debts in times of stress. There is virtually NO federal power in the Union, as witnessed by the complete breakdown of the Maastrict and Lisbon treaties. In fact, what we are seeing today is that the structure of the monetary system is so poorly designed, it actually creates perverse fiscal linkages across member states that incentivize strategic default and exit.

Our new leader of the Greek revolt, Mr CHE-pras, has figured this one out. And in turn he is holding Angie hostage as we head into June 17th!

The Revolution will not be Tweeted this weekend

Facebook also a loser in Egypt

By Mark Steyn

So how's that old Arab Spring going? You remember – the "Facebook Revolution." As I write, they're counting the votes in Egypt's presidential election, so by the time you read this the pecking order may have changed somewhat. But currently in first place is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi, who in an inspiring stump speech before the students of Cairo University the other night told them, "Death in the name of Allah is our goal."

Like!

In second place is the military's man, Ahmed Shafiq, Hosni Mubarak's last Prime Minister and a man who in a recent television interview said that "unfortunately the revolution succeeded."

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Greece should imitate Latvia

Latvia Shows the Way, Proving Some Famous Merchants of Doom Wrong

by Anders Aslund

Today, the Latvian government can claim victory. In the first quarter of this year, Latvia’s annualized GDP grew by 6.8 percent, the highest growth rate in Europe, and last year Latvia recorded a growth rate of 5.5 percent, the third highest in Europe. Four years ago, GDP plummeted by a total of 24 percent because of the sudden stop of international financing in September 2008. But that decline lasted only two years. Unemployment has fallen from 21 percent in early 2010 to 16 percent two years later.

How times can change. In December 2008, Paul Krugman claimed, “Latvia is the new Argentina.” In June 2009, Nouriel Roubini asserted that “devaluation seems unavoidable” and that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union were “throwing good money after bad” in their support of Latvia’s stabilization program.

But Latvia did not devalue. Instead it carried out a vigorous “internal devaluation,” with large cuts in public expenditures and wages as well as structural reforms, while supported financially by the IMF and the European Union. Many argue that Latvia is special, but the Latvian government did exactly what it was supposed to do and the Latvian people understand that. Remarkably, Valdis Dombrovskis, who became prime minister in the midst of the crisis in March 2009 and led the cure, has been reelected twice in parliamentary elections since then.

The Greek Montenegro option

Endgame in Greece: Don’t Look for an Imminent “Grexit”

by Jacob Funk Kirkegaard

As the countdown toward a new Greek election heads toward June 17, most analysts predict an imminent Greek exit from the euro area. Almost anything can happen, but a few possibilities are worth considering. Any newly elected Greek government will have trouble implementing the current austerity program called for by euro leaders and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A loss of funding at least from the IMF in 2012 appears likely. On the other hand, it is also likely that Greece will remain a member of the euro in the short run, through 2012. Prospects for an outright Greek Exit—a Grexit—are no more than 5 percent.

Two main scenarios for Greece in the coming weeks depend on politics and the elections.