Re: Tema: PPCC - Pisitófilos Creditófagos - Primavera 2023

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-17/powell-wake-up-call-means-more-corporate-defaults-credit-weekly

Powell Wake-Up Call Means More Corporate Defaults

Maturity wall is starting to rise as quantitative easing fades
Companies are turning to debt exchanges with mixed results

America’s most leveraged companies got a painful reality check this week when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned that a rate cut is still a couple of years away.

Companies will have to swallow higher borrowing costs for longer while finding a way to manage their liabilities. Rising funding costs increase the risk of defaults and distressed exchanges as firms struggle to adapt to a shrinking money supply.(...)

[Derby]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lots-of-hiring-but-not-so-much-working-d4f01646

Lots of Hiring, but Not So Much Working

Companies resist layoffs even as economic weakness looms

The hiring boom obscures what looks like a contradictory economic trend: Employees are working fewer hours.

The average number of hours worked a week by private-sector employees declined to 34.3 in May, below the 2019 average and down from a peak of 35 hours in January 2021, according to the Labor Department.

This could be ominous. With growth now slowing—and by one measure, negative—some employers might be responding by cutting hours, perhaps in preparation for recession.

“In the past, reducing working hours has been a reliable harbinger of a wave of layoffs,” said Aichi Amemiya, senior U.S. economist at Nomura Securities.

This time, that recession signal might be a false alarm because unusual postpandemic factors are at work. Indeed, even as employers cut hours, they are also adding workers—something they don’t usually do when contraction looms. Payrolls rose by 339,000 in May and by nearly 1.6 million for the year to date. Layoffs were nearly 13% lower in April than in the average month in 2019, according to the Labor Department.

The expense and trauma of hiring have left employers unusually eager to avoid shedding staff they will need when business picks up again, according to Amemiya. “That’s quite different from the past,” he said.

Businesses are finally able to hire for long-unfilled positions, allowing overworked staff to return to more normal hours. Finally, workers are opting to work less, possibly because of a shift in work-life priorities.

In May, the average factory worker had 3.6 overtime hours, down from 4.1 a year earlier.

Throughout much of the pandemic, American Fleet was churning out diesel engines for trucking companies. The Springfield, Mo., business couldn’t hire fast enough, said sales manager Mark Patterson. “We can do 30 engines a month easy, and last year we were sometimes doing 40—the guys were working overtime to get it all done,” he said.

Then, earlier this year, roaring growth came to an abrupt end. Orders for American Fleet’s engines are down around 40% as consumers’ pandemic-driven goods-buying binge waned, leaving truckers sitting idle. The company shifted from desperately posting job ads online to cutting worker hours.

Normally, reduced worker hours would signal impending job cuts. But Patterson said American Fleet isn’t planning layoffs because mechanics are so hard to find. With fewer orders to fill, workers are prepping engine blocks and upgrading equipment. He is optimistic that sales will start to pick up again based on containership arrivals, but that will take time to filter through.



“There’s such a shortage of labor we’ll do everything we can to keep everybody because you’re afraid you won’t get them back,” Patterson said. “The labor situation is the hardest we’ve ever faced, and we’ve been in business 35 years.”

For many employers—especially in lower-paying industries requiring in-person interaction—critical positions went unfilled, so work was spread across fewer employees—pushing up the number of hours each worker put in.

Droves of workers have since rejoined the labor force, allowing businesses that had operated short-staffed to fill critical roles. “We’re getting more people back to work, and that’s allowing some of the work to get split up,” said Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights.

At hotels, restaurants and shops, which are relatively more reliant on part-time workers, the workweek has dropped around 5% from pandemic peaks—compared with a 2% decline for the economy as a whole.

The restaurant chain El Pollo Loco said it has been able to hire enough people for its locations so that workers no longer need to skip breaks or take overtime.

“Our restaurants are basically fully staffed,” Laurance Roberts, chief executive of the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based company, told analysts recently.

“We’ve gotten past the point where supply was a major constraint—where restaurants had to close on certain days or for certain hours because there weren’t enough workers,” said Stephen Juneau, economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “We’re now operating in a ‘business as usual’ way, but that doesn’t mean that the labor market isn’t still very hot.”

Casey’s, a convenience-store chain, said employees are staying at their jobs longer. That resulted in 20% fewer overtime hours in its latest quarter as stores no longer needed to rely on having fewer employees work more.

A slightly different measure offers another possible reason the job market remains tight as hours drop: People are working less simply because they want to.

During the pandemic, U.S. workers began spending fewer hours in their jobs, according to a paper by the economist Yongseok Shin and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis. Their research draws from the Census Bureau’s survey of households, reflecting how many hours respondents and other household members actually worked. That differs from the better-known survey of employers, which is based on how many hours per job businesses paid workers for.

That trend has kept building even as the impact of Covid has faded. Outside of the early months of the pandemic, the average worker is now putting in fewer hours than at any point since 2014, during a slow recovery from the 2007-09 global financial crisis.

Survey data suggests this reflects a shift in priorities catalyzed by the pandemic, which remote work likely helped facilitate, making it easier for people to log off early without worrying about bosses looking askance, said Shin.

That the work-life reset affected everyone simultaneously could also be a factor, he added. Workers before the pandemic likely worried about being passed over for promotions or a bonus if they worked less than their peers. “But with enough people choosing to work fewer hours at the same time, they don’t have to worry about losing standing in the economy,” said Shin. “That’s why I think this is a stable trend.”

[Asdrúbal el Bello]

Al final resulta que el acuerdo del castillo de Eu sigue funcionando.

¡Links!

(Gracias)

https://www.boe.es/biblioteca_juridica/abrir_pdf.php?id=PUB-DH-2021-191


El papel de las grandes potencias en España desde las guerras napoleónicas es decisivo. En 1833, en 1844, en 1870-73, en 1917, en 1936, en 1974, en 2004, en 2017... y seguimos. Quizás la salida sea entregarnos sin más a la protección de Washington, y dejarnos de pamemas.

Pregunto en público porque la respuesta será interesante :

¿Esas cartas figuran en archivos del BOE porque tocan a reyes y por tanto al Estado?

¿Hay algo que siga vigente de lo acordado en el Castillo d'Eu?
Después de todo, el tratado de Gibraltar es de esa época

¿Los archivos, correos, etc, de los monarcas actuales se conservan como éstos, en el BOE, Son de acceso público como cualquier otro documento de rango oficial?
O el monarca actual ya no es el Estado ?

(Gracias por el link. Impresiona el contenido y el archivo.)

La política (y todo) la hacen personas, y siempre hay cartas, archivos, diarios, ensayos, cintas del despacho oval, papeles de Bono, escuchas de Villarejo... Algunos grupos de Telegram en España deben de ser muy sabrosos. Algunos se publican, la mayoría no. Cuando interesa, como los pagos del Foreign Office a los generales franquistas en 1940, o las cintas de Nixon, se publican en prensa. Otros, como las negociaciones entre Trump y Putin o las conversaciones entre Londres y Moscú en 1941-1942, no se publicarán jamás.

En cuanto al compromiso de Eu, se hizo público básicamente porque en la revolución del 48 cayó la casa de Orleans, y parte de sus archivos pasaron a poder de los revolucionarios. Algún radical francés encontró interesantes esos papeles y se los pasó a algún correligionario español de paseo en el París de esa primavera, al que faltó tiempo para mandarlos a España, donde se publicaron en la prensa progresista. Tuvo una importante repercusión política. Para los diplomáticos españoles marca el momento más bajo de la influencia diplomática española, convertida la nación en un protectorado franco-británico.

Obviamente el asunto de Eu es un tema matrimonial privado, con obvias repercusiones institucionales y diplomáticas. El equivalente sería la pregunta de ¿con quien casamos a Leonor? si como reina de 17 años tuviera el mismo poder que tiene, por ejemplo, Mohamed VI. Sería un tema internacional importante.

Sobre si esto sigue en vigor, evidentemente a otra escala sí. No podemos ser ingenuos. En 1870 estalló una guerra en Europa por la cuestión del rey constitucional de España de 1869, en 1873 Alemania y Reino Unido pactaron no intervenir en España, en 1898 Inglaterra y Francia pactaron permitir que EE.UU. ocupara las provincias de Ultramar, en 1907 Francia y Reino Unido entregaron el protectorado de Marruecos, la crisis de 1917 fue azuzada desde Alemania y Francia, la no intervención y el apoyo a Franco fue pactado entre Reino Unido y Francia, la supervivencia de Franco fue una decisión de EE.UU. sostenida por Londres y París, la elección de Juan Carlos como sucesor, fue decidida por EE.UU., y para qué hablar de Carrero Blanco, el 23-F, del 11-M o de dónde sale la decisión de ir al Pròces... Eu en su sentido estricto ya no tiene sentido, pero su espíritu sigue vivo. Para los asuntos realmente importantes importantes, España depende de decisiones que se toman fuera.  En Nueva York, Bruselas, Washington, Frankfurt, Londres, París... Pero bueno, para los que no juegan en primer división siempre es así.

[Derby]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/18/business/economy/global-economy-us-china.html

Why It Seems Everything We Knew About the Global Economy Is No Longer True

While the world’s eyes were on the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and China, the paths to prosperity and shared interests have grown murkier.

When the world’s business and political leaders gathered in 2018 at the annual economic forum in Davos, the mood was jubilant. Growth in every major country was on an upswing. The global economy, declared Christine Lagarde, then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, “is in a very sweet spot.”

Five years later, the outlook has decidedly soured.

“Nearly all the economic forces that powered progress and prosperity over the last three decades are fading,” the World Bank warned in a recent analysis. “The result could be a lost decade in the making — not just for some countries or regions as has occurred in the past — but for the whole world.”

A lot has happened between then and now: A global pandemic hit; war erupted in Europe; tensions between the United States and China boiled. And inflation, thought to be safely stored away with disco album collections, returned with a vengeance.

But as the dust has settled, it has suddenly seemed as if almost everything we thought we knew about the world economy was wrong.

The economic conventions that policymakers had relied on since the Berlin Wall fell more than 30 years ago — the unfailing superiority of open markets, liberalized trade and maximum efficiency — look to be running off the rails.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the ceaseless drive to integrate the global economy and reduce costs left health care workers without face masks and medical gloves, carmakers without semiconductors, sawmills without lumber and sneaker buyers without Nikes.

The idea that trade and shared economic interests would prevent military conflicts was trampled last year under the boots of Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

And increasing bouts of extreme weather that destroyed crops, forced migrations and halted power plants has illustrated that the market’s invisible hand was not protecting the planet.

Now, as the second year of war in Ukraine grinds on and countries struggle with limp growth and persistent inflation, questions about the emerging economic playing field have taken center stage.

Globalization, seen in recent decades as unstoppable a force as gravity, is clearly evolving in unpredictable ways. The move away from an integrated world economy is accelerating. And the best way to respond is a subject of fierce debate.

Of course, challenges to the reigning economic consensus had been growing for a while.

“We saw before the pandemic began that the wealthiest countries were getting frustrated by international trade, believing — whether correctly or not — that somehow this was hurting them, their jobs and standards of living,” said Betsey Stevenson, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration.

The financial meltdown in 2008 came close to tanking the global financial system. Britain pulled out of the European Union in 2016. President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on China in 2017, spurring a mini trade war.

But starting with Covid-19, the rat-a-tat series of crises exposed with startling clarity vulnerabilities that demanded attention.

It was the ‘end of history.’

Today’s sense of unease is a stark contrast with the heady triumphalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. It was a period when a theorist could declare that the fall of communism marked “the end of history” — that liberal democratic ideas not only vanquished rivals, but represented “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution.”

Associated economic theories about the ineluctable rise of worldwide free market capitalism took on a similar sheen of invincibility and inevitability. Open markets, hands-off government and the relentless pursuit of efficiency would offer the best route to prosperity.

It was believed that a new world where goods, money and information crisscrossed the globe would essentially sweep away the old order of Cold War conflicts and undemocratic regimes.

There was reason for optimism. During the 1990s, inflation was low while employment, wages and productivity were up. Global trade nearly doubled. Investments in developing countries surged. The stock market rose.

The World Trade Organization was established in 1995 to enforce the rules. China’s entry six years later was seen as transformative. And linking a huge market with 142 countries would irresistibly draw the Asian giant toward democracy.

China, along with South Korea, Malaysia and others, turned struggling farmers into productive urban factory workers. The furniture, toys and electronics they sold around the world generated tremendous growth.

The favored economic road map helped produce fabulous wealth, lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and spur wondrous technological advances.

But there were stunning failures as well. Globalization hastened climate change and deepened inequalities.

In the United States and other advanced economies, many industrial jobs were exported to lower-wage countries, removing a springboard to the middle class.

Policymakers always knew there would be winners and losers. Still, the market was left to decide how to deploy labor, technology and capital in the belief that efficiency and growth would automatically follow. Only afterward, the thinking went, should politicians step in to redistribute gains or help those left without jobs or prospects.

Companies embarked on a worldwide scavenger hunt for low-wage workers, regardless of worker protections, environmental impact or democratic rights. They found many of them in places like Mexico, Vietnam and China.

Television, T-shirts and tacos were cheaper than ever, but many essentials like health care, housing and higher education were increasingly out of reach.

The job exodus pushed down wages at home and undercut workers’ bargaining power, spurring anti-immigrant sentiments and strengthening hard-right populist leaders like Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France.

In advanced industrial giants like the United States, Britain and several European countries, political leaders turned out to be unable or unwilling to more broadly reapportion rewards and burdens.

Nor were they able to prevent damaging environmental fallout. Transporting goods around the globe increased greenhouse gas emissions. Producing for a world of consumers strained natural resources, encouraging overfishing in Southeast Asia and illegal deforestation in Brazil. And cheap production facilities polluted countries without adequate environmental standards.

It turned out that markets on their own weren’t able to automatically distribute gains fairly or spur developing countries to grow or establish democratic institutions.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said in a recent speech that a central fallacy in American economic policy had been to assume “that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently — no matter what our competitors did, no matter how big our shared challenges grew, and no matter how many guardrails we took down.”

The proliferation of economic exchanges between nations also failed to usher in a promised democratic renaissance.

Communist-led China turned out to be the global economic system’s biggest beneficiary — and perhaps master gamesman — without embracing democratic values.

“Capitalist tools in socialist hands,” the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said in 1992, when his country was developing into the world’s factory floor. China’s astonishing growth transformed it into the world’s second largest economy and a major engine of global growth. All along, though, Beijing maintained a tight grip on its raw materials, land, capital, energy, credit and labor, as well as the movements and speech of its people.

Money flowed in, and poor countries paid the price.

In developing countries, the results could be dire.

The economic havoc wreaked by the pandemic combined with soaring food and fuel prices caused by the war in Ukraine have created a spate of debt crises. Rising interest rates have made those crises worse. Debts, like energy and food, are often priced in dollars on the world market, so when U.S. rates go up, debt payments get more expensive.

The cycle of loans and bailouts, though, has deeper roots.

Poorer nations were pressured to lift all restrictions on capital moving in and out of the country. The argument was that money, like goods, should flow freely among nations. Allowing governments, businesses and individuals to borrow from foreign lenders would finance industrial development and key infrastructure.

“Financial globalization was supposed to usher in an era of robust growth and fiscal stability in the developing world,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But “it ended up doing the opposite.”

Some loans — whether from private lenders or institutions like the World Bank — didn’t produce enough returns to pay off the debt. Others were poured into speculative schemes, half-baked proposals, vanity projects or corrupt officials’ bank accounts. And debtors remained at the mercy of rising interest rates that swelled the size of debt payments in a heartbeat.

Over the years, reckless lending, asset bubbles, currency fluctuations and official mismanagement led to boom-and-bust cycles in Asia, Russia, Latin America and elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, extravagant projects undertaken by the government, from ports to cricket stadiums, helped drive the country into bankruptcy last year as citizens scavenged for food and the central bank, in a barter arrangement, paid for Iranian oil with tea leaves.

It’s a “Ponzi scheme,” Ms. Ghosh said.

Private lenders who got spooked that they would not be repaid abruptly cut off the flow of money, leaving countries in the lurch.

And the mandated austerity that accompanied bailouts from the International Monetary Fund, which compelled overextended governments to slash spending, often brought widespread misery by cutting public assistance, pensions, education and health care.

Even I.M.F. economists acknowledged in 2016 that instead of delivering growth, such policies “increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion.”

Disenchantment with the West’s style of lending gave China the opportunity to become an aggressive creditor in countries like Argentina, Mongolia, Egypt and Suriname.

Self-reliance replaces cheap imports.

While the collapse of the Soviet Union cleared the way for the domination of free-market orthodoxy, the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation has now decisively unmoored it.

The story of the international economy today, said Henry Farrell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is about “how geopolitics is gobbling up hyperglobalization.”

Old-world style great power politics accomplished what the threat of catastrophic climate collapse, seething social unrest and widening inequality could not: It upended assumptions about the global economic order.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy, put it bluntly in a speech 10 months after the invasion of Ukraine: “We have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security.” Europe got cheap energy from Russia and cheap manufactured goods from China. “This is a world that is no longer there,” he said.

Supply-chain chokeholds stemming from the pandemic and subsequent recovery had already underscored the fragility of a globally sourced economy. As political tensions over the war grew, policymakers quickly added self-reliance and strength to the goals of growth and efficiency.

“Our supply chains are not secure, and they’re not resilient,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said last spring. Trade relationships should be built around “trusted partners,” she said, even if it means “a somewhat higher level of cost, a somewhat less efficient system.”

“It was naïve to think that markets are just about efficiency and that they’re not also about power,” said Abraham Newman, a co-author with Mr. Farrell of “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.”

Economic networks, by their very nature, create power imbalances and pressure points because countries have varying capabilities, resources and vulnerabilities.

Russia, which had supplied 40 percent of the European Union’s natural gas, tried to use that dependency to pressure the bloc to withdraw its support of Ukraine.

The United States and its allies used their domination of the global financial system to remove major Russian banks from the international payments system.

China has retaliated against trading partners by restricting access to its enormous market.

The extreme concentrations of critical suppliers and information technology networks has generated additional choke points.

China manufactures 80 percent of the world’s solar panels. Taiwan produces 92 percent of tiny advanced semiconductors. Much of the world’s trade and transactions are figured in U.S. dollars.

The new reality is reflected in American policy. The United States — the central architect of the liberalized economic order and the World Trade Organization — has turned away from more comprehensive free trade agreements and repeatedly refused to abide by W.T.O. decisions.

Security concerns have led the Biden administration to block Chinese investment in American businesses and limit China’s access to private data on citizens and to new technologies.

And it has embraced Chinese-style industrial policy, offering gargantuan subsidies for electric vehicles, batteries, wind farms, solar plants and more to secure supply chains and speed the transition to renewable energy.

“Ignoring the economic dependencies that had built up over the decades of liberalization had become really perilous,” Mr. Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said. Adherence to “oversimplified market efficiency,” he added, proved to be a mistake.

While the previous economic orthodoxy has been partly abandoned, it is not clear what will replace it. Improvisation is the order of the day. Perhaps the only assumption that can be confidently relied on now is that the path to prosperity and policy trade-offs will become murkier.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/9940b3b2-1988-4658-95cb-fa312bd23185

UK households remortgaging in 2024 face £2,900 rise in annual payments

New estimate of rising cost of borrowing increases pressure on Rishi Sunak to help families

UK households that come to the end of fixed-rate mortgage deals next year face an average £2,900 increase in annual payments, putting Rishi Sunak under pressure to defuse an election-year time bomb.

The estimated increase in payments by the Resolution Foundation think-tank reflects concern that the UK has a worse inflation problem than other countries and that the Bank of England will need to raise interest rates to almost 6 per cent next year, when a general election is expected.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey on Friday called for a targeted £3bn “mortgage protection fund” for people whose homes would otherwise be repossessed, in a sign of growing political heat on the issue.

But the prime minister and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt argue that such a move would be dangerous because it would fuel inflation.

Sunak said on Wednesday that the government’s “number one economic priority” was taming high inflation.

The political row comes after another week of mortgage rate increases by lenders, including NatWest, Nationwide and HSBC, in moves that followed poor official inflation data last month that prompted financial markets to increase their expectations of interest rate rises by the BoE.

“It is serious,” said one senior government figure. “That’s why we are fully focused on halving inflation by the end of the year. Inflation is the disease in the economy.”

The BoE is likely to raise interest rates from 4.5 per cent to 4.75 per cent when the Monetary Policy Committee meets on Thursday, although some economists think a larger increase is possible if there is another bad set of inflation figures on Wednesday.


(...)

[Derby]

  El último discurso de Musk...

https://twitter.com/alx/status/1669887052421251073

[Centinela]

No tiene nada que ver con el hilo del foro, o si, pero me ha parecido interesarte para colgarlo.

Almuerzo con Berlusconi, el hombre que cambió Italia y el mundo bajo un disfraz de bufón

En Italia descubrí dos términos. Uno de ellos, “el Grande Vecchio”, una figura todopoderosa y desconocida que supuestamente maneja en secreto la realidad que hay detrás de los hechos aparentes. Sentado a la mesa ante Silvio Berlusconi, creí haber conocido al auténtico “Grande Vecchio”

En Italia descubrí dos términos. Uno, la “dietrologia”: muchos italianos, quizá la mayoría de ellos, consideran que detrás de cada acontecimiento hay una historia y una explicación que permanecen ocultos al público. Otro, “el Grande Vecchio”, una figura todopoderosa y desconocida que supuestamente maneja en secreto la realidad que hay detrás de los hechos aparentes.

Sentado a la mesa ante Silvio Berlusconi, en una de las salas de Palazzo Grazioli, era imposible no pensar en esas cosas. Berlusconi se levantaba, cantaba un momento, contaba un chiste, volvía a sentarse, bromeaba sobre sí mismo, reía. Y uno se planteaba una pregunta: si “el Grande Vecchio” se viera por alguna razón forzado a salir a escena, ¿cómo camuflaría su auténtica identidad? El disfraz de payaso resultaba una hipótesis verosímil.

Mientras el entonces corresponsal, hasta cierto punto abrumado por el hecho de ser recibido por Berlusconi en su residencia romana, cavilaba y permanecía atento a su anfitrión, el anfitrión seguía comportándose como un bufón sin otro deseo aparente que divertir y complacer al invitado.

Leyendo el otro día en El País un excelente relato sobre las andanzas de Berlusconi (“El retrato de un tramposo”, de Íñigo Domínguez) recordé mis impresiones de aquel almuerzo en Palazzo Grazioli. Recordé también una frase que Berlusconi, entonces en la oposición, pronunció como de pasada antes de que nos sentáramos: “Estaríamos mejor ahí enfrente, ¿verdad?”. Ahí enfrente, a menos de 20 metros, estaba Palazzo Venezia, el edificio desde el que Benito Mussolini dirigió la Italia fascista.

Allí recibía a sus amantes cotidianas (al margen de Claretta Petacci, la amante oficial). Allí se asomaba al balcón para arengar a las masas. Allí tenía su inmenso despacho, diseñado para intimidar al visitante. (Una nota: en 2003, Berlusconi declaró a “The Spectator”, bajo un “off the record” que la revista británica no respetó, que “Mussolini no mató a nadie” e hizo muchas cosas buenas).

Silvio Berlusconi acababa de mostrar al corresponsal la enorme “sala del consejo de ministros” que, copiada en todos los detalles de la real, la de Palazzo Chigi, había instalado en su casa. El Palazzo Grazioli no era realmente suyo, se limitaba a alquilar la “parte noble” por 40.000 euros mensuales. Había intentado comprarlo a los Grazioli y, al no conseguirlo, lo alquiló: no había ningún otro palacio tan cercano al que ocupó Mussolini, hoy sede de varios museos.

Permítanme una incursión en la “dietrología”. Anticipo que no sacaremos nada en claro. Salvo algunos hechos.

La historia más o menos oscura de Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi, nacido en 1936, hijo de empleado de banca y de ama de casa, se licenció en Derecho (con muy buenas notas) y dedicó años a cantar en cruceros, tocar el contrabajo, ejercer como intermediario en pequeños negocios, vender electrodomésticos a domicilio y estudiar la industria publicitaria. Nada hacía prever que hacia 1968, con poco más de 30 años, pudiera acometer la construcción de una pequeña ciudad de lujo, Milano 2, en el municipio de Segrate, contiguo a la capital lombarda.

¿De dónde salió el dineral necesario? Una parte procedió de créditos de la Banca Rasini (especializada en blanquear fondos de la mafia), donde trabajaba su padre. Otra, mayor, de unos “inversores suizos” cuyo nombre jamás se conoció. Las sospechas recaen sobre la mafia siciliana.

En 1974 estafó a una joven heredera huérfana traicionada por su tutor (Cesare Previti, en adelante abogado de Berlusconi y con el tiempo ministro de Defensa y luego condenado por sobornar jueces) y se hizo por unas pocas liras con la fabulosa Villa San Martino, en Arcore (a las afueras de Milán). En cuanto se instaló en Arcore, ese mismo año, Berlusconi contrató como “jefe de caballerizas” a Vittorio Mangano, responsable de las finanzas de la Cosa Nostra en la plaza financiera de Milán y homicida múltiple.

Eran los “años de plomo”, con atentados y secuestros casi a diario. Nadie se atrevió a amenazar al joven constructor Silvio Berlusconi porque nadie, ni los terroristas ni los servicios secretos golpistas, era tan idiota como para meterse con alguien que tenía alojado en casa a un jefe de la mafia siciliana. A partir de ahí, la conversión de Berlusconi en magnate de la comunicación es más o menos conocida.

Creó una televisión por cable (Telemilano) en Milano 2, que luego conectó a otras televisiones vecinales (la televisión aún era monopolio público) y a partir de ese núcleo forzó (no está del todo claro cómo) la legalización de una red que en 1978 se convirtió en Canale 5, el primer canal privado de ámbito nacional.

A finales de los 60, cuando Berlusconi acometió la construcción de Milano 2, se suponía que el “Grande Vecchio”, la mano oculta que manejaba el poder, era Eugenio Cefis, presunto organizador del asesinato de Enrico Mattei, presidente de la empresa petrolera pública ENI. Pier Paolo Pasolini acusaba a Cefis en 'Petróleo', el libro que estaba escribiendo cuando fue asesinado en 1975. Cefis se hizo con ENI, con el gigante químico Montedison y con la dirección de Confindustria, la gran patronal, imponiéndose al mismísimo Gianni Agnelli, patrón de Fiat.

Cefis fue uno de los fundadores de la logia masónica secreta P2, cuyos objetivos consistían en imponer un “plan de refundación democrática” basado, según la Comisión Parlamentaria que investigó la logia, “en la prohibición de los partidos de izquierda, en el control de los jueces por parte del gobierno, en la disolución de los sindicatos y, sobre todo, en el dominio de los medios de comunicación de masas”. ¿Les suena?

Masones, mafiosos y otros poderosos

La P2, con la ayuda del banquero mafioso Michele Sindona y con fondos del Vaticano a través de Roberto Calvi, llamado “el banquero de Dios” (a Calvi lo suicidaron en Londres en 1982), logró hacerse en 1975 con el principal diario italiano, el “Corriere della Sera”. Ese momento de auge de la P2 coincidió con el declive de Eugenio Cefis.

Los “dietrólogos” dedujeron que el nuevo “Grande Vecchio” era el sinuoso político democristiano Giulio Andreotti, siete veces presidente del Gobierno y miembro de la P2. Pero quien estaba al frente de la logia secreta P2 era en realidad Licio Gelli, un antiguo fascista que había combatido en la guerra civil española y luego había ejercido como jerarca nazi en Yugoslavia. Huyó a Argentina con otros nazis y permaneció allí hasta 1960.

Décadas después, ya detenido, Gelli hizo declaraciones esclarecedoras. “El auténtico poder es de quien domina los medios de comunicación de masas”, por ejemplo. Otra frase: “Con la P2 teníamos Italia en un puño, con nosotros estaba el Ejército, la Guardia de Finanzas, la Policía, porque sus jefes pertenecían a la P2”. Y aún otra frase, pronunciada poco antes de morir, en 2015: “Berlusconi copió nuestro programa”.

Berlusconi era, por supuesto, miembro de la P2. “Me inscribí porque pensé que era algo parecido al Rotary Club y nunca me pidieron que pagara la cuota”, dijo cuando ya era presidente del Consejo de Ministros. Es decir, ya tenemos a Berlusconi conectado con la mafia, con la organización clandestina que durante los años 70 y 80 manejó Italia y, a través de ella, con los servicios secretos.

En 1981, con el eurocomunismo de Enrico Berlinguer lleno de fuerza y en condiciones de alcanzar el poder, la Democracia Cristiana se vio obligada a formar una alianza anticomunista cristalizada en el llamado “pentapartito” (Democracia Cristiana, Partido Socialista, Partido Socialista Democrático y Partido Republicano). Esa coalición gobernó Italia entre 1981 y 1991.

En 1991 se derrumbó porque la URSS ya no existía y, sobre todo, porque robaba y corrompía con un entusiasmo bochornoso. El hombre fuerte de la coalición era el socialista Bettino Craxi. Craxi huyó a Túnez para evitar la cárcel. ¿Quién era el financiador de Craxi? ¿Quién manejó a su gusto el “pentapartito” mientras creaba un imperio de medios de comunicación? ¿Quién era el gran corruptor? Todo el mundo lo sabe: Silvio Berlusconi.

Ahora lo sabemos. No estaba tan claro cuando, en pleno vacío político, con frecuentes suicidios de empresarios y una investigación, “Mani Pulite”, que empezó a descubrir tramas secretas, un empresario simpático, dueño del Milan que había revolucionado el mundo del fútbol, dijo sentirse obligado a “scendere in campo” (traducible como “saltar al césped”) y presentarse como candidato al frente de un nuevo partido llamado Forza Italia. No hace falta relatar lo ocurrido desde entonces.

Durante aquel almuerzo, con platos tricolores (ensalada de mozzarella, tomate y aguacate; carne con puré de patatas y verduras) como la bandera italiana, Berlusconi mostró al corresponsal un pequeño almacén donde guardaba los regalos para sus invitados (corbatas para los caballeros, pañuelos para las damas, ambos de la marca Marinella, y algunos Rolex para pequeños compromisos -él nunca se dignó a llevar esa baratija, usaba relojes muchísimo más caros).

También le pidió al corresponsal que no fuera “malvado” en sus crónicas. Y provocó risas. Cuando su fiel Paolo Bonaiuti asomó la cabeza para reclamarle, tras un almuerzo-espectáculo que había durado en realidad poco más de media hora, Berlusconi desapareció suspirando “soy un esclavo, soy un esclavo”.

El entonces corresponsal, quien firma esto, hoy, casi 20 años después, cree haber conocido al auténtico “Grande Vecchio”. Al hombre que manejó su país desde la sombra y luego, ya en el escenario y ante el público, cambió Italia y el mundo bajo un disfraz de bufón.

https://www.eldiario.es/internacional/almuerzo-berlusconi-hombre-cambio-italia-mundo-disfraz-bufon_129_10298209.html

Al leer el artículo, y recordar la historia de Roberto Calvi, apodado "el banquero de Dios", me viene a la cabeza al todopoderoso presidente de Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blackflien, cuando decía que ellos hacían el trabajo de Dios.

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion-blogs/noticias/2066863/04/10/Goldman-y-el-trabajo-de-Dios.html

[Centinela]

[Desastre en 'The Ocean Race'.— Nada más salir en la última etapa La Haya-Génova, después de haber dado la durísima vuelta al mundo a toda velocidad, el último, el equipo de la UE, ha embestido al primero, el equipo de EEUU. El de la UE era el único con la única tripulante española que hay en la clase IMOCA, que es la que cuenta (hay dos clases). Avergonzado, se ha retirado. El velero de EEUU ha regresado a puerto a ver si puede reparar el boquete y decidir si sale o no para navegar solo.

Quedan tres veleros en competición. Ahora están en el Canal de Mancha (si van a La Haya verán amarrado al velero de EEUU):
https://www.theoceanrace.com/es/racing/tracker ]

¿Será acaso esa embestida una metáfora reflejo de la realidad geopolítica internacional? ¿O alguna especie de proyección psicológica?

[Lem]

¿habrá rescate? espero que los dioses de log Gilts nos guarden, porque los únicos que sufrimos el "es el mercado, amigo" somos los inquilinos https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65922072

Mortgage help 'under review', says Michael Gove

Help for people struggling with their mortgages is being kept "under review", cabinet minister Michael Gove has said.

But any financial assistance would be a decision for the Treasury, he told Laura Kuennsberg.

He also warned any help similar to Covid or energy bill schemes risked driving up interest rates further.

The BBC understands that the Treasury has no current plans to give mortgage relief.

Asked on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg whether the government would consider stepping into the mortgage market, Mr Gove said there is a "difference between keeping under review and ruling out" a scheme similar to the wages support given during Covid.

But he said if public money is spent to "deal with particular crises" then "you are inevitably adding to the stock of public debt" which puts pressure on interest rates.

"The worst thing to do would be to spend money to provide a short term relief which would then mean that our overall finances were in a weaker position, and interest rates were higher for longer, and inflation was higher for longer," Mr Gove added.

He said people moving off fixed rate mortgages face "significant increases" which is part of a broader cost of living crisis, but the way to tackle that is to get the pace of general price increases down.

Interest rate rises by the Bank of England to try to get inflation under control are already pushing up mortgage rates, Mr Gove said.

Another big scheme to bail out mortgage holders would add to UK debt, and government payments on that debt, which would push up interest rates further, he said.

The government has no desire to write another enormous cheque for householders who can't pay the bills, but it is still possible that the political pressure might, in time, become too great for them not to act.

A Treasury source said a bailout for homeowners would be "self-defeating" because it would push up inflation and prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates.

The Sunday Times reported that the Treasury has ruled out mortgage support because of this and other factors.

Instead, the Treasury will ask banks to do more to stop people losing their homes, it said.

Pressure on people struggling with mortgages could increase again on Thursday, with some analysts predicting the Bank will raise interest rates for the thirteenth time in a row.

'Exhausting and very stressful'

David Husbands, 43, a property valuer from Chester-le-Street in County Durham, said his rising mortgage payments are "crippling" him.

His payments have gone from about £300 per month in early 2022 to more than £600.

"Because interest rates have gone sky high I'm lucky if I'm left with £100 to live off at the end of each month," he said. "I've had to take on extra casual work elsewhere."

He is finding the situation "exhausting" and "very stressful", finishing work at 5:30pm, then doing gigs as a casual DJ until midnight.

He fell into negative equity in the financial crash in 2008, and doesn't have enough money to renovate the house to sell it to "at least break even".

David and his husband have also put adoption plans on hold.

"Right now we don't feel confident to be able to give a child a secure, safe and comfortable home," he said.

Support prospects

The idea of the government providing help for mortgage customers is more nuanced than the furlough jobs scheme or recent Energy Price Guarantee.

While those were universal, less than 30% of UK households have a mortgage.

Providing support for them risks alienating older voters who own their homes outright, and younger people who cannot even afford to buy.

That is why the government is not entirely ruling out some kind of support for homeowners, but sticking to its key pledge to bring inflation down to below 5%.

In theory that would ease everyday costs for every household.

However, ministers are desperate to get the economy firing, and if millions of people soon have to pay hundreds of pounds a month extra in their mortgage costs, that is money which they won't spend on eating out, buying goods, or holidaying.

With a growing number of mortgage customers now getting into arrears, and repossessions increasing sharply in recent months, it is a worrying time for millions of households, with no easy answers.

[sudden and sharp]

[...] Pero bueno, para los que no juegan en primer división siempre es así.

Bueno...

Éxtasis nocturno en Vitoria porque el Alavés vuelve a ser de Primera
https://www.marca.com/futbol/alaves/2023/06/18/648ec648ca474187408b4597.html
No cabía un alma en las calles de la capital de Álava por la celebración del ascenso del 'Glorioso' a la máxima categoría del fútbol español




Nadie puede pararnos (realmente) los pies.

[sudden and sharp]

[Desastre en 'The Ocean Race'.— Nada más salir en la última etapa La Haya-Génova, después de haber dado la durísima vuelta al mundo a toda velocidad, el último, el equipo de la UE, ha embestido al primero, el equipo de EEUU. El de la UE era el único con la única tripulante española que hay en la clase IMOCA, que es la que cuenta (hay dos clases). Avergonzado, se ha retirado. El velero de EEUU ha regresado a puerto a ver si puede reparar el boquete y decidir si sale o no para navegar solo.

Quedan tres veleros en competición. Ahora están en el Canal de Mancha (si van a La Haya verán amarrado al velero de EEUU):
https://www.theoceanrace.com/es/racing/tracker ]

¿Será acaso esa embestida una metáfora reflejo de la realidad geopolítica internacional? ¿O alguna especie de proyección psicológica?

De la monetaria. 

[Cadavre Exquis]

Working-from-Home May Start an Office Real Estate Crisis - But Banks May Adapt
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday June 18, 2023 @07:34AM from the returns-on-offices dept.

The Washington Post reports that "Since the pandemic, employers — particularly in major cities — have been struggling to get their workers to return to the office, while others have given up and allowed workers to go fully remote.

"That trend is finally starting to catch up with the owners of office buildings in the form of rising vacancy rates and declining property values."

Earlier this month, real estate data provider Trepp reported that an estimated $270 billion in commercial bank loans are coming due in 2023 — and warned of the potential for defaults. Office delinquencies spiked in May, signaling a "tipping point," according to Manus Clancy, senior managing director at Trepp. Asked about commercial real estate concerns in a television appearance on Wednesday, [U.S.] Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said she thinks banks are "broadly preparing for some restructuring and difficulties going ahead...."

"If office and retail owners are having trouble generating rental income because people just aren't going into the office and shopping, then it increases the odds that they aren't going to be able to pay back those loans in timely way," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics. "That means losses will start to mount on those loans. And because the banking and financial system more broadly is already struggling with lots of other problems ... there's going to be more banking failures." Despite the public debate over return-to-office mandates at major companies, experts say office occupancy will never return to the levels experienced before 2020. In February, workplace data company Kastle Systems estimated that half of workers in the United States had returned, but that figure has stagnated since...

Still, many experts say the worst can still be avoided. The issues have been known for a while, giving lenders plenty of time to consider what to do. Banks can always renegotiate the terms of their loans to landlords... Although cities themselves could be in trouble because of property taxes and budget shortfalls, the financial system as a whole is more protected, said Brookings Institution fellow Tracy Hadden Loh, who researches real estate and cities. "It's in no one's interest to have them all fall into foreclosure at once, because that could destabilize the banking system," she said. "So banks will take what they can get in terms of payment and work through this."

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/06/17/648cb4e7468aebeb658b45a6.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/06/17/648cbce8468aebe2758b4579.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/06/17/648cbe10468aeb54378b45c1.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/empresas/banca/2023/06/17/648cb05b468aeb1d0e8b4669.html

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional-sabado/20230617/page/20/textview

Sareb pierde contra la banca por las cláusulas cero de sus bonos

https://www.expansion.com/empresas/banca/2023/06/16/648c4a45468aeb1d0e8b4653.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/06/17/648cd387e5fdeacc0a8b46ab.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/06/17/648cb24ae5fdea7f198b460f.html

https://www.expansion.com/economia/2023/06/17/648c9efc468aeb673d8b4607.html

Saludos.