Italian interest rates are up 11 basis points this morning.
Spain’s are also up the same amount.
That’s about 5% higher from Friday.
Tick tock.
Day 1. What happens tomorrow?
Month: July 2015
We’ll Miss You, Yanis Varoufakis
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the guy. On the one hand he’s a commie. On the other hand, he promised not take any bailout money and he never did.
He has resigned, saying:
Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.
I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum.
And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.
I believe it was entirely Varoufakis who prevented any more bankster bailouts, and for that he should be commended. I fear that Greece may yet break if he’s not there.
I can proudly say that though at times I can’t stand the guy, I found him and thought he was cool before it was cool to think he was cool.
Greeks Stick it to the Banksters, Vote No, OXI, No Deal
Oh boy. All eyes on Italy and Spain now. Watch the yields.
The three weeks are off to a crazy start this year.
The OXI camp really beat the crap out of the Yes camp. So far 60-40. Total landslide! Grexit at this point doesn’t really matter. If the Greeks print money, it’s Grexit. If they don’t print money, then no Grexit. What matters is the bond yields. Interest rates. Do they stay under control or do they bankrupt the whole continent?
OXI.
Italian Government Exposure to Greece: €61.85 billion; Spain at €44.42B
I came across this table at ZeroHedge. This article is very worth reading.
Italy’s taxpayers are exposed to the tune 3.8% of the country’s GDP. Spain is at an even higher 4.1%. The jist is that a hard default by Greece on a No vote will mean all those assets turn to zero, which jacks up the debt ratios of these already extremely indebted governments, and pushes interest rates extremely higher overnight.
My feeling is that the central banks have a week or two at most to contain the bond markets by printing money faster than they ever have before, after the Greeks vote No, if they do indeed vote No. We’ll find that out in a few hours.
Money supply growth in the US is already fading fast.
עת לעשות ל-ה
What a day to be reading “Democracy, The God That Failed”
I started a new book last Shabbat. Hans Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God That Failed.” He’s not as good a writer as Rothbard, sentence structure more confusing and convoluted, but his mother tongue is German like Mises, so considering, it’s pretty good.
The thrust of it is that democracy is actually a step backward for humanity, and monarchy is preferable. For many reasons, one being that monarchy is privately owned government, where the right of confiscation is capitalized into one dynasty, allowing for lower time preference rates (farsightedness) insofar as preserving the right of confiscation and maximizing its value long term.
Democracy is publicly owned government, which is worse, because the government officials cannot capitalize their right of plunder, and therefore their time preference rates become much higher (shortsighted) and they try to extract as much as they can as fast as they can without worrying about preserving the wealth of the government they are the caretakers of.
Axiomatically, the progress humanity has enjoyed since democracy became the leading form of government has been in spite of democracy, not because of it.
I have only finished the first chapter, but I love the way he splits it between “privately owned” government and “publicly owned” government. One other way to see it is that tax rates in monarchies rarely exceeded 10%. 20% is absolute highest recorded in the Torah by Pharaoh. 20% tax rates in Israel or America would seem puny. We pay much, much more than that. Not just income taxes, but everything taxes. Our standards of living are still higher because we have so much more capital equipment, more for the government to steal without starving us.
So it is very interesting that the pinnacle of democracy, a plebiscite, a referendum, may lead to the starvation of an entire country (Greece).
I would much rather live, ceteris paribus, given current levels of capital and technology, in a monarchy where I know that he won’t steal so much from me as to bankrupt himself. A democracy is much more dangerous. If you’re going to tell me that a king can just kidnap me whenever he wants me as fodder to fight his wars, yes, that’s true.
And I point you to Vietnam and the forced draft in Israel.
Weekend Music: The Change
This one is really hard to sing. You can hear her get tired at the end. You’ve got to have a really good ear and range for this one.
It’s gonna be an interesting week starting Sunday. Let’s see what happens.
Looks like the Greeks will vote No on the Greferendum
Bloomberg reports:
The first poll before a snap referendum Sunday indicated most people back Tsipras. The survey, in Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper, showed 54 percent would vote “no” — rejecting austerity in exchange for aid — and 33 percent would vote “yes” — accepting austerity as the price of staying in the euro. The poll was conducted by ProRata, which surveyed 1,200 people June 28-29 with a margin of error of 2.8 percent.
The truth is the question itself is nonsense. They cannot reject austerity. They have already overspent. Austerity will either come through spending cuts which will impose it on those who receive government paychecks, or it will come through hyperinflation if they go to the Drachma.
It looks like the Greeks are voting to leave. It’s going to be a pretty interesting 17 Tammuz. I wonder what happens on 9 Av.
The Jewish Libertarian 