GRECIA 2015

[Маркс]

Lazard: Un impago del 50% de la deuda griega parece una cifra razonable

Lazard, Lazard, Lazard.... ¿de qué me suena a mi ese nombre? 
http://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/economia/banco-Lazard-ficha-Rodrigo-Rato_0_25897517.html
http://www.eldiario.es/economia/Rato-exempresa-asesorar-Bankia-Bolsa_0_102890580.html
http://www.eldiario.es/politica/Lazard-ingreso-millones-Rato-paraiso_0_314619441.html

Jo jo jo jo...

El Rato está hecho todo un crack. 

Un comentario al segundo link:

Alucinante, me quedo con la boca abierta. Pero bueno,esto es para mear y no echar gota. Me quieres decir que se dio a si mismo ese pastizal para luego quebrar la entidad. Y luego querrá cobrar su indemnización...

Y claro.., el tercer link:

El banco Lazard ingresó 6,1 millones a Rato en una cuenta de un paraíso fiscal 

[NosTrasladamus]

De todos modos, volvemos a lo mismo: Ha llegado un punto en que a base de refinanciar y por la magia del interés compuesto, la deuda se ha vuelto completamente impagable (a nivel global, no solo en Grecia). http://www.burbuja.info/inmobiliaria/burbuja-inmobiliaria/157373-no-hay-futuro-deuda-global-indevolvible.html Y que no me jodan que los prestamistas no sabían que no se podría devolver (al igual que lo sabían los bankitos patrios cuando concedían créditos hipotecarios descabellados a pelanas que sabían que acabarían palmando).

En cierto modo, lo que esta diciendo Syriza, ahora que ya es patente que Grecia no podrá devolver la deuda es que el emperador está desnudo. (Los Babilonios sabían perfectamente que la usura -prohibida, con buenos motivos, por numerosas religiones- y la deuda que generaba acababa fuera de control hasta poner en peligro al propio estado, por lo que inventaron el año jubilar, que era un año en que cada "X" años se anulaban las deudas y se redimia a todos aquellos que hubiesen acabado siendo esclavos debido a las deudas, lo que permitía al príncipe, mantener la estabilidad de su estado. http://dfc-economiahistoria.blogspot.com/2011/12/la-insostenibilidad-de-las-deudas.html )

Y no, CHOSEN, de ninguna manera la economía es un problema "técnico", la economía no es sólo "contabildad" ni debe/haber. Con los mismos recursos, con los mismos balances contables, pueden tomarse decisiones económicas que conduzcan a resultados sobre la sociedad absolutamente distintos, y en ese sentido no hay nada más político que la economía. Y los "técnicos", los mandarines del FMI/BCE/Comisión Europea tienen su propia agenda y sus intereses, los propios y los de aquellos a quienes sirven y con sus decisiones HACEN POLÍTICA (aunque las disfracen de asépticas decisiones técnicas -y de "no podíamos hacer otra cosa"- el "there's no alternative" de la Tatcher, reeditado). El neoliberalismo y sus postulados no son una ley física como la termodinámica, sino una forma de POLÍTICA ECONÓMICA que tiene determinados fines (y está arropada por todo un aparto ideológico y propagandístico, que, al haber devenido STATU QUO, y, gracias al inmisericorde bombardeo mediático de todos sus mantras ideológicos, ha llegado a parecer en el imaginario colectivo el estado natural de las cosas pero no lo es ni muchísimo menos.)

Además. volviendo al más cercano y pedestre ejemplo de las hipotecas (haciendo el -mal- símil de que Grecia fuese el pepito hipotecado), en un primer momento "lo primero que se paga es la hipoteca". Los cojones. Hasta que tus hijos empiezan a pasar hambre. ¿De qué te sirve pagar la deuda si ello te impide sobrevivir e impedirá al acreedor cobrarse lo adeudado?, los acreedores comprenden eso, y vaya si renegocian, es preferible cobrar algo que no cobrar nada (luego está el tema de los intereses y las refinanciaciones, en donde hay mucho, MUCHO que cuestionar y que sistemáticamente se deja fuera del debate -por no hablar de la socialización de deudas absolutamente privadas, algo a lo que os negais en redondo a entrar, pero en donde IMPERATIVAMENTE hay que entrar-) lo que el nuevo gobierno griego pretende es limitar los daños que la deuda contraida por los anteriores gobiernos puede llegar a hacer a la sociedad griega.

Y luego entra en juego la eurodiplomacia y la geoestrategia. Si la troika (con una Comisión Europea muy poco democrática -más bien nada-, un BCE obsesionado con la inflación y con el FMI como fuerte componente anglosférico-usano) aprieta demasiado a Grecia, y los prestamistas euro-anglos-usanos no le dejan otra salida, es posible que busque recursos en bloques geoeconómicos competidores, Rusia y China, con la guerra latente -de momento económica- que los USA están librando por mantener su influencia en el este de europa (conflicto de Ucrania) y en el pacífico y minimizar su decadencia, muy amenazada por la debilidad del dólar como moneda internacional de reserva y su propio endeudamiento (que curiosamente es mucho más elevado que el de Grecia, pero eso no parece preocuparle a nadie, la hegemonía del dólar esta basada en la deuda y, por supuesto, en el respaldo militar del gobierno estadounidense) y a los USA no le interesa para nada que Rusia gane influencia en el este de Europa.

[Currobena]

Una de las mejores explicaciones que he leído sobre la crisis de deuda greco-hispano-alemana (en realidad, europea).

The European debt crisis is not a conflict among nations.

...

Resolving a debt crisis involves nothing more than assigning the losses. In the current crisis these costs have to be assigned to different economic sectors within Europe, but to the extent that the assignation of costs can be characterized as exercises in national cost allocation, it is easy to turn an economic conflict into a national conflict.
Most currency and sovereign debt crises in modern history ultimately represent a conflict over how the costs are to be assigned among two different groups. On the one hand are creditors, owners of real estate and other assets, and the businesses who benefit from the existing currency distortions. One the other hand are workers who pay in the form of low wages and unemployment and, eventually, middle class household savers and taxpayers who pay in the form of a gradual erosion of their income or of the value of their savings. Historically during currency and sovereign debt crises political parties have come to represent one or the other of these groups, and whether they are of the left or the right, they are able to capture the allegiance of these groups.
Except for Greece, in Europe the main political parties on both sides of the political spectrum have until now chosen to maintain the value of the currency and protect the interests of the creditors. It has been the extremist parties, either on the right or the left, who have attacked the currency union and the interests of the creditors. In many cases these parties are extreme nationalists and oppose the existence of the European Union. If they succeed in taking control of the debate, the European experiment will almost certainly collapse, and it will take decades, if ever, for a European union to revive.
But it hasn’t been clear why distortions in the savings rate are at the root of the European crisis. Until now an awful lot of Europeans have understood the crisis in terms of differences in national character, economic virtue, and as a moral struggle between prudence and irresponsibility. This interpretation is intuitively appealing but it is almost wholly incorrect, and because the cost of saving Europe is debt forgiveness, and Europe must decide if this is a cost worth paying, to the extent that the European crisis is seen as a struggle between the prudent countries and the irresponsible countries, it is extremely unlikely that European will be willing to pay the cost. As my regular readers know, I generally refer to the two groups of counties seen as being on the opposite sides of the barricades as “Germany” and “Spain”, the former for obvious reasons and the latter because I was born and grew up there, and it is the country I know best. I will continue to do so in this blog entry.
It is a horrible irony that while the view that the European crisis is a conflict between prudent Germany and irresponsible Spain could easily tear apart the European experiment, it terribly muddles Europe’s actual experience and may create a false impression of irresponsibility. To see why, it is useful to start with a little history. Nearly 150 years ago Spain’s “Glorious Revolution” of 1868 saw the deposition of Isabella II and the collapse of the first Spanish Republic. More importantly for our purposes it also unleashed within continental Europe a conflict over the succession to the Spanish throne which ultimately, through a series of circuitous events, resulted in France’s declaration of war on Prussia in July 1870, which was widely seen in France as a chance partially to even the score over Prussia’s victory during the Napoleonic wars. France’s’ revanchist fantasies were frustrated, however, and by early 1871, the French army  was roundly defeated by Prussia, which during that time had unified the various German states as the German Empire under the Prussian king.

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This is interesting. The German economy responded to French capital inflows in almost the same way that several peripheral European economies responded to equally large German capital inflows 135 years later. It might seem an unfair comparison at first because the 1871-73 transfer to Germany was huge, but it turns out that the magnitude of the inflows were broadly similar, in fact probably smaller, to the inflows into peripheral Europe. By the way I should point out that I use Spain to represent peripheral Europe not just, as I stated earlier, because I was born and grew up there, and so know it well, but also because Spanish government polices were in many ways among the most “responsible” in Europe, and so cannot really be blamed for the aftereffects. Spain’s debt and its fiscal accounts were far stronger than the European average and stronger than those of Germany in most respects.
It is hard to imagine that the amount of inflows into Germany from 1871 to 1873 could have been comparable to the inflows Spain experienced, but if anything they were actually smaller. Here is why I think they were. From 2000-04 Spain ran stable current account deficits of roughly 3-4% of GDP, more or less double the average of the previous decade. Germany, after a decade of current account deficits of roughly 1% of GDP, began the century with slightly larger deficits, but this balanced to zero by 2002, after which Germany ran steady surpluses of 2% for the next two years.
Everything changed around 2005. Germany’s surplus jumped sharply to nearly 5% of GDP and averaged 6% for the next four years. The opposite happened to Spain. From 2005 until 2009 Spain’s current account deficit roughly doubled again from its 3-4% average during the previous five years. The numbers are not directly comparable, of course, but during those four years Spain effectively ran a cumulative current account deficit above its previous 3-4% average of roughly 21-22% of GDP. Seen over a longer time frame, during the decade it ran a cumulative current account deficit above its earlier average of roughly 31-32% of GDP.
These are huge numbers, and substantially exceed the French indemnity in relative terms. Of course the current account deficit is the obverse of the capital account surplus, so this means that Spain absorbed capital inflows above its “normal” absorption rate equal to an astonishing 21-22% of GDP from 2005 to 2009, and of 31-32% of GDP from 2000 to 2009. However you look at it, in other words, Spain absorbed an amount of net capital inflows equal to or substantially larger than Germany’s absorption of French reparations during 1871-73. It is not just Spain. In the 2005-09 period a number of peripheral European countries experienced net inflows of similar magnitude, according to an IMF study, including Portugal, Greece and several smaller east European countries.
By the way in principle it isn’t obvious which way causality ran between capital account inflows and current account deficits (the two must always balance to zero). In 1871-73 it is obvious that German capital inflows drove current account deficits. In 2005-09 European countries might similarly have run large current account deficits because of the capital inflows imposed upon them, but it is also possible that they had to import capital by eagerly borrowing German money in order to finance their large current account deficits. To put it differently, German money might have been “pushed” into these countries, as the “blame Germany” crew has it, or it might have been “pulled” in, by the need to finance their spending orgies, as the “blame anyone but Germany” crew insist.
The structure of the balance of payments itself does not tell us conclusively which caused which, and no one doubts that there was a strong element of self-reinforcement that was an almost automatic consequence of the payments process, as I have discussed in the January 21 entry on this blog. If it were the latter case, however, it would be an astonishing coincidence that so many countries decided to embark on consumption sprees at exactly the same time. It would be even more remarkable, had they done so, that they could have all sucked money out of a reluctant Germany while driving interest rates down. It is very hard to believe, in other words, that the enormous shift in the internal European balance of payments was driven by anything other than a domestic shift in the German economy that suddenly saw total savings soar relative to total investment. I have discussed many times before what happened in Germany that resulted in the savings distortion that convinces me that the flows originated in Germany, as it has many others.
What is interesting is how similar the consequence of the inflows were even though Berlin was able to control the ways in which the inflows were disbursed in a way that Madrid could only dream of. From 1871 to 1873 the German economy experienced one of the most dramatic stock market and real estate booms in German history, and although the flow of funds into government coffers rather than through banks to businesses and households ensured that the subsequent rise in German consumption was not early as extreme as it was in Spain, Germany did engage in a frenzy of investment at home and abroad in which a substantial share of the inflows was effectively wasted in foolish investment. Of course unlike Spain today, there never was any question about Germany’s obligation to repay the transfer. It had come, after all, in the form of reparations demanded by a victorious army, and not in the form of loans. In fact it took the massive US lending to Germany in the 1920s for German investment misallocation to lead to wholesale default on external debt.
Syriza’s challenge
It is useful to remember this history when we confront the consequences of Greece’s recent elections. Syriza’s victory in Greece has reignited the name-calling and moralizing that has characterized much of the discussion on peripheral Europe’s unsustainable debt burden. I think it is pretty clear, and obvious to almost everyone, that Greece simply cannot repay its external obligations, and one way or another it is going to receive substantial debt forgiveness. Even if the question of who is to “blame”, Greece or Germany, were an important one, the answer would not change the debt dynamics. It would take the equivalent of Ceausescu’s brutal austerity policies in Romania, which were imposed during the 1980s in order for the country fully to repay its external debt, to resolve the Greek debt burden without a write-down. Given that Ceausescu’s policies led directly to the 1989 revolution, which culminated in both Ceausescu and his wife being executed by firing squad, the reluctance in Athens to imitate Romania in the 1980s is probably not surprising.
But to say Greece simply cannot repay isn’t the end of the story. As Europe moves towards a more rational debt policy with Greece, I would say that there are three important things to remember:
1.  There is an enormous economic cost, not to mention social and perhaps political, to any delay. I worry about the terrifyingly low level of sophistication among policymakers and the economists who advise them when it comes to understanding balance sheet dynamics and debt restructuring. Greece’s debt overhang imposes rising financial distress costs and increasingly deep distortions in the institutional structure of the economy over time, and the longer it takes to resolve, the greater the cost.
I think most analysts understand that costs will rise during the restructuring process. I am not sure they understand, however, that delays will impose even heavier costs during the many years of subsequent adjustment. There is a lot of bad blood and recrimination among the various parties. I suspect that some of those who oppose Syriza are probably revolted by the thought that a rapid resolution of the Greek crisis would rebound to Syriza’s credit, but they must understand that dragging out the restructuring process will impose far greater long-term costs on the Greek people than they think.
My friend Hans Humes, from Greylock Capital, has been involved in more sovereign debt restructurings than I can remember, and he once told me with disgust that while it is usually pretty easy to guess what the ultimate deal will look like within the first few days of negotiation, it still takes months or even years of bitter arguing before getting there. We cannot forget however that each month of delay will be far more costly to Greece and her people than we might at first assume.
2.  From what I read, much of the focus of the restructuring will be aimed at determining an acceptable and manageable debt-servicing cashflow for Greece. There is a mistaken belief that this is the only “real” variable that matters, and the rest is cosmetics. I don’t agree. Greece’s nominal debt structure will not just affect the debt-servicing cashflows but will also determine future behavior of economic agents.
There are at least two important functions of an economic entity’s liability structure. One is to determine the way operating profits or economic growth is distributed among the various stakeholders, or, put differently, to determine economic incentive structures. The other is to determine the way external shocks are absorbed. The face value and structure of outstanding debt matters, and for more than cosmetic reasons. Rather than let economists work out the arithmetic of the restructuring, Greece and her creditors may want to unleash a couple of options experts onto the repayment formulas and allow them to calculate how volatility affects the value of these payments and what impact this might have on economic behavior.
3.  In fact the overall restructuring must be designed so that the interests of Greece, the producers who create Greek GDP, and the creditors are correctly aligned. Among other things the negotiating committee might want to dust off the GDP warrants that were included in Argentina’s last debt restructuring. If the restructuring is well designed, within a year of the restructuring I think we could easily see Greek growth surprise us with its vigor. I was delighted to see that Greece’s new Finance minister agrees. An article in Monday’s Financial Times starts with the claim that “Greece’s radical new government revealed proposals on Monday for ending the confrontation with its creditors by swapping outstanding debt for new growth-linked bonds, running a permanent budget surplus and targeting wealthy tax-evaders.” Today’s Financial Times has an article by Martin Wolf that mentions the benefits of “a growth linked bond”. In The Volatility Machine I spend chapters explaining how to create liability structures that minimize external shocks, align the interests of creditors and citizens, and improve the quality of payments for creditors, and I show why these make a restructuring much more successful for all parties concerned. This is just basic finance theory. Yanis Varoufakis should really take the lead in designing an entirely new form of sovereign debt restructuring, not just for Greece but for the many countries, in Europe and elsewhere, that will soon follow it into default.
While everyone probably agrees that Greece simply cannot proceed without debt forgiveness, less widely agreed, but no less obvious in my opinion, is that there are a number of other European countries that also need debt forgiveness if they are to grow. Because I was born and grew up in Spain, and my French mother founded and ran a successful business there which my family and I still own, I am confident that I know the country well enough to say that Spain is one of these countries. I suspect that many other countries including Portugal, Italy, and maybe even France are too.
I also know, however, that Spanish debt prospects are an extremely sensitive and emotional topic, and I will be roundly condemned for saying this. Today’s Financial Times has a very worrying article explaining why Madrid wants to be seen among the hardliners in opposing a rational treatment for Greece: “when it comes to helping Greece, there will be no such thing as southern solidarity or peripheral patronage.” In an article for Politica Exterior in January 2012 I actually proposed, without much hope, that Spain take the lead and organize the debtor countries to negotiate a sustainable agreement, but in its fear of Podemos, the Spanish equivalent of Syriza, and its determination to be one of the virtuous countries, it strikes me that Madrid is probably moving in the wrong direction economically. Ultimately, by tying itself even more tightly to the interests of the creditors, Rajoy and his associates are only making the electoral prospects for Podemos all the brighter.
As it is, and for reasons that may have to do with history and the psychological scars it left among those of my generation, any discussion in Spain is likely to be subsumed under non-economic considerations, especially angry denunciations of moral virtue and moral turpitude. I want to address some of these issues not in order to assert that they these non-economic considerations are irrelevant — in fact some of them are very important — but rather to put them in a more neutral context.
As far as I can tell there are at least four important reasons that opponents of debt forgiveness, not just in Germany but also in Spain, have proposed as to why debt forgiveness would be a long-term disaster for Spain:
1.  Spain’s economic future depends on its remaining a member of Europe in good standing. To demand debt forgiveness (let alone a renegotiation of the currency union) would cause a financial crisis and relegate Spain to backward country status.
2.  If Spain fails to honor its debt commitments it will be considered forever an unreliable prospect and will be frozen out of future investment and trade.
3.  More importantly, it would be morally wrong. The German people provided Spain with real, hard-earned resources which it misused. It is not fair that Spain punish the German people.
4.  Spain had a real choice. It got itself into this mess only because of the very poor economic policies a corrupt Madrid implemented. Had Spaniards acted more like Germans and refrained from excessive consumption — the result of a flawed national character trait — it would not have suffered from speculative stock and real estate market bubbles, wasted investment and, above all, an unsustainable consumption boom and a collapse in savings. It is unfortunate that ordinary Spaniards must suffer for the venality of tis leaders, but ultimately they are responsible.
These four arguments, which are the same arguments made about other highly indebted European countries, have been made not just by the greedy Germans of caricature, but also, more importantly, by indignant locals. They genuinely believe that their country behaved stupidly and must pay the price, and it is hard not to respect their sincerity.
Blaming nations
The last of the four points is I think the most powerful of the arguments and among the most confused, and it is the one I hope I have at least partly addressed with my discussion of the French indemnity, and that I will discuss more below, but I should briefly address the first three, and of course while I refer to Spain, in fact much of what follows is as true of Greece and other heavily indebted European borrowers as it  is of Spain:
1.  There is no question that a renegotiation of Spanish debt or of its status within the currency union would be accompanied by economic hardship and perhaps even a crisis. But compared to what? The Spanish economy is already in disastrous shape and there is compelling historical evidence that countries suffering under excessive debt burdens can never grow their way out of their debt no matter how radical and forceful the reforms.
This means that by refusing to negotiate debt forgiveness, not only must Spain be prepared to live with unbearably high unemployment and slow growth for many years, which would undermine the social, political and financial institutions that are the real determinants of whether a country is economically advanced or economically backwards, but in the end after many years of suffering Spain would be forced into debt forgiveness anyway, only now with an economy in far worse shape. Historical precedents also suggest that while the real reforms Madrid has implemented seem to have failed, in fact it is the debt constraint that has prevented their impacts on productivity from showing up as economic growth. I suspect that many of these reforms have actually been very positive for Spain’s long-term productivity. In that sense I think Mariano Rajoy and his grove enemy have put in an impressive performance. Unless Madrid waits too long, they may very well even unleash tremendous growth once debt is written down, but until the debt is resolved, they will not seem to have worked. Even “good” reforms have failed to generate growth in nearly every previous case of overly indebted countries, unless of course those reforms sharply reduce outstanding debt.
Some economists argue the facts on the ground already contradict my pessimism. Last week Madrid announced excitedly that GDP grew by 1.7% last year, its fastest pace in seven years. The Financial Times pointed out that Spain was well-positioned in 2015 to continue to take advantage of lower energy costs, a weaker euro, and a cut in personal and corporate taxes, to which I would add lower metal prices, massive QE, and stronger than expected consumption. But even if these tailwinds are permanent, and they clearly are not, nominal GDP growth is still much lower than the growth in the debt burden. This is as good as it gets, in other words, and it is not good enough. As the debt burden continues to climb, and as social and political frustrations mount, Spain will slide inexorably backwards into the backward-country status it wants so badly to avoid.
2.  There is overwhelming evidence — the US during the 19th Century most obviously — that trade and investment flow to countries with good future prospects, and not to countries with good track records. The main investment Spain is likely to see over the next few years is foreign purchases of existing apartments along the country’s beautiful beaches. Once its growth prospects improve, however, with among other things a manageable debt burden, foreign businesses and investors will fall over each other to regain the Spanish market regardless of its debt repayment history. This is one of those things about which historical track record is quite unambiguous.
3.  It was not the German people who lent money to the Spanish people. The policies implemented by Berlin that resulted in the huge swing in Germany’s current account from deficit in the 1990s to surplus in the 2000s were imposed at a cost to German workers, and have been at least partly responsible for Germany’s extremely low productivity growth — most of Germany’s growth before the crisis can be explained by the change in its current account — rather than by rising productivity.
Moreover because German capital flows to Spain ensured that Spanish inflation exceeded German inflation, lending rates that may have been “reasonable” in Germany were extremely low in Spain, perhaps even negative in real terms. With German, Spanish, and other banks offering nearly unlimited amounts of extremely cheap credit to all takers in Spain, the fact that some of these borrowers were terribly irresponsible was not a Spanish “choice.” I am hesitant to introduce what may seem like class warfare, but if you separate those who benefitted the most from European policies before the crisis from those who befitted the least, and are now expected to pay the bulk of the adjustment costs, rather than posit a conflict between Germans and Spaniards, it might be far more accurate to posit a conflict between the business and financial elite on one side (along with EU officials) and workers and middle class savers on the other.  This is a class conflict, in other words, and not a national conflict, although it is increasingly hard to prevent it from becoming a national conflict.
But didn’t Spain have a choice? After all it seems that Spain could have refused to accept the cheap credit, and so would not have suffered from speculative market excesses, poor investment, and the collapse in the savings rate. This is true, of course, only if there were such a decision-maker as “Spain”. There wasn’t. As long as a country has a large number of individuals, households, and business entities, it does not require uniform irresponsibility, or even majority irresponsibility, for the economy to misuse unlimited credit at excessively low interest rates. Every country under those conditions has done the same. Germany most obviously did after 1871, even though it was much better placed than Spain later was for two important reasons. First, unlike Spain today, Germany was not saddled with an enormous debt obligation which it had to repay. Second, in 1871-73 the transfers went straight to Berlin, which was able fully to control the disbursements. In 2005-09, on the other hand, the transfers to Spain were discrete and widely dispersed in ways that may have created biases in favor of the most optimistic or foolish lenders and the most optimistic or foolish borrowers.
And this is a point that’s often missed in the popular debate. Over and over we hear — often, ironically, from those most committed to the idea of a Europe that transcends national boundaries — that Spain must bear responsibility for its actions and must repay what it owes to Germany. But there is no “Spain” and there is no “Germany” in this story. At the turn of the century Berlin, with the agreement of businesses and labor unions, put into place agreements to restrain wage growth relative to GDP growth. By holding back consumption, those policies forced up German savings rate. Because Germany was unable to invest these savings domestically, and in fact even lowered its investment rate, German banks exported the excess of savings over investment abroad to countries like Spain.
Why didn’t Germans, rather than Spaniards, take advantage of the excess savings to fund a consumption boom. The standard response is to point to German prudence and Spanish irresponsibility, but it must be remembered that as German and Spanish interest rates converged (driven in large part by German capital flows into Spain), because they adopted a common currency at a time when Spanish inflation had been higher than German, the real interest rate in Spain was lower than that of Germany. As German money poured into Spain — with Spain importing capital equal to 10% of GDP at its peak — the massive capital inflows and declining interest rates ignited asset price bubbles, and even more inflation, setting off in Spain what Charles Kindleberger called a “displacement”. This locked Spain into a classic self-reinforcing cycle of rising asset prices and declining interest rates.
What is more, under normal (i.e. pre-euro) conditions the Spanish peseta would have dropped and Spanish interest rates risen, but the conditions of the euro prevented both adjustment mechanisms, and to make things worse this gave Berlin’s policies far more traction than anyone expected, locking Germany into an over-reliance on capital exports to Spain, the obverse of Germany’s current account surplus. German workers gave up wage growth in order to eke out employment growth, which itself depended on an ever rising surplus. Throughout it all there was little productivity growth as German companies reduced their investment share in the economy.
Meanwhile German banks, flush with the higher savings that low wage growth, rising surpluses and growing corporate profits all but guaranteed, continued eagerly to export into Spain the savings they simply could not invest at home. So why didn’t ”Spain” step in and put an end to this process by refusing to borrow German money? Because, again, there was no “Spain”. There were millions of households and business entities all of whom were offered unlimited amounts of lending at very low or even negative interest rates. As long as there were some greedy, overly optimistic or foolish borrowers, and in a country of 45-50 million people how could there not be, German and Spanish banks fell over themselves to make loans, and so the money had to be absorbed by Spain.
This is not a story about nations. Before the crisis German workers were forced to pay to inflate the Spanish bubble by accepting very low wage growth, even as the European economy boomed. After the crisis Spanish workers were forced to absorb the cost of deflating the bubble in the form of soaring unemployment. But the story doesn’t end there. Before the crisis, German and Spanish lenders eagerly sought out Spanish borrowers and offered them unlimited amounts of extremely cheap loans — somewhere in the fine print I suppose the lenders suggested that it would be better if these loans were used to fund only highly productive investments.
But many of them didn’t, and because they didn’t, German and Spanish banks — mainly the German banks who originally exported excess German savings — must take very large losses as these foolish investments, funded by foolish loans, fail to generate the necessary returns. It is no great secret that banking systems resolve losses with the cooperation of their governments by passing them on to middle class savers, either directly, in the form of failed deposits or higher taxes, or indirectly, in the form of financial repression. Both German and Spanish banks must be recapitalized in order that they can eventually recognize the inevitable losses, and this means either many years of artificially boosted profits on the back of middle class savers, or the direct transfer of losses onto the government balance sheets, with German and Spanish household taxpayers covering the debt repayments.
Who is fighting whom?
I am not rejecting the claim that “Spain” acted irresponsibly, in other words, only to place the blame on “German” irresponsibility. But it is absolutely wrong for Volker Kauder, the parliamentary caucus leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, to say, according to an article in last week’s Bloomberg, that “Germany bears no responsibility for what happened in Greece. The new prime minister must recognize that.” There was indeed plenty of irresponsible behavior on both sides, during which time wealth was transferred from workers of both countries to create the boom and to absorb the subsequent bust, and wealth will be transferred again from middle class households of both countries to clean up the resulting debt debacle.
Put differently, there is no national virtue or national vice here, and there is no reason for the European crisis to devolve into right-wing, nationalist extremism. The financial crisis in Europe, like all financial crises, is ultimately a struggle about how the costs of the adjustment will be allocated, either  to workers and middle class savers or to bankers, owners of real and financial assets, and the business elite. Because the major parties have refused to acknowledge the nature of this allocation process, and have turned it into a fight between a creditor Germany, on the one hand, and indebted peripheral European countries on the other, I was able to make in 2010-11 one of the easiest predictions I have ever made in my career — whichever extremist parties, whether of the right or of the left, who first went on the offensive against Germany, the bankers and the currency bureaucrats, I predicted, would surge in electoral popularity and would eventually reformulate the debate.
That is why the question of debt forgiveness must be reformulated by the centrist parties first. Fundamental to the argument that Spain (or Greece, or anyone else) has a moral obligation to repay in full its debt to Germany are two assumptions. The first assumption is that “Spain” borrowed the money from “Germany”, and that there is a collective obligation on the part of Spain to repay the German collective. The second assumption is that Spain had a choice in what it could do with the German money that poured into the country, and so it must be held responsible for its having mis-used hard-earned german funds.
The first assumption is, I think, easily dismissed. Germany exported capital because by repressing wage growth, Berlin ensured the high profits and low consumption that forced up its national savings rates. Instead of employing these savings to invest in raising the productivity of German workers (in fact domestic investment actually declined) it offered them either to fund German consumption at high real interest rates (and there were few takers), or through German and Spanish banks this capital was offered to other European households for consumption or to other European businesses for investment. The offers were taken up in different ways by different countries. In countries where the offered interest rates were very low or negative, the loans were more widely taken up than in countries where real interest rates were much higher. To ascribe this difference to cultural preferences rather than to market dynamics doesn’t make much sense.
What started slowly quickly accelerated, again for reasons of market dynamics. As the huge inflow into Spain set off stock market and real estate booms, some Spanish households, feeling wealthier, borrowed to increase their consumption, and many Spanish households and businesses borrowed to buy real estate. In the subsequent frenzy, credit standards collapsed as Spanish and German banks fought to gain market share, and as optimism soared, consumption grew to unsustainable levels, until eventually Spain was so overextended that it collapsed. The same story can be told elsewhere. In fact this is what happened in Germany after the French indemnity.
As for the second assumption, that Spain had a choice, this too should be quickly dismissed. Clearly Spanish households and businesses in the aggregate behaved, in retrospect, with astonishing abandon. But could they have done otherwise — did they have a choice? Almost certainly not. Germany did not when it received the French indemnity, and I don’t think there are many, if any, cases of country’s that were able to absorb productively such massive inflows. As long as there is a widely diverse range of views among Spanish individuals and businesses about prospects for the future, as long as there is a mix of optimists and pessimists, or as long as there are varying levels of financial sophistication, it would have been historically unprecedented if at least some Spanish entities did not respond foolishly to aggressive offers of extremely cheap credit, especially once this cheap credit had set off a real estate boom.
In summary, I think there are several points that those of us who want “Europe” to survive should be making.
1.  The euro crisis is a crisis of Europe, not of European countries. It is not a conflict between Germany and Spain (and I use these two countries to represent every European country on one side or the other of the boom) about who should be deemed irresponsible, and so should absorb the enormous costs of nearly a decade of mismanagement. There is plenty of irresponsible behavior in every country, and it is absurd to think that if German and Spanish banks were pouring nearly unlimited amounts of money into countries at extremely low or even negative real interest rates, especially once these initial inflows had set off stock market and real estate booms, that there was any chance that these countries would not respond in the way every country in history, including Germany in the 1870s and in the 1920s, had responded to similar conditions.
2.  The “losers” in this system have been German and Spanish workers, until now, and German and Spanish middle class savers and taxpayers in the future as European banks are directly or indirectly bailed out. The winners have been banks, owners of assets, and business owners, mainly in Germany, whose profits were much higher during the last decade than they could possibly have been otherwise
3.  In fact, the current European crisis is boringly similar to nearly every currency and sovereign debt crisis in modern history, in that it pits the interests of workers and small producers against the interests of bankers. The former want higher wages and rapid economic growth. The latter want to protect the value of the currency and the sanctity of debt.
4.  I am not smart enough to say with any confidence that one side or the other is right. There have been cases in history in which the bankers were probably right, and cases in which the workers were probably right. I can say, however, that the historical precedents suggest two very obvious things. First, as long as Spain suffers from its current debt burden, it does not matter how intelligently and forcefully it implements economic reforms. It will not be able to grow out of its debt burden and must choose between two paths. One path involves many, many more years of economic hell, as ordinary households are slowly forced to absorb the costs of debt — sometimes explicitly but usually implicitly in the form of financial repression, unemployment, and debt monetization.  The other path is a swift resolution of the debt as it is restructured and partially forgiven in a disruptive but short process, after which growth will return and almost certainly with vigor
5.  Second, it is the responsibility of the leading centrist parties to recognize the options explicitly. If they do not, extremist parties either of the right or the left will take control of the debate, and convert what is a conflict between different economic sectors into a nationalist conflict or a class conflict. If the former win, it will spell the end of the grand European experiment.

He tenido que cortar el artículo porque es muy largo, pero merece la pena releerlo unas cuantas veces. Extraordinario.

http://blog.mpettis.com/2015/02/syriza-and-the-french-indemnity-of-1871-73/

[saturno]

Michael Petit -- Dice que crecio y su familia tiene un negocio en España.
Que conoce bien España, aunque no sale en su About.
(Podría intervenir en las negociaciones europeas en representación de ES, digo yo.))

[wanderer]

Seguimos con el circo, o quizá con el día del Juicio Final; dos versiones:

El BCE, Alemania y España preparan una encerrona a Varoufakis en el próximo eurogrupo

El ministro de Finanzas griego, Yanis Varoufakis, se dirige hacia una encerrona en la que corre el riesgo de sufrir una seria humillación a manos de Alemania y el BCE.
http://vozpopuli.com/economia-y-finanzas/57013-el-bce-alemania-y-espana-preparan-una-encerrona-a-varoufakis-en-el-proximo-eurogrupo

Y los de ZH:

ECB Pulls The Trigger: Blocks Funding To Greece Via Debt Collateral - Full Statement

Just what the market had hoped would not happen...

• *ECB SAYS IT LIFTS WAIVER ON GREEK GOVERNMENT DEBT AS COLLATERAL
  
• *ECB SAYS IT CAN'T ASSUME SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF GREECE REVIEW

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-04/ecb-pulls-trigger-blocks-funding-greece

[Маркс]

Seguimos con el circo, o quizá con el día del Juicio Final; dos versiones:

El BCE, Alemania y España preparan una encerrona a Varoufakis en el próximo eurogrupo

El ministro de Finanzas griego, Yanis Varoufakis, se dirige hacia una encerrona en la que corre el riesgo de sufrir una seria humillación a manos de Alemania y el BCE.
http://vozpopuli.com/economia-y-finanzas/57013-el-bce-alemania-y-espana-preparan-una-encerrona-a-varoufakis-en-el-proximo-eurogrupo

Y los de ZH:

ECB Pulls The Trigger: Blocks Funding To Greece Via Debt Collateral - Full Statement

Just what the market had hoped would not happen...

• *ECB SAYS IT LIFTS WAIVER ON GREEK GOVERNMENT DEBT AS COLLATERAL
  
• *ECB SAYS IT CAN'T ASSUME SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF GREECE REVIEW

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-04/ecb-pulls-trigger-blocks-funding-greece

Es un circo y además mediático.

De momento Grecia recurre al ELA en caso de falta de liquidez. Eso lo sabe tanto Varoufakis como el BCE, de hecho están diseñando el nuevo acuerdo tal y como indica el texto que trajo ayer Currobena.

[Currobena]

Michael Petit -- Dice que crecio y su familia tiene un negocio en España.
Que conoce bien España, aunque no sale en su About.
(Podría intervenir en las negociaciones europeas en representación de ES, digo yo.))

Desde luego, lo haría mucho mejor que los que hay ahora. Además de inteligente es cabezón, como buen aragonés, y cuenta en algunos posts anécdotas de cómo su honestidad a la hora de asesorar clientes le ha valido para perder cuentas a pesar de que le han dado la razón. Pero su trabajo no era "políticamente correcto".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pettis

[wanderer]

Encuentro Schäuble&Varoufakis:

Schauble And Varoufakis Meeting Ends: "We Didn't Even Agreed To Disagree"



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-05/schauble-and-varoufakis-meeting-ends-we-didnt-even-agreed-disagree

Impagable la foto... 

[NosTrasladamus]

Jojojojojooooooo me imagino la cara de Montoro y De Windows, verdes de envidia... 

http://www.principiamarsupia.com/2015/02/05/miles-de-griegos-salen-la-calle-y-corean-su-ministro-de-finanzas/

Miles de griegos salen a la calle… y corean a su Ministro de Finanzas


La Plaza Syntagma contra la austeridad. (Fotografía propia)

¿Ha existido alguna vez una manifestación en la que la gente corée el nombre de un Ministro de Finanzas? ¡Esto debe ser un estreno mundial!” pregunta socarrona Xenia, una mujer de 53 años que durante minutos ha gritado, junto a miles de manifestantes, el ya omnipresente en Atenas “Yanis Varufakis, Yanis Varoufakis, Yanis Varoufakis”.

“Mire, téngalo usted muy claro: yo no voté a Syriza. No soy de izquierdas. Pero el viernes pasado vi a un Ministro que se atrevió a decirle a la Troika lo que la mayoría de griegos pensamos: estamos hartos de ustedes”.

“Pensé que Syriza haría lo que todos los gobiernos: arrodillarse ante los alemanes en cuanto llegasen al gobierno. No lo ha hecho. Y mientras sigan así, tendrán todo mi apoyo”.

Entre los manifestantes más jóvenes, muchos de los cuales participaron en las concentraciones de hace 3 años, lo que más se comentaba era la ausencia de policía: “Que la plaza Syntagma esté llena y no estemos rodeados de antidisturbios y gas…. No sé, como que no estoy seguro de que esto no sea un sueño”, comenta entre risas Dimitrios.

“Ahora mismo estamos en una zona prohibida para el pueblo hasta hace una semana”. Dimitros se refiere al costado de la plaza que da acceso al Parlamento. Durante el último gobierno de Samaras estuvo rodeado de vallas para que los manifestantes no accediesen. Retirarlas fue uno de los primeros gestos de Tsipras tras ganar las elecciones.

Evangelos, uno de los amigos de Dimitros, añade: “Tú eres español, tienes que decirles a los españoles que necesitamos su apoyo. En Alemania deben saber que los pueblos del sur estamos unidos”.

Risas, optimismo y orgullo nacional eran los aromas que se respiraban esta tarde en la Plaza Syntagma. Varoufakis y Tsipras han aumentado sin duda su apoyo popular tras los gestos de la primera semana de gobierno. Pero esta euforia también podría volverse en su contra si no cumplen con lo prometido.

En los últimos días se ha hablado mucho de Alemania y el BCE. Pero hay otro actor fundamental en las negociaciones: una gran parte del pueblo griego que ahora cree en su gobierno.

NOTA: Iré colocando todos los post sobre Grecia en este enlace.
http://www.principiamarsupia.com/category/grecia/

Por cierto, hace poco ví en Madrid que habían abierto un bar llamado "loukanikos" con la serigrafía del can heleno como logotipo. Qué grande.

[CHOSEN]

España no es Grecia, o lo que es lo mismo, Syriza no es Podemos ni se le parece siquiera.

Otra ración de realidad (otra más);
NOAM CHOMSKY: “Syriza y Podemos son la reacción al asalto neoliberal que aplasta a la periferia”

En la propia "plaza del pueblo" se enorgullecen de ello:
http://www.reddit.com/r/podemos/comments/2v6u2i/noam_chomsky_syriza_y_podemos_son_la_reacci%C3%B3n_al/



Y otra mas;

La izquierda de verdad queda definitivamente desestructurada.

Conseguir el mayor número de parlamentarios en lustros es desestructuración de la izquierda ¿? 







La mitad de las argumentos leídos en este hilo rozan lo esperpéntico.

[Маркс]

Yo entiendo (o puedo llegar a entender) que retumben los cimientos de tu ideario vista la deriva política y de fuerzas tras los últimos acontecimientos, ahora, lo que ya no me cabe en la cabeza es tu falta de atención ¿intencionada? ¿trolleo? y tergiversación en cuanto a los postulados del resto.

Te he explicado (ya que tú no lo sabes) las diferencias de rigor entre una izquierda y otra (la transversal Podemita). No lo vuelvo a hacer.

Ah, el partido Anel (derecha pero derecha de la de verdad) también se alinea con Syriza en esa reacción al asalto neoliberal. 

En cuanto a la "desestructuración de la izquierda" española (algo que vengo anunciando tiempo ha) se está cumpliendo paso a paso. Otra cosa es que tú (particularmente tú) no sepas leerlo. Y mira que te lo anuncian clarito clarito.

Chau chau.

[CHOSEN]

En cuanto a la "desestructuración de la izquierda" española (algo que vengo anunciando tiempo ha) se está cumpliendo paso a paso.

¿Que desestructuración de la izquierda? 
Si están dando botes de alegría sobre un mayoría social histórica!!! 
Osea que la izquierda con 11 diputados es una alternativa, y con 80 está desestructurada
 


Ah claro, que Podemos es un partido de derechas.
...por eso van a ir en coalición con IU a las nacionales. 

Te pediría que bajaras al mundo real si no estuvieras tan, tan, tan lejos.
Con que te acerques un poco ya me conformaría 

[Маркс]

En cuanto a la "desestructuración de la izquierda" española (algo que vengo anunciando tiempo ha) se está cumpliendo paso a paso.

¿Que desestructuración de la izquierda? 
Si están dando botes de alegría sobre un mayoría social histórica!!! 
Osea que la izquierda con 11 diputados es una alternativa, y con 80 está desestructurada
 


Ah claro, que Podemos es un partido de derechas.
...por eso van a ir en coalición con IU a las nacionales. 

Te pediría que bajaras al mundo real si no estuvieras tan, tan, tan lejos.
Con que te acerques un poco ya me conformaría 

De nuevo te ha quedao como un poco trollaco, no? 

Entras (en el foro), trolleas y desapareces.   

A ver, que como táctica está muy bien si no fuese tan recurrente.

Como que ya no cuela. Se te ve el plumerillo. 

Ánimo.

[lectorhinfluyente1984]

Grecia reclamará a Alemania reparaciones por la II Guerra Mundial

[wanderer]

Grecia reclamará a Alemania reparaciones por la II Guerra Mundial

Ya tardaban, aunque me temo que su monto no llega ni a la mitad de su deuda viva, aunque puede ser una buena baza de negociación para las reestructuraciones por venir.