A Game of Euro Chicken

Playing Until the Germans Lose Their Nerve

by Jan Fleischhauer

For Germany, being part of the European Union has always included an element of blackmail. France has been playing this card from the beginning, but now the Spanish and the Greeks have mastered the game. They're banking on Berlin losing its nerve.

France's newly elected Socialist government has just decided to lower the retirement age to 60. From now on, no Frenchman will be forced to work any longer just because it might help kick-start the country's flagging economy. And there's no way the French are going to work as long as their poor fellow Europeans in Germany, whose government is obliging them to labor and toil until age 67.

Blessed France, where the ruthless laws of the economy lose their ability to frighten people bathing in the eternal sunlight of socialism. Granted, this grand nation doesn't produce enough children to guarantee the prosperity of its inhabitants into old age. But in France, something that would elsewhere be viewed as a serious demographic problem demanding tough attention is seen as a mere misunderstanding that the strong arm of the president can simply dispel with the stoke of a pen, should he so desire.

The Politics of "Consensus" Is the Politics of Failure

Horse-trading and other vices

Persuading those in power to limit their power via "consensus" doesn't work. Both the legal system and the horse-trading politics of "consensus" have failed.

How do you get "consensus" in politics? You horse-trade. You give everybody something they want. You cut everyone into the deal. That passes for "consensus" in politics: divide the swag.

If you want to understand President Obama's failure as a leader, ask where did he learn politics? 

In Chicago. Big-city politics boils down to getting the ward bosses, ethnic-neighborhood leaders, Chamber of Commerce and public unions together and making them all happy with concessions, give-aways or some other slice of swag so they all agree to to support some minor policy tweak of the Status Quo.

Any constituency left out of the swag distribution squeals like a stuck pig and kills the "consensus."

This "making sausage" consensus is passed off as "the only way to get anything passed," but the truth is that it's the politics of failure: nothing meaningful can possibly get done in the politics of "consensus" because 95% of any useful reform must be traded away to get everyone willingly on board.

The screwed generation

It can happen anywhere

by Joel Kotkin

In Madrid you see them on the streets, jobless, aimless, often bearing college degrees but working as cabbies, baristas, street performers, or—more often—not at all. In Spain as in Greece, nearly half of the adults under 25 don’t work.

Call them the screwed generation, the victims of expansive welfare states and the massive structural debt charged by their parents. In virtually every developed country, and increasingly in developing ones, they include not only the usual victims, the undereducated and recent immigrants, but also the college-educated.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the European Union’s Club Med of Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy, the focal point of the emerging new economic crisis. There’s a growing sense of hopelessness in these places, where debt is turning politics into an ugly choice between austerity, which reduces present opportunities, or renewed emphasis on public spending, which all but guarantees major problems in the bond market, and spending promises that can’t be kept.

The Spanish Bailout Explained With One Image

Another one down the drain

In the meantime, the debasement of paper money continues

Prozac-craving markets

by DETLEV SCHLICHTER

In my view, there is no escaping the fact that things are not getting better. If anything, they are getting worse. Following the large swings in financial markets this past week and reading the commentary in the press, it strikes me that there is still a surprisingly strong belief out there that our fate is in the hands of the policymakers, who presumably still have it in their power to make things better for the economy. How can they do this?  Well, expect nothing new here: Mainly by the time-worn strategy of lowering official interest rates again – where this is still possible – or by injecting more fiat money into the system through fresh loans to the banking industry or by yet another round of debt monetization. Talk about the laws of diminishing returns!

The World is Flat and other Tales from Spain

The cancer has spread to the lymph nodes

“The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.”

                                                                      -Dr. Who

By Mark Grant

The art/science of Deduction is a process that I engage in daily. To paraphrase Mr. Sherlock Holmes; it is where I make my bread and cheese. On the most fundamental of levels you must have the facts right before you can reach any conclusion or series of conclusions and here is where Europe tries its best to mislead you; they do not wish for you to have the correct data. I used to think it was just some political strategy of giving the public information but I now honestly believe that the Europeans engage in a very devious manipulated charade quite on purpose. It probably dates back to the Church claiming that the Earth was flat when it was heretical to disagree with the doctrine which was provided by Rome. The way the Spanish Prime Minister is behaving concerning the Spanish bailout he must still believe this heretical nonsense today. This week the bailout; next week the Inquisition.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history

Niall Ferguson on How Europe Could Cost Obama the Election

Spain has accepted a big bank bailout, but the Eurostorm isn't ending anytime soon—and it may come to American shores just in time for the election.

by Niall Ferguson  

Could Europe cost Barack Obama the presidency? At first sight, that seems like a crazy question. Isn’t November’s election supposed to be decided in key swing states like Florida and Ohio, not foreign countries like Greece and Spain? And don’t left-leaning Europeans love Obama and loathe Republicans?

Sure. But the possibility is now very real that a double-dip recession in Europe could kill off hopes of a sustained recovery in the United States. As the president showed in his anxious press conference last Friday, he well understands the danger emanating from across the pond. Slower growth and higher unemployment can only hurt his chances in an already very tight race with Mitt Romney.

France and the rest of the eurozone need to wake up

Any way you slice it, Germany wins

Germany holds all the cards in the euro power struggle: It prospers even as countries around it collapse, and that means it will likely end up with even more control over the eurozone after this is all over.

By Cyrus Sanati

The faster Europe realizes that Germany holds most, if not all, of the cards when it comes to ending the eurozone debt crisis, the faster a lasting solution can be found. With positive economic growth, low unemployment and fantastically low interest rates, Germany is simply in no rush to implement reforms that have been proposed by its economically weaker neighbors, as they would negatively impact Germany's ability to borrow cheaply and expand exports.

The only way the EU's biggest member can be convinced to take on reforms, like issuing eurobonds, would be if it were granted incentives, such as control over the fiscal policy of the eurozone. Other members of the eurozone, namely France, have been wary about handing more of their economic power over to Brussels and ultimately to Frankfurt. But while solutions like the pooling of eurozone's existing debt is a good first step to diffusing the crisis, they still require incentives for Germany to get on board.

More spending won't rescue Europe's six big spenders

Αn illusion supporting policies that are pure delusion

By Shawn Tully

France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece and Portugal have already proven that more government spending actually slows growth. Why do they want to spend even more?

The leaders of distressed European nations, from Italy's Mario Monti to France's Francois Hollande, are blaming "austerity" for their economic woes, and championing policies that promote "growth."

It's important to define the two terms. Austerity stands for shrinking budget deficits, by lowering spending, raising taxes, or a combination of the two. The pro-growth measures are what's known in the U.S. as "stimulus." It comprises short-term fiscal policies designed to limit the damage from a recession and speed recovery. Stimulus works in precisely the opposite direction of austerity by raising budget deficits, supposedly as an emergency measure. Today, southern Europe's heads-of-government, applauded by the Obama administration, advocate recharging their flagging economies by swelling the gap between revenues and expenses, chiefly by lifting government outlays.

EUROPE: A Thousand Miles Behind

The Eurozone countries are stuck with each other and with nowhere to go. But down

By Raul Ilargi

Production and exports are plummeting in Italy, Holland, Finland, Germany, just about anywhere; in China, production growth falls sharply. But your "leaders" will keep on talking about restoring growth, recovery etc. Spain has secretly asked for some $200-300 billion in bank bail-outs on Saturday (and got much less, the Wall Street Journal reports it will be €125), and 24 hours later play its first game in the Euro Cup, for which it's the great favorite.

The potential Spain bailout will need to be financed through EFSF bonds. The IMF has stated that the banks will need €40 billion, but that number looks ridiculously low. €40 billion every week over the entire summer sounds more like it.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard quotes a few voices:

Is a Spanish bail-out viable?

Megan Greene, from Roubini Global Economics, says Spain's banks will need up to €250bn - a claim that no longer looks extreme. New troubles are emerging daily. The Bank of Spain said yesterday that Catalunya Caixa and Novagalicia will need a total of €9bn in new state funds.

JP Morgan is expecting the final package for Spain to rise above €350bn, while RBS says the rescue will "morph" into a full-blown rescue of €370bn to €450bn over time - by far the largest in world history.

Is Global Finance a Ponzi Scheme?

 Ask a Russian Expert

By Leonid Bershidsky

What's the difference between today's global finance system and a Ponzi scheme? This is the question that a 56-year-old veteran Russian financial scammer has been asking his victims.

Chillingly, he almost has a point.

Sergei Mavrodi is one of the most infamous names in Russia's recent history. Back in February 1994, amid the turmoil of the country's transition to a market economy, the mathematician organized a Ponzi scheme called MMM. He offered returns of 100 percent a month and advertised aggressively on national television. Before the pyramid crashed in July 1994, it attracted as many as 10 million depositors, making it more popular than the voucher privatization program that was supposed to give regular Russians a chance to take a stake in formerly state-owned enterprises.

Mavrodi managed to avoid prison for nearly a decade, in part by getting elected as a parliamentary deputy and using the status to obtain immunity from prosecution. He ultimately served out a four-and-a-half-year sentence for fraud. While in prison, Mavrodi wrote books and movie scripts, one of which -- PyraMMMid -- was later made into a successful film.

The 'Ruble Zone' Collapsed in the 1990s, and It Was Bad

Euro Breakup Precedent Seen When 15 State-Ruble Zone Fell Apart

By Catherine Hickley

It was a currency union of 15 states in 1992. Two years later, as budget deficits spiraled out of control, hyperinflation reigned and economies shriveled, just two members of the Soviet Union’s ruble zone were left.

As Greek politicians threaten to break terms of the country’s bailout with international lenders, Spain calls for financial help, and northern European nations balk at funding the south, historians are asking whether the euro region is about to face a similar exodus. They take a longer view of the European Union’s crisis than economists, and it’s much bleaker.

The Soviet experience tells us “an exit like this is messy and leads to loss of income and inflation, and people are right to be scared of it,” said Harold James, a professor of history atPrinceton University whose books include “The End of Globalization: Lessons From the Great Depression.” “It isn’t an attractive analogy at all because the Soviet Union states all had serious troubles for the whole of the 1990s.”

Return to Greece’s past, a radical mistake

The Great Leap Backwards

By Joshua Chaffin

It has become accepted wisdom that Alexis Tsipras, the leftwing Greek politician vying to become the country’s next prime minister, is a radical.

With good reason. Mr Tsipras’ party, Syriza, is formally known as the Coalition of the Radical Left. His campaign appearances feature homages to the revolutionary icon Che Guevara, and fiery speeches that rail against crooked bankers, corrupt politicians, the International Monetary Fund and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

But what if the chief appeal of Syriza is not so much the promise of radical change but rather a return to the status quo – the days before Greece ran aground on the rocks of a debt crisis and became entangled with the EU and the IMF?There are signs that Syriza may be just that. Take the campaign rhetoric. The message feathered beneath the accusations is one of comfort for a citizenry whose feelings of humiliation and embarrassment should not be underestimated: It was not your fault – it was theirs.

Club Med needs to take a long hard look at Buenos Aires.

Argentina Continues The Descent

By Walter Russell

Argentina’s President did something so amazing today that it made the world news: she announced that she’s converting her last dollar bank account into pesos.

But don’t worry; this isn’t a story about the decline of the dollar.

Argentina wasted the 20th century lurching from one ill-considered economic experiment to the next. Many worked temporarily; the country’s vast natural resources are always there to help out. But in the end, one by one they failed, sending the country into alternating bouts of hyperinflation and business depression.

Unfortunately the country is starting the 21st century in the same way; the Kirchner-Fernandez period like the Menem period before it began with high hopes but it is now slowly descending to earth. So far the government has resorted to the traditional techniques: cooking the books, hounding whistle blowers, nationalizing assets and confiscating foreign investment.

The Triumph of Hope

Europe has no good choices, only a choice among very distressing and expensive options

By John Mauldin

When the Eurozone was created it was the triumph of hope over the reality of political and economic discord. Somehow, countries that had different languages, customs and national characteristics; that had fought each other for centuries; and that all had different views of themselves in relation to the rest of their fellow Europeans, were supposed to come together into a fiscal union, because they now shopped with the same money.

Rather than simply creating a free-trade zone and allowing for a common understanding and economic integration to develop over time, the European leaders wanted to jump-start the process. And they had numerous critics. Many of the best and brightest in the economics world pointed out the problems.

How Four Jewish Butchers Brought Down the First New Deal

That’s Not Kosher

By Steven Horwitz

Jewish-Americans have a long history of finding role models who broke barriers, accomplished great things, or engaged in more mundane acts of heroism. Jewish religious schools are full of discussions of athletes like Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, or the legions of Jewish entertainers and scholars, as ways to demonstrate the accomplishments of American Jews.

But in all those stories many of us heard growing up, one set of brave heroes was never mentioned: the Schechter brothers of New York City. The Schechters were kosher butchers operating in the 1930s who stood fast to their commitment to the dietary laws of kashrut in the face of ferocious pressure and prosecution by a powerful government. They eventually took their case to the highest court in the land—and won—defeating one of the most popular and powerful administrations in American history.

One would think this story of Jewish heroism and commitment to Jewish values would be inspirational for generations of young American Jews. But the Schechter brothers were up against Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Berlin is ignoring the lessons of the 1930s

Is it one minute to midnight in Europe?

By Niall Ferguson and Nouriel Roubini

We fear that the German government’s policy of doing “too little too late” risks a repeat of precisely the crisis of the mid-20th century that European integration was designed to avoid.

We find it extraordinary that it should be Germany, of all countries, that is failing to learn from history. Fixated on the non-threat of inflation, today’s Germans appear to attach more importance to 1923 (the year of hyperinflation) than to 1933 (the year democracy died). They would do well to remember how a European banking crisis two years before 1933 contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy not just in their own country but right across the European continent.

Argentina’s Way to Decadence

To the enemy, not even justice

By Ariel Barbero

Argentina’s former president Eduardo Duhalde—elected by Congress in 2002 after a coup toppled the candidate who had defeated him in the regular elections—once said that Argentina was condemned to success. Indeed a country with fertile land, a mild climate, mighty rivers, a small population that used to be well educated, no major conflicts, and no racial rifts would seem difficult to sink. It must inevitably rise. Nevertheless, we Argentines have demonstrated a rare ability to avoid success. Fortunately destiny—good or bad—is never inevitable.

People often point out that the two Koreas provide (as the two Germanys once did) good examples of what the rule of law means for the life of a nation. Argentina provides yet another example of the changes that take place when respect for rights—including property—is no longer considered relevant. Except that in the case of Argentina, the division doesn’t concern space but time.

We Argentines started very well. People tend to forget that by 1928 Argentina had the sixth-highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world. Income per capita was similar to Germany’s. Literature and music flourished.

Defiance. A Lost Virtue?

The Tambov Rebellion

By Brandon Smith

It was August 19th, 1920. A military detachment of Red Army soldiers led by Bolshevik authorities steamrolled into the Russian town of Khitrovo to implement a policy known as “Prodrazvyorstka”; resource allocation in the name of national security which led to the confiscation of vital grain supplies and the starvation of millions of peasants. To be sure, multiple excuses were used to rationalize the program, all in the name of the “greater good”. But in reality, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw the farming culture of Russia not as human beings, but as mechanisms for feeding city residents and the army; the power centers of the newly formed Communist government.

Let’s Be Friends

There's waste of taxpayers' money and then there's waste of taxpayers' money...

By Daniel J. Mitchel

While most of my disdain is focused on the clowns in Washington, I enjoy poking fun at the policies adopted by the various nitwits and thugs that can be found in other governments.

** That’s why I’ve mocked the British government-run healthcare system for letting a woman die when officials failed to notice a six-inch toilet brush handle embedded in her buttocks.