Hablemos de Europa

[muyuu]

se hace más posible la salida ordenada

Lo que está haciendo el ECB es anticipar (poner los fondos) para la fusión entre deudor y acreedor. Obviamente no va a haber ninguna expulsión.
Es como decir que España va a "expulsar" a Extremadura por su deuda En cualquier caso el gobierno central (el que tiene el poder) llevaría a cabo una reorganización que fusionase administrativamente  el territorio con otras regiones.
Y aqui lo tenemos. El gobierno UE ya se impone en muchas medidas a los gobiernos nacionales. España es una región de la UE, es decir, no se puede expulsar a España de la UE como tampoco se puede expulsar a Badajoz por su deuda.

¿No se quejaban los antieuropeístas (Tsipras) de que Alemania se estaba quedando con los puertos griegos?

Entonces... como cojones van a expulsar ahora a ningún país de la EU ¿?¿?¿?
Es que no tiene sentido. Nunca antes había estado tan clara la fusión (sometimiento) a la superestructura como lo está ahora. Pensad en la UE como el gobierno federal de los USA.


EDITO: nadie en USA jamás se plantearía expulsar a Puerto Rico independientemente de su deuda. Al contrario los USA desean anexionarse más países y cuanto más pobres (débiles) mejor. Toda sudamérica por ejemplo.
Eso es lo que intenta Europa con Turquía y -como ya sabemos- las repúblicas ex-soviéticas.
¿Expulsar de la UE por la deuda país?
 
Dejad que me ría.

Bueno, pero eso es como la "gunboat diplomacy" - el mero hecho de ser capaces de dejar caer un miembro ya cambia el escenario de negociación completamente. Así no llega uno diciendo "Spain is not Uganda" - porque para la UE, llegado el punto es casi como si lo fuera.

La cuestión no es ya echar a nadie, sino tener la fortaleza de poder hacerlo. Yo creo que eso importa, aunque como dices echar a miembros no tiene sentido. De hecho, ejecutar esa opción automáticamente te deja en mucho peor lugar. Es como el padre que le pega a sus hijos - generalmente, con la demostración de fuerza es suficiente, llegar a las manos hace que quedes como el culo (con perdón).

A todo esto, me he encontrado esto por ahí: https://europaono.com/2016/12/28/zingales-ecb-decision-on-monte-paschi-economically-correct-politically-dangerous-decisione-bce-su-monte-paschi-economicamente-corretta-politicamente-pericolosa/

[ERB]

Sobre los refugiados: Mi opinión

El objetivo final de la pre-fabricada “crisis” de los refugiados es cerrar las fronteras de la UE.

Lo que se busca es cerrar las fronteras EXTERIORES de la UE

La prefabricada crisis de los refugiados es el primer paso de la consabida estrategia problema-acción-solución.

Necesitan blindar la UE antes de continuar la escalada con el proyecto del gran oriente medio. Esto debe de hacerse ANTES, porque cuando comience el show, la gente desesperada (realmente desesperada) intentará llegar un lugar mejor para vivir y la UE se verá como puerto seguro. Para cuando llegue esa circunstancia, la opinión pública debe ver con buenos ojos que se les prohíba la entrada a la UE. Y de eso va la crisis de los refugiados, de manipular la opinión pública con eventos protagonizados por “refugiados” (que NO lo son) para que la misma opinión pública clame a sus políticos que hagan algo (reacción) y ese algo será cerrar las fronteras exteriores de la UE.

La idea es un reforma migratoria al estilo USA + control militar en el mediterraneo y fronteras exteriores conflictivas.

A continuación algunas declaraciones para que ustedes vean hacía adonde va el asunto…

   

(…) El mes pasado la Alta Representante de Política Exterior y Seguridad Común, Federica Mogherini, insistía en la necesidad de dotar de contenido real a la cláusula de asistencia mutua y solidaridad de los Tratados para protegerse en caso de ataque. Y ante la amenaza terrorista en el este y sur mediterráneos solicitó un aumento de la contribución para garantizar la defensa colectiva.

    Junto a las medidas antiterroristas se impulsará la armonización de políticas de inmigración, fronteras y costas con un sistema auténticamente supranacional europeo. La cercanía del EI es un claro aviso. Y ejemplo de la necesidad urgente de crear un Ejército europeo. https://href.li/?http://www.eleconomista.es/firmas/noticias/7750560/08/16/Libia-por-que-ahora.html

Juncker vuelve a pedir la creación de un Ejército europeo
21 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS)”Necesitamos configurar una política exterior, de seguridad y defensa común con el fin de crear un Ejército europeo para tener la posibilidad de cumplir nuestras responsabilidades en el mundo”, dijo en la ciudad austriaca de Alpbach. https://href.li/?http://www.europapress.es/internacional/noticia-juncker-vuelve-pedir-creacion-ejercito-europeo-20160821212930.html

Hollande / Merkel (víspera cumbre de Bratislava)

(…) Frente al drama de los actuales refugiados, solo cabe “la solidaridad” para repartirlos entre los países, pero la futura UE debe ser “equipada” para un control efectivo de sus fronteras exteriores. También por la amenaza terrorista. https://href.li/?http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/09/15/actualidad/1473940020_311410.html

Para Donald Tusk, la mayor preocupación de la UE es “el orden en sus fronteras exteriores”

(…) el presidente del Consejo, Donald Tusk, expresó bien a las claras que la mayor preocupación de los 27 se reduce a “restaurar el orden en sus fronteras exteriores” para conseguir “una reducción de los flujos irregulares hacia la UE”. https://href.li/?http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/09/21/actualidad/1474483329_759616.html

Presidente del BCE M.Draghi
25/10/16“Hay un pesimismo muy extendido. Pero la integración europea avanza. No en las áreas que nos parecían más importantes hace unos años, sino en las que más interesan ahora a los ciudadanos: migración, seguridad y defensa” https://href.li/?http://economia.elpais.com/economia/2016/10/25/actualidad/1477422339_281528.html

a continuación un artículo que relaciona el cierre de las fronteras exteriores de la UE con la industria militar.

Sembrar armas, cosechar fronteras: un negocio europeo

13/07/16

Las pruebas revelan una creciente confluencia de intereses entre los líderes políticos europeos que buscan militarizar las fronteras y los principales contratistas de defensa y seguridad que proporcionan los servicios.

Eisenhower advirtió de los peligros del complejo militar-industrial, cuyo poder podría “amenazar nuestras libertades y procesos democráticos”. A día de hoy nos encontramos ante la Europa de la lucha contra la inmigración clandestina cuyos estandartes de ‘Refugees welcome’ cuelgan en numerosos espacios públicos europeos. Sin embargo, hay otra Europa que cierra la puerta a los refugiados y la abre hacia un futuro más lucrativo, privatizado y militarizado, enmarcada por Frontex y las desmesuradas inversiones en securización, el tratado con Turquía y las licencias de exportación de armas a estados en Oriente Medio y África directamente relacionados con la crisis. Esto nos ha llevado a un complejo militar de seguridad industrial aún más potente que en los tiempos del militar y presidente norteamericano. El informe, ‘]Guerras de Frontera; los fabricantes y vendedores de armas que se benefician de la tragedia de los refugiados en Europa’ publicado en España por Stop Wapenhandel, Transnational Institute y el Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau, arroja luz sobre los actores beneficiarios y fomentadores del creciente aumento de la seguridad fronteriza, analizando quiénes son y qué servicios prestan, además de cómo influyen en las políticas europeas y qué fondos reciben de los contribuyentes. Lo más destacable es que también muestra como algunos de los beneficiarios de los contratos de seguridad en las fronteras son algunos de los mayores vendedores de armas a la región de Oriente y Norte de África. En otras palabras: las compañías que están creando la crisis después se benefician de ella.

https://href.li/?http://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/adios_a_las_armas/Frontex-refugiados-defensa_fronteras-seguridad_6_535156480.html

[CHOSEN]

Me parece bien la opinión social-liberal sobre los refugiados. Opino que la libre circulación de capitales debe ir acompañada de la circulación de personas.

Pero ésta opinión, que comparto, es incompatible con la otra (muy generalizada y que no comparto) acerca de una supuesta "Europa de las corporaciones" lejos de los ciudadanos, la opinión de un europarlamento "vendido" a las empresas, y demás zarandajas new-age destinadas a engatusar mentes despistadas.

Si alguien aqui quiere a los refugiados bien lejos son la mayoría silenciosa de ciudadanos europeos, trabajadores medioclasistas que verían sus trabajos (y el futuro de sus hijos) dumpeados por hordas de inmigrantes semicualificados a precio irrisorio.
Las empresas capitalistas están encantadas con mano de obra barata acostumbrada a nulos derechos laborales. Si alguien aqui presiona para que entren inmigrantes, son las corporaciones capitalistas, véase Alemania país capitalista de derechas haciendo horas extra para absorber el máximo de horas trabajadas posibles.

Defender las dos posiciones a la vez es imposible.

[ERB]

El nuevo presidente de Moldavia inicia el viraje hacia Rusia a espaldas de Europa
30/12/16

El nuevo presidente de Moldavia, el socialista Igor Dodón, ha comenzado a escenificar su política de aproximación a Rusia y distanciamiento de la Unión Europea, organización ésta con la que su país está vinculado desde 2014 por un tratado de Asociación y Libre Comercio. “Firmamos sin preguntar al pueblo. Fue un error. Nuestro mercado tradicional está en Rusia, no en Europa”, afirma en una entrevista con EL PAIS en Chisinau. “Los resultados del tratado (de asociación) han sido negativos: perdimos el mercado ruso, ahogamos a los productores locales y no exportamos más a Europa”, explicaba Dodón pocos días antes de jurar su cargo, el 23 de diciembre. A escala reducida, el caso moldavo refleja la pugna global entre dos modelos de integración, uno orientado a Bruselas y otro a Moscú.

http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/12/29/actualidad/1483028396_163722.html

[muyuu]

https://www.thestreet.com/story/13938989/1/bank-of-italy-puts-monte-dei-paschi-rescue-cost-at-9-25-billion.html

El banco de Italia estima el rescate del Monte dei Paschi en 8,8 millardos de €.

[Republik]

Me parece bien la opinión social-liberal sobre los refugiados. Opino que la libre circulación de capitales debe ir acompañada de la circulación de personas.

Pero ésta opinión, que comparto, es incompatible con la otra (muy generalizada y que no comparto) acerca de una supuesta "Europa de las corporaciones" lejos de los ciudadanos, la opinión de un europarlamento "vendido" a las empresas, y demás zarandajas new-age destinadas a engatusar mentes despistadas.

Si alguien aqui quiere a los refugiados bien lejos son la mayoría silenciosa de ciudadanos europeos, trabajadores medioclasistas que verían sus trabajos (y el futuro de sus hijos) dumpeados por hordas de inmigrantes semicualificados a precio irrisorio.
Las empresas capitalistas están encantadas con mano de obra barata acostumbrada a nulos derechos laborales. Si alguien aqui presiona para que entren inmigrantes, son las corporaciones capitalistas, véase Alemania país capitalista de derechas haciendo horas extra para absorber el máximo de horas trabajadas posibles.

Defender las dos posiciones a la vez es imposible.

 


Lo que empieza a manifestarse es que el coste creciente de los servicios sociales  que damos por garabtizados choca con los intereses de algunos sectores empresariales  (y en los países germanos de los amos de los inmuebles, que allí están más concentrados en su propiedad ) en lo relativo a apertura de fronteras.  Las diferencias de renta en el Mediterráneo o Norteamérica son las mayores que se han dado en el espacio y en el tiempo, y un gradiente elevado implica presión sobre las fronteras.

Quizá estemos a tiempo de buscar una salida en forma de apoyo al desarrollo de los países emisores pero eso exige planificación e ingentes recursos dedicados a proyectos que sirvan de verdad para algo (desarrollo energético del Sahara o el río Congo, autopistas y trenes que ya China está construyendo en algunos países..) y más apertura comercial en sectores  donde esos países puedan competir. 

[muyuu]

El discurso de May (inglés):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Qe13uzmK8

reacciones (inglés):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNq5gmP8eU

[Currobena]

El fin del euro, según Steve Keen (y más cosas):

Lelde Smits: So are you at all concerned about the impact of Brexit to the EU, what will it be to the EU?
Steve Keen: My feeling about Brexit has always been that England is only a partial member of the club to begin with, it never joined the Euro, which is a gigantic difference between itself and the other economies.
Steve Keen: I think, England has got out thinking, “We’ve got away and what a big mistake we’ve made, we’ve lost access to this big market, etcetera, etcetera…”
I think at some stage the club is going to disband. Because quite possibly Italy, and certainly if Marine Le Pen wins in France, they’re going to leave the club. And once they are gone, the club won’t be there anymore.
Lelde Smits: But Steve –
Steve Keen: Brexit may be Britain getting out of the whole thing before the others getting out and being in a better situation because they are more prepared.

http://finfeed.com/opinion/steve-keen-exposes-next-global-economic-shockwaves/20170117/

http://youtu.be/KSFBUXx1q1k
	Small | Large

[CHOSEN]

and certainly if Marine Le Pen wins in France

Las estimaciones otorgan al FN un 25% de los votos.

Keen utiliza un dato estadisticamente remoto como punto de partida para establecer una hipótesis contraviniendo todo principio de búsqueda de la verdad. Encima presenta una conclusión (el fin de EU) como algo plausible dentro de dicha hipótesis.

Creo que está intentando meter miedo.
Movilizar al electorado centrista.

[muyuu]

and certainly if Marine Le Pen wins in France

Las estimaciones otorgan al FN un 25% de los votos.

Keen utiliza un dato estadisticamente remoto como punto de partida para establecer una hipótesis contraviniendo todo principio de búsqueda de la verdad. Encima presenta una conclusión (el fin de EU) como algo plausible dentro de dicha hipótesis.

Creo que está intentando meter miedo.
Movilizar al electorado centrista.

A Trump le daban un 20% de probabilidades a una semana de las elecciones.
Al Brexit, un 30%.

Sinceramente, parece que la prensa y los encuestadores han perdido por completo el pulso del populacho.

No digo que vaya a ganar Le Pen, ni mucho menos. Digo que los datos son muy poco de fiar y en realidad sabemos bastante menos de lo que creemos saber. Si luego se cumplen las expectativas o no, eso ya es otro tema.

Mi pronóstico es que Le Pen no va a ganar, pero tengo bastante poca certidumbre sobre este pronóstico. Una campaña lo suficientemente virulenta podría favorecer a Le Pen, como pasó con Trump, consiguiendo que los votantes "mainstream" no voten al adversario en una hipotética segunda vuelta.

Y dicho sea de paso, incluso sin Le Pen Francia tiene problemas socioeconómicos que casi con seguridad crearán fricciones dentro de la UE. No tanto como Italia, porque se añade el problema de la deuda y de la banca, pero también habrá movidita con Alemania por la política monetaria.

[muyuu]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-01-19/how-deutsche-bank-made-367-million-disappear

How Deutsche Bank Made a $462 Million Loss Disappear
A dubious trade leads to a criminal trial for Europe’s most important bank.

On Dec. 1, 2008, most of the world’s banks were still panicking through the financial crisis. Lehman Brothers had collapsed. Merrill Lynch had been sold. Citigroup and others had required multibillion-dollar bailouts to survive. But not every institution appeared to be in free fall. That afternoon, at the London outpost of Deutsche Bank, the stolid-seeming, €2 trillion German powerhouse, a group of financiers met to consider a proposal from a team led by a trim, 40-year-old banker named Michele Faissola.

The scion of an Italian banking family, Faissola was the head of Deutsche’s global rates unit, a division that created and sold financial instruments tied to interest rates. He’d been studying the problems of one of Deutsche’s clients, Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which, as the crisis raged, was down €367 million ($462 million at the time) on a single investment. Losing that much money was bad; having to include it in the bank’s yearend report to the public, as required by Italian law, was arguably much worse. Monte dei Paschi was the world’s oldest bank. It had been operating since 1472, not long after the invention of the printing press, when the Black Death was still a living memory. If investors were to find out the extent of its losses in the 2008 credit crisis, the consequences would be unpredictable and grave: a run on the bank, a government takeover, or worse. At the Deutsche meeting, Faissola’s team said it had come up with a miraculous solution: a new trade that would make Paschi’s loss disappear.

The bankers in the room had seen some financial sleight of hand in their day, but the maneuver that Faissola’s staffers proposed was audacious. They described a simple trade in two parts. For one half of the deal, Paschi would make a sure-thing, moneymaking bet with Deutsche Bank and use those winnings to extinguish its 2008 trading losses. Of course, Deutsche doesn’t give away money for free, so for the second half of the deal, the Italians would make a bet that was sure to lose. But while the first transaction was immediate, the second would play out slowly, over many years. No sign of the €367 million sinkhole would need to show up when Paschi compiled its yearend financial reports.

The audience for the proposal that day was Deutsche’s global market risks assessment committee, a top-level panel that reviews transactions with legal, regulatory, and reputational considerations. Respectively, that means asking: Is a given trade within the law? Is it within the looser framework of industry rules and standards? And even if so, can Deutsche pull it off without maiming its brand—its basic ability to operate as a trustworthy member of the global financial system?

To at least one member of the committee, the possibilities of Faissola’s trade seemed wondrous. “This is fantastic,” said Jeremy Bailey, Deutsche’s European chairman of global banking, according to testimony of an executive who later recounted the exchange for an internal disciplinary panel. “You can book a [profit] in front and spread losses over time?” Bailey added. “We should do it for Deutsche Bank.”

Ivor Dunbar, the meeting’s chairman, curbed Bailey’s enthusiasm. “We are not discussing [our] balance sheet here,” he said. (Bailey, through a spokesman, denies he made the remarks.)

Outside the room, one of Faissola’s longtime colleagues was raising questions about the deal. William Broeksmit, a managing director who specialized in risk optimization, was concerned about the winner-loser construction. A Chicago-born son of a United Church of Christ minister, Broeksmit had decades earlier been a pioneer in interest rate swaps, the financial instruments that had rewritten the possibilities—and profitability—of investment banking. But Broeksmit, 53, was also against reckless derivative deals, which is how he viewed Faissola’s proposal, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Eleven minutes after the meeting began, Broeksmit e-mailed one of its attendees with a warning about the Paschi trade and its “reputational risks.”

The message had no effect. When the meeting ended after almost 90 minutes, Faissola got a go-ahead—setting in motion a scandal that has resulted in a criminal trial now under way in Milan. A judge there has accused Deutsche Bank and five former executives, including Faissola and Dunbar, of colluding with Paschi to falsify its accounts in 2008. (None of Deutsche’s top managers at the time has been accused of wrongdoing. Faissola declined to comment for this article, as did both banks. Dunbar didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Eight years after the financial crisis, the stakes could hardly be higher. Being the biggest bank in Germany makes Deutsche the most important bank in Europe, and the Paschi trial is an uncomfortable reminder that its operations, already with barely enough capital to meet industry standards, are threatened by persistent scandal. Deutsche is also facing investigations into whether it helped clients launder billions out of Russia. This month the bank agreed to pay $7.2 billion to resolve a U.S. probe into its subprime mortgage business, admitting it misled investors. Deutsche has paid more than $9 billion in further fines and settlements related to claims of tax evasion; violating sanctions against Iran, Libya, Syria, Myanmar, and Sudan; rigging the $300 trillion Libor market; and other alleged breaches of the law.

The strain has intensified concerns about Deutsche’s balance sheet, which contains one of the world’s largest pots of most-difficult-to-quantify risk. The bank says it’s trimmed some of its exposure, as John Cryan, who became chief executive officer in 2015, attempts to clean up his predecessors’ messes. But if Deutsche ever requires government help, such as a bailout, the effects could be catastrophic for more than shareholders. In recent years, as the euro community has faced one solvency problem after another in Greece, Portugal, and elsewhere, Germany’s Angela Merkel has been chief scold. She’s insisted on fiscal pain for irresponsible actors and pushed for banking rules that keep taxpayers from picking up the bills again for reckless financiers. Her government coming to the aid of Deutsche Bank after lecturing others on restraint would be the ultimate euro zone irony. In a worst-case scenario, it could trigger a furor that finally brings down the continent’s currency, already made fragile by Brexit, refugees, and the rise of nationalist politicians.

The bank’s deal with Paschi is a microcosm of how Deutsche’s embrace of derivatives, questionable accounting, and slow-walking of regulators have eroded the market’s trust to the point that no one really knows how close the company is to the edge. What exactly happened in the days surrounding the December 2008 meeting in London is key to the Italian prosecution. The German financial-markets regulator, known as BaFin, already tried to get to the bottom of the matter, commissioning an independent audit in January 2014.

The ensuing report has never been made public, but Bloomberg Businessweek obtained a copy. It shows that auditors asked Faissola what happened that afternoon in London. Other participants recalled details and dialogue, the report says, but Faissola drew a blank about the event he’d helped run. Broeksmit wasn’t interviewed. On Jan. 26, 2014, the day before the audit began, his body was found at his London home, hanging from a dog leash.

Founded in 1870, Deutsche Bank was for most of its existence content to take deposits and make loans; in the 1920s it participated in the founding of the airline Lufthansa and the merger of automakers Daimler and Benz. Then, in the 1980s and ’90s, Deutsche watched as rival lenders in London and across the U.S. turbocharged profit growth by snapping up boutique investment banks and hiring or building teams to sell higher-margin financial products. To join the bonanza, Deutsche in 1995 hired one of its leaders from Merrill Lynch: Edson Mitchell, a redheaded chain smoker from Maine who was nurturing a team of future financial leaders. His crew included Broeksmit, the swaps innovator, and Anshu Jain, a prodigy at selling such risky, fee-laden products to hedge funds. Three years later, Deutsche made an even more emphatic attempt to buy its way into investment banking’s culture and profits, acquiring Bankers Trust—a New York derivatives house notorious for its cowboy culture—for about $10 billion.

If longtime Wall Streeters gawked at first at the German interloper, they quickly recognized that Deutsche had adopted their aggression and then some: Mitchell and his deputies expanded Deutsche’s London-based investment banking operation until it made half the bank’s revenue by the turn of the century.

Mitchell didn’t live to see Deutsche complete its transformation into a financial omnivore. Three days before Christmas 2000, he was riding in a small Beechcraft Super King Air 200 plane along the coast of Maine toward his vacation home in Rangeley. The wreckage was found the next morning, not far from the summit of Beaver Mountain. He was 47. Afterward, Jain took over as head of global markets. One of his deputies was Faissola.

Faissola represented the next generation in Deutsche’s investment banking push. He was born in 1968 in Sanremo, the coastal town whose legendary song contest launched the tune Volare, and his uncle was president of the Italian banking association. While running Deutsche’s global rates division in London for Jain, Faissola built his own fortune, at times earning tens of millions of pounds a year. He drew the jealousy of British co-workers because, as a foreigner, he was able to legally avoid U.K. tax on his bonuses. Faissola’s town house in Chelsea featured an indoor pool.

In the first years of the millennium, Deutsche bankers chased new sources of riches around the globe. People who piled into uncharted areas or pushed the rules were rewarded handsomely. Starting in 2005, Deutsche traders in Europe, North America, and Asia manipulated a benchmark interest rate to benefit their own derivative bets, according to an indictment made public last year in federal court in New York City. Deutsche’s most profitable derivatives trader earned a bonus of almost £90 million (then $130 million) in 2008 alone. Deutsche bankers also increased their bonuses in the runup to the crisis by creating and selling to clients mortgage securities that were marketed as high-quality investments but were in fact loaded with home loans destined to go bust. For clients, Deutsche became a go-to bank when they wanted risk and complexity.

In May 2002, when it was 530 years old, Monte dei Paschi asked Deutsche Bank to sell it something complicated. Paschi had recently listed its shares on the Italian stock exchange and was under pressure to grow. It owned a piece of another bank known today as Intesa Sanpaolo and wanted to convert some of that stake into cash for acquisitions, while still benefiting from any rise in Intesa’s shares—a kind of have-cake-and-eat-it-too arrangement. It was exactly the kind of bespoke financial product the new, risk-friendly Deutsche was growing fat on. The two banks created a venture called Santorini Investments—essentially, a derivative bet in the form of a company. The bet would pay off if Intesa shares rose and would lose value if they fell. Later restructuring made Paschi the sole shareholder.

The switch meant that in 2008, when bank stocks tanked in the worldwide financial crisis, Paschi took all of the losses, which swelled from €180 million in early October to more than €300 million in the following weeks. The bank’s own shares were on their way to losing half their value since the start of the year. If Paschi included the Santorini loss in its Dec. 31 reports, the consequences would be dire: Italy’s central bank could take over its administration or force a bailout that would wrest control from its owners, a politically connected Siena foundation. As the losses grew, Deutsche executives knew time was running out for Paschi to find a solution. Having done the first deal, they went to Paschi management with a proposal for a second that would both help the Tuscan bank and be a new source of fees for Faissola’s group. On Nov. 3 they sent Paschi draft contracts for the sure-to-win/sure-to-lose trade that straddled the new year. Each prong of the bet simply wagered on an index that was the exact inverse of the other. Essentially, the trade had little economic purpose—only an accounting one.

That’s typically a red flag to auditors and regulators, and it took almost a month for Deutsche to alter the deal so it contained a small amount of actual risk. The bankers did this by mixing in two interest rate triggers—that is, prices to be fed into a formula that would determine how much money the participants in the trade had to pay or receive from each other. But that created a slight possibility that Paschi could win both sides of the bet. To mitigate this potential Deutsche loss—as much as €500 million—Deutsche added a third trigger. Underlying the now complex flowcharts of rates, payments, and triggering events was the asset on which the transactions were to be based: about €2 billion in Italian government bonds.

Further illustrating the incestuousness of the deal, Paschi would need to buy the bonds and hand them over to Deutsche as collateral. Deutsche, for the sake of its own accounting, would need to sell the bonds to come up with cash that it then would give right back to Paschi to pay off the Santorini loss. And Paschi would buy the bonds in the first place from a third bank that had bought them from Deutsche.

By Dec. 1, 2008, Faissola’s group was ready to present the deal to Deutsche’s risks assessment committee, which sent it along to a final bureaucratic stage: the market risk management approval committee, where Broeksmit had influence. Top management had just handed Broeksmit broad authority to police risk across the firm, rehiring him after he’d taken a hiatus as a consultant. Michele Foresti, a managing director who reported to Faissola, e-mailed Broeksmit on Dec. 2, copying his boss. “I understand market risk management doesn’t want to give us green light to close this transaction,” Foresti wrote, noting the small chance of a €500 million loss. “I feel the risks are important but we should be able to manage them, could we sit down to discuss as soon as you have 5 mins?” Broeksmit’s reply was terse: “I think this should be presented to Anshu.”

Anshu Jain was by then co-head of investment banking at Deutsche. Foresti sent another e-mail at 3:52 p.m. the next day: “still waiting for [committee] approval, faissola is in anshu’s office.” What, if anything, Jain knew about the deal was an avenue later explored in the German regulator BaFin’s audit. It found no evidence to suggest Jain was aware of the transaction and couldn’t conclude whether he’d been involved in its approval. Jain told the inquiry that he wasn’t part of that process, though he couldn’t rule out having heard about the Paschi transaction in a general meeting. Faissola said he couldn’t recall having talked with Jain about the transaction. Faissola could have been in Jain’s office for many reasons. (Jain declined to comment for this article. Foresti, who’s a defendant in the Milan case, also declined to comment.)

Deutsche’s risk committee signed off on the Santorini project by the end of the day, after first securing a concession that Paschi would sign a memo pledging to inform its own auditors about the deal and consult its own legal and accounting advisers. The two parties executed the first part of the trade that night by phone, and the rest of the paperwork was signed over the following two days.

The deal allowed Paschi an immediate gain of €364.1 million, neutralizing the derivative loss. Deutsche netted about €60 million in fees, according to documents seen by Bloomberg Businessweek. Internally, the profits were credited to Faissola’s unit.

Deutsche also benefited from the way it accounted internally for its side of the deal. That complex shuttling of Italian bonds? The bank decided that all of the back-and-forth maneuvers cancelled themselves out and did not need to appear on its balance sheet. Deutsche began to apply the practice to transactions around the world, totalling more than $10 billion that never showed up on its books and making the bank look smaller and less risky than it really was. In September 2009, it was Broeksmit again who took notice. In an e-mail about a similar deal, he wrote that such accounting techniques “may be a rounding error at this point, but [they are] growing quickly.”

 

An anonymous whistle-blower contacted Italian authorities and the U.S. Federal Reserve about Santorini, and they started parallel probes in 2011. In the fourth quarter of that year, Deutsche appeared to resist the Fed’s questions, and likely because of the delays and insufficient replies—according to the BaFin audit—the Fed issued a subpoena in April 2012.

Jain was promoted to co-CEO the next month. He proposed Broeksmit as the new chief risk officer, but had to back off after BaFin objected, noting that he’d never managed a large number of employees. Broeksmit retired in February 2013—out of the bank, but well aware of the mounting investigations into the Deutsche-Paschi deal. In subsequent months he complained to a psychiatrist that he was suffering from anxiety about being investigated.

At the same time, Santorini exploded in Italy as a national scandal. In January 2013, Bloomberg News reported that Paschi executives had used the deal to improperly obscure losses—provoking criminal investigations, tanking the bank’s stock, and, in February 2013, leading to a government bailout of €4.07 billion.

Among the casualties was David Rossi, Paschi’s communications chief. At about 9 p.m. on March 6, a bank employee noticed that Rossi was missing from his fourth-floor office. A window had been left open. Authorities found Rossi’s body in a courtyard below. Rossi, 51, wasn’t himself the subject of any inquiries, but his home had been searched two weeks earlier by police. His death was at first ruled a suicide, but the inquest has been reopened based on evidence his wife presented, including security video that shows Rossi fell out backward.

Several months after Rossi’s death, in January 2014, Broeksmit was supposed to meet his wife of almost 30 years at a cafe near their home in the South Kensington neighborhood of London. He didn’t show. When she returned home, she found his body hanging from the leash attached to a door. In a dog bed, he’d left suicide notes, including one addressed to Jain, his longtime colleague. The New York Post reported last year that the note to Jain contained an apology. A summary of Deutsche Bank’s own review of the suicide, seen by Bloomberg Businessweek, doesn’t mention the note and says the review found no direct link between Broeksmit’s death and his work at Deutsche.

BaFin’s auditors interviewed Faissola on Aug. 28, 2014. He told them he couldn’t recall details of the period in which the Santorini deal closed. Faissola also said he couldn’t recall telling Deutsche’s lawyers in 2012 that the transaction could be characterized as “window dressing” Paschi’s financials, as another source had told the investigators.

Faissola laid blame on Paschi and defended his role. “Nobody could have anticipated that the top management of a top European bank, fully regulated, with credible advisors and auditors, had allegedly ‘crooks’ on the board,” he told auditors hired by BaFin. Faissola left Deutsche Bank in 2015, as did Jain and his co-CEO, Jürgen Fitschen. (Neither Jain nor Fitschen is accused in the Italian case.)

In February 2016, Deutsche said BaFin had closed its inquiries into Paschi and other matters, pointing to changes the bank had implemented and further measures it planned to take. An overhaul of the management board and the departure of senior executives contributed to the regulator’s assessment that the company had done enough, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time.

On Oct. 1, 2016, a judge in Milan handed down his indictment in the Santorini affair. The trial, which began with an initial hearing in December, is expected to run throughout 2017. Doubts about the financial health of Deutsche Bank have eased, but the stock is still about 80 percent below its 2007 high, and with legal costs uncertain, management hasn’t ruled out needing to raise more capital. New CEO Cryan is expected to introduce a strategy as soon as February, when the bank announces its final 2016 results, which analysts estimate will barely show a profit. Brought in to right the ship, Cryan has been contrite. “We didn’t always control ourselves,” he said at a Davos panel on Jan. 17. And those big bonuses? Gone. Senior employees won’t be getting any for the last year.

Meanwhile, Paschi is about to be nationalized in the biggest bank takeover by the state since the 1930s. And Faissola has kept busy. After his resignation he founded an investment company, based in Jersey in the Channel Islands, called F.A.B. Partners. The F stands for Faissola. It counts among its clients the Qatari government. With a stake of almost 10 percent, the regime is the biggest shareholder in Deutsche Bank. According to recent reports, Faissola’s latest project is advising the Qataris on whether to boost that position—and extend his former employer a lifeline.

[CHOSEN]

Tengo que decirlo porque sino reviento
El tema de la pobreza energética es una broma comparado con lo que "creo" se viene encima.

No me parece de recibo sacar una familia en el telediario llorando porque no les da para la calefacción (como no, radiadores eléctricos  ) argumentando que "o calefacción, o comer" con la entradilla de que muchas familias se ven abocadas a recurrir a la catalítica de toda la vida 

Creo que realmente la ciudadanía se está estupidificando a pasos agigantados.
De la hipoteca no habla nadie, porque es SAGRADA.
Alquilar es de pobres. Hidalgos hasta morir.
Estoy enfadado. Me da pena.


Perdón, era para el hilo de "Hoy no me quiero deflactar" 
(benditas pestañas del navegador)



Lo que quería poner en este hilo (de EUROPA) es que los europeos estamos (yo al menos) encantados con el reconocimiento estadounidense implícito de que la fecha del fin del imperio ha llegado. Su debilidad es patente. Podrían haberlo escrito en una pancarta y no estaría tan claro, que el país atravisesa tantos y tan graves problemas que pelean a la desesperada por "no deflactarse".
Trump es lo mejor que podría pasarle a una EU abierta al mundo, dispuesta a ejercer un poder blando para con sus aliados (que viene a ser todo el planeta) y sustituir -en lo posible- el vacío de poder económico global tras el suicidio de UK y las bufonadas anti-wall street de Trump.

[muyuu]

[Manu Oquendo]

El edificio fiscal construido a lo largo de la segunda mitad del siglo XX en Europa se deriva de la explosión de Constituciones Socialdemócratas y del coste, siempre creciente, de los compromisos políticos producidos por el proceso de compra de votos con cargo al presupuesto.

Son los dos problemas centrales de la actual deriva de las mal llamadas Democracias Representativas– “mal llamadas” porque en realidad son regímenes Mixtos con algunos elementos democráticos y otros de naturaleza aristocrática-oligopólica o directamente despóticas.

El Estado carece de freno estructural a demandas asistenciales en un momento histórico en el cual el sistema económico ha dejado de crecer y de hecho decrece. Cualquier dique es roto por el Sistema Político y en particular por las dinámicas de la Compra de votos.

No hace falta darle muchas vueltas para ver que esto no tiene salida real dentro de los Parámetros Constitucionales vigentes en los cuales no hay límite a lo exigible al Estado y a la Sociedad al tiempo que la persona que se posiciona como “Demandante” no es responsable por absolutamente nada.

El fundamento filosófico elegido por el sistema –Rawlsiano– determina la naturaleza, frecuentemente Arbitraria (sin criterio de Justicia real) y Extractiva (al no estar en la verdad moral es puramente coactivo).
Por ello el actual modo de establecer la fiscalidad que, por ende, incumple hasta sus propios principios de equidad y de equilibrio en aras del proceso recaudatorio. Por no hablar de las definiciones contables básicas de Renta, Coste, Beneficio, Activo, Pasivo, etc. Otro berenjenal.

Todo ello nos lleva a dos conceptos básicos en cualquier sistema de convivencia que no han sido adecuadamente tratados y han dado lugar a sistemas de fiscalidad que, al crecer desorbitadamente para atender un pozo sin fondo de demandas, han producido un edificio estructuralmente insostenible que, además, conduce necesariamente hacia un poder crecientemente  totalitario y despótico.

Estamos ya viviendo las consecuencias de la pérdida del Criterio de Justicia –sin adjetivos– para entrar en un sistema puramente Extractivo cuyo criterio central es la Recaudación sin más historias. Una mala situación para el Estado (pierde la “Virtud”) y para los Ciudadanos que soportan el Sistema (entran en el círculo vicioso de empobrecimiento).
Esto es soportable durante un tiempo pero tiene límites que ya hemos excedido.

Hoy el contribuyente medio, es decir, un mileurista en neto después de impuestos, sufre cargas fiscales que exceden el 55% de sus ingresos brutos solo con la fiscalidad explícita. Estos ingresos brutos decrecen y más con la inflación real.

Si este mileurista en neto aplicase criterios económico-utilitarios para decidir sobre su vida veríamos que ya es más rentable –y saludable– ubicarse en la parte asistencial del Estado --complementando ingresos, RBU´s etc. con pequeños trabajos chapuza o mendicidad--.

Una masa ingente, nativa y foránea,  ya ha optado, racionalmente, por ubicarse en lo Asistencial y la Dependencia. No hay datos de Free-Riders pero nadie duda de que la mentalidad Okupa ya es Racional. Como mínimo una sabia optimización de la realidad.

Podemos quejarnos lo que queramos sobre determinados detalles fiscales pero ninguno de nosotros querría encontrarse en el papel de las Instituciones Recaudatorias en una situación en la que no hay límites ni al gasto ni al comportamiento inevitablemente destructivo del también impotente sistema Político.


Si el mensaje de Davos de este año es cierto, que lo es, …………. ¿Qué perspectivas tienen la recaudación, la redistribución y la coacción en un entorno en el cual con absoluta certeza el ciudadano medio va a seguir empeorando económicamente?

Hemos de comenzar a apuntar a las “Reglas Mayores”. Las grandes leyes, las Constituciones, están siempre por detrás de los detalles y no tiene sentido perder el tiempo en detalles con la que está cayendo.

Buenos días

[Currobena]

In Stunning Admission, Draghi Says A Country Can Leave Eurozone But Must "Settle Bill First"


by Tyler Durden
Jan 21, 2017 12:50 PM


Less than 4 years ago, and shortly after his infamous "whatever it takes" threat to speculators, Mario Draghi responded to a question from Zero Hedge readers, saying "there is no Plan B" when it comes to contingency plans for a Eurozone nation leaving the monetary union. The reasoning was simple: the mere contemplation of such a scenario assigned a probability to its occurrence, which is why the ECB was desperate to give the impression that no matter what, Europe's cohesion is unbreakable.


Fast forward four years later, when not only has this particular strategy been thoroughly rejected, but for the first time ever the head of the ECB provided a framework, vague as it may be, laying out what a Eurozone exit would look like.


In a letter to two Italian lawmakers in the European Parliament released on Friday, and first reported by Reuters, Mario Draghi implied that a country could leave the euro zone - so much for "No Plan B" -  but first it would need to settle or debts with the bloc's TARGET2 payments system before severing ties.


"If a country were to leave the Eurosystem, its national central bank's claims on or liabilities to the ECB would need to be settled in full," Draghi said in the letter. He did not specify in what currency the "settlement" would have to take place. It was also not clear just what the ECB would do in response if a country did not "settle its claims in full": at last check the ECB did not have a policy-enforcing army.


As Reuters confirms, the comment by Draghi is "a rare reference by Draghi to the possibility of the currency zone losing members." We would say not just "reference" but admission that a Italexit is all too possible, however the only way the ECB would allow it, would be for Italy first to pay its €357 billion TARGET2 bill (which various confused and clueless tenured economists over the past five years claimed would never be used by the ECB as a bargaining chip in "exit" negotiations and has no political implications; oops).




To be sure, the beneficiary of such a transfer payment would be the country most reliant on the perpetuation of the status quo: Germany, which has some €754 billion in Target2 "assets" which could be nullified should one or more Eurozone countries exit without satisfying their payment obligations.


In the letter, Draghi reiterated that the imbalances were due to the ECB's own bond buying-program, where many of the sellers are foreign investors with accounts in Germany, and ensuing portfolio rebalancing.


Draghi's admission that "QuItaly" or UscIta as it is known domestically - is an all too real possibility coincides with a groundswell of anti-euro sentiment in Italy and other euro zone states, fueled in part by last June's unprecedented decision by Britain to leave the European Union.


The threat of defaults on cross-border debts has often been credited as one element keeping the euro zone together throughout the financial crisis. As these payments are not generally settled, weaker economies including Italy, Spain and Greece have accumulated huge liabilities towards Target 2 while Germany stands out as the biggest creditor with net claims of 754.1 billion euros.


Target 2 imbalances have worsened in recent months, with Harvard economist Carmen Reinhart warning of capital flight from Italy. This can be seen in the chart below, which confirms that below the calm surface portrayed by low - if recently rising - Italian bond yields, tremendous capital imbalances are piling up.






Draghi's admission, which is meant as a quasi-threat to Italy, may have opened up a whole new can of worms for European stability in addition to concerns about Trump, because not only has Draghi confirmed that an exit from the Eurozone has been explicitly modeled by the central bank, but also lays out the conditions under which it would be considered and permitted.


More importantly, it also once again provides the basis for an aggressive "negotiation", potentially escalating to rancorous bargaining between Italy and Germany, as suddenly the ECB has made it clear that Italy's gain in a "hypothetical" Euro zone exit would be a tremendous loss for Berlin and Merkel. We are confident that the question of "how much" preventing such a loss would be worth to Merkel, will emerge in very short order. As for what Draghi's statement means for countries with a far smaller Target2 liability which may also consider exiting the monetary union, the answer is two words: "green light."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-21/stunning-admission-draghi-says-country-can-leave-eurozone-must-settle-its-bill-first