NEW THINGS: @08:45, 03/10/12 2

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Mar 9, 2012
c
- Henry recommended a blog post:
  Mar 7, 2011
  
  Does IMF Stand for Impressive Macroeconomic Flexibility?
  So the IMF is holding a meeting on rethinking macroeconomic policy (I was invited but couldn’t make the timing work.) And the Fund’s chief economist has already made it clear that he’s open to some serious revision of the prevailing paradigm.
  
  Spiegle:
  
  'Historic Opportunity'
  Greece Pulls Off Debt Restructuring Deal
  SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 09, 2012 Greece on Friday averted default after a large majority of private creditors agreed to the country's historic debt haircut. The deal paves the way for a second EU bailout package to be disbursed to Athens. The country says it may now move to force creditors who are not participating to swap their bonds. more... [ Forum ]
  
  Debt Haircut for Greece
  'The Problem Has Only Been Deferred'
  SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 09, 2012 Nearly 86 percent of private investors have agreed to join in the debt-swap deal that will help Greece avoid an uncontrolled default. But is that good news? Many experts have their doubts. In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, economics professor Harald Hau argues that not only will the plan put the burden on taxpayers, but it will mean an even bigger crisis to come. more...
  
  http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/greek-bailout-uncertainty-persists-as-new-sovereign-liabilities-surface/
  
  "March 10, 2012 · 11:17 pm
  ↓ Jump to Comments
  GREEK BAILOUT: UNCERTAINTY PERSISTS AS NEW SOVEREIGN LIABILITIES SURFACE
  “We’re about this far up the beanstalk”
  There are signs that Germany, the IMF and Washington retain their doubts about Greek ‘salvation’
  Seemingly confident that the worst is behind him, Evangelo Venizelos strode into a PASOK Party conference this morning. A pensioner on crutches hurled a full yoghurt pot at the obese Finance Minister just before he got to the podium. Perhaps this was the old man’s way of trying to add a little culture to the occasion: either way, it was a timely reminder of the deep unpopularity of the austerity measures this shifty and widely hated man has driven through - by fair means and foul.
  But as he knows perfectly well inside his capacious and intelligent head, Venizelos has many an obstacle to overcome before standing any chance of becoming Prime Minister at the elections scheduled for late April. Not least of these is the fact that Pasok badly trails New Democracy in the opinion polls. But bigger still is what observers of the Greek predicament may yet learn…if the MSM gets off its backside and starts reporting reality, as opposed to fantasies put out by the Troikanauts and the Venizealots.
  In yet another coup, the Tyler Durden column at Zero Hedge, today led with a piece from bestselling author Mark J Grant, pointing out all the other payments effectively triggered by the ISDA decision….and how, once the ratings agencies call default (as at least two of them assuredly will) these will explode, multiply and then get exponentially bigger and bigger via the madness of collateral agreements and default swaps – a process dubbed ‘acceleration’. So far, just one ropey bank – Austria’s KA Finanz – is known to be facing a $1.3bn payout that doesn’t seem to be there in its accounts, as such. But Grant argues that this is the tip of the iceberg…and chiefly, it’s the good ship Hellenic that’s heading straight for it:
  ‘….there are bank bonds, Hellenic Railway bonds, Urban Transportation bonds et al that are guaranteed by Greece. You will also note that there are bonds tied to Inflation, Floating Rate Notes, Asset-Backed securities and a whole mélange of other structured products with a Greek sovereign guarantee. What we all thought was fact [bailout] is now clearly fiction, and default will now bring “Acceleration” one could reasonably bet in all kinds of these securitizations and in all kinds of currencies. This could come from the ratings agencies placing Greece in “Default” or it could come from the CDS contracts being triggered depending upon each indenture and you will also note that a great many of these off balance sheet securitizations are governed by English Law and not Greek Law. You may also wish to consider the fallout to the banking system as the lead managers of all of these deals could find themselves behind the eight ball as various clauses trigger and as the holders of these securitizations line up at the judicial bench….’
  Sadly, he’s right. Wall Street, the White House, the Berlin FinMin and Wolfgang Strangelove know he’s right. But ordinary Europeans and Americans don’t, and that’s the problem. Under the calling of a default caused by not paying the full amount to the Greek bondholders and applying coercion, these additional liabilities become immediately due and payable at their principal amount together with accrued interest. What they all have in common is a frightening number of noughts following the bottom line numbers.
  The funny-money is about to start seeping into the real money system.
  Starting tomorrow, The Slog is will be running a series of pieces detailing the crazy assumptions, insolvencies, derivative obligations and – above all – endemic levels of corruption in the EU generally, and Greece in particular. It will feature leaked documents showing how deeply ingrained graft is in the privileged Greek elite; how German companies have cheated the Greeks and fed the graft by paying huge bribes and overcharging to an obscene degree; and how Evangelo Venizelos himself – both now and in the past – stands accused of cheating his people and protecting himself and the equally greedy members of his Establishment clique.
  But that’s then, and this is now. In case you hadn’t noticed the Troika approving the Greek psi audit, neither have I. Most titles and sites are gaily contining to talk of the bailout as a done deal, but it is anything but. In the weekend absence of normal snouts in Brussels, I rang the ECB and got a rambling answer which achieved its objective of telling me nothing. “We have no reason to”, “There is no indication we know of that” and so forth – but no sign whatsoever “Yes we checked the numbers and they’re fine”. I suppose it would be logical to ask whether they’d tell us even if they did find some holes in there, but it would be nice to have a confirmation with which to hang those responsible later.
  The ECB meanwhile has other sausages on its plate. Berlin has restarted its campaign of “assuring EU citizens” that Mario Draghi’s slush-money campaign for eurozone banks is now at an end. It’s a shrewd approach this one, forcing Draghi to either keep shtum, or have to say “Oh no it isn’t”. That would immediately start inflationary alarm bells ringing. But deep in his personal silo two miles beneath the German Finance Ministry, Wolfgang Schauble scoffs at such talk. He knows perfectly well that traditional printing-derived inflation like this, while irksome, is but a minor bee-sting compared to the cobra-bite of funny-money inflation heading our way. Yes, the Bankfurt Maulwurf has been on the line again.
  “I think you could now say that Herr Schauble is somewhat depressed,” he told me this afternoon, “but continuing to pin his hopes on some kind of cleverly created and then formally controlled Greek default. He certainly does not wish anything like 130 billion euros to go to either Athens or the creditors. Meanwhile, we in the banking community have fallen back on prayer”.
  To be fair to this bloke, he does have a sense of irony. And he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the existence of any international attempt to push Greece into default. His agenda is a simple one: he thinks Merkel has delusions of grandeur that could easily wind up destroying the Bundesrepublik, and he’s very keen for anything that supports his view getting out into the open. He still, for example, refers to fiscal union as “a gun at Germany’s head”. But he never acknowledges any Washington influence. That would be bad form. What I still don’t have is any kind of audit (or even steer) on how representative he is of Bankfurt opinion. (If any German readers do, the discreet place for such information is, as always, jawslog@gmail.com).
  Over in America itself, Tim Geithner continues to be yes and no about the bond-swap psi ‘success’. “Over the last few months, the Europeans have done a much better job getting their arms around this and getting people more confidence around the world that they are going to contain the risk of crisis,” said the US Fed Treasurer, “but it is going to be a really difficult long road for them.” Especially for the Greeks eh, Tim?
  Christine Lagarde at the IMF was equally circumspect. Note again here that not only has she drastically cut the IMF’s contribution to Greek bailout – to just €28 bn – she is being very careful not to commit:
  “Today I have consulted with the IMF’s executive board and on that basis, as discussed with the Greek government, I intend to recommend a €28bn arrangement … to support Greece’s ambitious economic programme over the next four years,” she said.
  I don’t think she has the slightest intention of ever giving that money to Athens. Once the other sovereign obligations start to surface, and the Greeks start to backslide on austerity, and the strikes get worse, and the economic data from Greece become more dire still, she will pull the plug…as indeed will the Troika as a whole. I don’t have an update for you tonight on whether those keen on ‘amputation now’ are in the ascendancy or not. It’s the weekend: most people have a life. It certainly would be nice to write articles about things other than the criminal rape of Greece (and its utter pointlessness) but there is more to play out on this yet.
  Related: Did Venizelos employ bribery to get the psi level up to 85.8%?"
  
  This is a disaster just not this one.
  The liquidity trap is not a reality for these people.
  There is nothing funny about this money.
  Very soon the stock markets will crash as the insurance companies cash out.
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bethbeck
- bethbeck posted to Twitter a review:
  Nov 24, 2009
  
  The Women Left on Earth When Space Called Men
  “"Women Left on Earth When Space Called Men" - http://bit.ly/83VmRs ”
  The press wants heroes. Men doing dangerous work are not heroes. When it is done the world is not much better. We know more but there were few great discoveries. The men got older.
  The women grew up.
  A pride of sisters.
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AuthorNarea
- Sperkins posted to Twitter an article:
  Apr 4, 2011
  
  Steinbeck’s ‘Travels With Charley’ Gets a Fact-Checking
  “Steinbeck is unassailable, but that Charley's always been a bit dodgy... ‘Travels With Charley’ Gets a Fact-Checking - http://nyti.ms/i9Vlbx”
  Steinbeck wrote dramatically about the world he found around him.
  That world vanished into a haze of time and distance.
  He set out to meet what it had become.
  He accomplished that.
  Facts have little to do with what he reported.
  The story he told is his.
  It stands well as a story.
  
  Facts anchor a story but the story stands on drama.
  I find that I have few facts and must hang a satisfying tale on very little.
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jenny8lee
For the A-Cup Crowd, Minimal Assets Are a Plus

I LOVE YOU
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BookTV
- Henry recommended a blog post:
  Mar 7, 2011
  
  Does IMF Stand for Impressive Macroeconomic Flexibility?
  So the IMF is holding a meeting on rethinking macroeconomic policy (I was invited but couldn’t make the timing work.) And the Fund’s chief economist has already made it clear that he’s open to some serious revision of the prevailing paradigm.
  
  http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/revealed-why-the-troikas-validation-of-the-greek-psi-may-open-up-a-can-of-worms/
  
  "March 10, 2012 · 12:20 pm
  ↓ Jump to Comments
  REVEALED: Why the Troika’s ‘validation’ of the Greek psi may open up a can of worms
  ANAYSIS OF A CREDIT EVENT: DIRTY DEEDS AT THE DEBT-SWAP CORRAL
  Evidence of public sector bribery raises doubts as Venizelos accused of personal gain
  Although the ways and means used to get to 85.8% overall Greek swap participation (0.8% over what ISDA wanted) and 95.7% including CAC enactions (0.7% over what Brussels wanted) are roughly 0.0001% relevant to the now inevitable death of the eurozone, I think it behoves all good bloggers and investigative hacks to raise some doubts about them. I believe this because all those who think 21st century commerce and politics need a major ethics transfusion always require some evidence to go on….if only to shatter the risible arguments put up by the opposing side.
  First up, let’s do some forensics on how that magical 85.8% was achieved. Thursday March 9th at 9.18 am, I posted that participation was stalled at around 75%. It had been when I went to bed the night before, too. It still was at noon on Thursday, when Reuters claimed it was ‘slightly above 75%’. But eight hours later when the deal closed, another 10% had piled in.
  As closure approaches, one sometimes does find a sudden rush. But by and large, if you’ve had a week to think about stuff – and two weeks before that poring over the paperwork – yet on closure day you still haven’t shown up, it means you’re holding out. This is why, in that morning post, I was fairly confidently expecting 75-80% participation. So were others I spoke to. So were most of the Telegraph staff.
  There are three ways you can get that many in such a short time: blackmail, bribes, or ballot-stuffing. My mailbox from Friday contains allegations of all three.
  According to the Berlin Finance Ministry source, ‘The Greeks – not anybody else – are responsible for issuing the percentage number of PSI acceptances‘. The German authorities claimed not to have an inside track on progress at all, but a Frankfurt source told me Wednesday evening that, at that stage, Berlin was ‘less than impressed’ with the 74/5% figure. The point is, the PSI count was a totally Athens-run operation.
  I’m left wondering why there was no Troika presence at all. Given that thus far the Greeks had deceived them at almost every turn, one would’ve thought they’d be expecting some fiddling of the results. But as the Troikanauts were due to go over the accounts of the process yesterday (Friday) it may well be that they felt it unnecessary. It may also be, of course, that they wanted to distance themselves from it.
  Either way, Friday passed without any Troika announcement saying they were satisfied with the results process. This is slightly different to what The Slog’s Berlin FinMin source suggested:
  ‘Greeks announce a number which the troika has a few hours to check and “validate” before a teleconference of finance ministers’
  In fact, I understand officials will spend more time over the weekend on it, and reconvene Monday. So far, 35 bn euros of ‘immediate’ debt relief has been issued. But as yet, I haven’t seen any trumpeted validation.
  Meanwhile, it seems that several Greek pension funds came on board during Thursday. And there were also some other irregularities. One thing you need to deliver participation (as with most things in life in these times) are lots and lots of lawyers and civil servants. It is not commonly understood that upwards of 105bn euros of the bonds swapped this week were owned by Greek public sector institutions and pension funds. How strange, then, that on March 7th itself, the Athens government’s Official Gazette announced backdated pay increases for certain folks. Drill down a bit – and here I’ve needed the help of Athenians, for which they get my eternal gratitude - you find some rather suspiciously specific job functions:
  
  ‘The legal advisers appointed in independent authorities, the Capital Market Commission and the Accounting and Auditing Oversight Board (ELTE) will have an additional monthly bonus of 400 euros…’
  Note the immediate ‘monthly bonus’. Further research reveals that
  ‘….the Court of Audit will start with a monthly salary of 1,906 euros. They will also be entitled to family benefits, Christmas, Easter and summer vacation bonuses, as well as, position related bonuses. The salary increases decided will be retroactive from Nov. 1, 2011…’
  This second group are largely young gofers recently qualified. So a starting salary of 1,906 euros might not seem much to you and me, but if you’re 23 years old and hungry, that’s a lot of money.
  The overall announcement – ‘The monthly salaries of legal advisers appointed in the public sector will gradually increase 10-15 per cent within the next three years’ – has been widely reported in the Greek media, and offers a stark contrast to, said Adesmeftos Typos, for example, “times when many households suffer from unemployment and Greece’s biggest social insurance fund IKA recently borrowed another 200 million euro in order to pay pensions”.
  Even the normally quite staid Athens News allowed a female reported to add this acidic comment at the end of her column: ‘Romantic and stylish woman seeks marriage with legal adviser in the Greek public sector’.
  All up, some 500 people working in the public sector have been exempted from the planned salary cuts, and instead awarded rather generous new pay and emolument contracts. Again, the official gazette describes them quite openly as being located ‘in the ministries of Finance and Administrative Reform [for] civil servants working next to deputy ministers and secretary generals’.
  It’s quite possible of course that, like most brotherly, equality-seeking trade unionists when they see an opportunity, the beagles and Sir Humphreys blackmailed their bosses. Either way, it seems likely that they were paid in this extraordinary manner with one purpose in mind: looking the other way – and/or forcing through legal compliance.
  The somewhat late decision of the Greek public sector pension funds to buy into the bond-swap has, I’m informed, wiped out 11,370 pensioners entirely. Not just reduced their stipend, but – as Tyler Durden put it at Zero Hedge – ‘vaporized it’. He too quotes a figure of ‘around 11,000′ – and who am I to argue with a bareknuckle pugilist? And when you’re 10% adrift on the participation count, what’s 11,000 citizens compared to the survival of this Great European Project of which we are all so fond, according to Herman van Rompuy?
  Now, I am a man with a suspicious mind nurtured by a decade of dealing with EU institutions, pension providers, banks, property developers, local planning authorities, the police, and senior mandarins. Am I besmirching the good name of those who work for IKA (the State Social Security Board) when such is ill-deserved? Am I bigoted against Evangelos Venizelos because he is a toad with piggy eyes that are too close together? Possibly; but on the other hand, here’s a little recent history.
  Last week a major fraud by IKA staff was uncovered. IKA officials had managed to siphon off a cool 6 million euros since 2003. The IKA officers involved were certifying decisions to grant medical care of all kinds. In some cases and in cooperation with insurers, they issued fake hospitalisation orders, gave 20% of the illegal fund to the insurers, and kept the rest for themselves. And here’s the most worrying aspect: the whole thing was done by four (count them) employees. Imagine the graft going on if just 5% of employees in one small section of that Greek DSS were up to one scam or another.
  Earlier this week, the German company Siemens agreed to pay 130 million euros compensation and create 700 new jobs in Greece in order to avoid a long-running bribery scandal going to Court. That’s a big price to pay, so the mind boggles at just how smelly the whole process must’ve been. Personally negotiating the compensation was – guess who? – Evangelos Venizelos. The bribery concerned bungs that Siemens gave to Greek politicians and senior civil servants over several decades to secure public contracts.
  The ‘over several decades’ emphasis there is to enable us to take a trip down Bribery Lane with Finance Minister Venizelos. For a while, he played a major role in the Olympic Games construction projects. Later he was instrumental in taking procurement decisions for weaponry in his role as Defence Minister. The Games went badly over budget, and both in that portfolio and Defence, clouds regularly followed him around. As Culture Minister, he was directly involved in some of the Siemens projects; here too there were allegations of graft and corruption…now seen to have been true.
  In order to protect himself and others against the growing evidence of wrongdoing, Venizelos – he being a Doctor of Law and Constitutional Expert – in 2006 wrote and and pushed through an amnesty law for Government Ministers On the Responsibilities of Ministers, as a result of which all senior politicians are practically immune to public prosecution for cases of political corruption. It was described in a recent magazine article in Greece as ‘the most hated Law in our history’. Given that would include some pretty unpleasant ones passed by the Ottoman Empire in its time, that’s saying quite a lot.
  One final twist. As a young lawyer, Evangelo Venizelos got his start in politics by defending former Prime Minister George Papandreou….against corruption charges. In a Slogpost last year, you may recall I covered some of the odder dealings of Papandreou and others in the removal of public funds to the account of a Swiss wealth management firm via the juxtaposition of CDSs. The Papandreou family is deeply implicated in the scam…..but thanks to his one-time saviour Venizelos, Papandreou can rest assured that he is immune from prosecution in any Greek court. This is a shame, as the total embezzled is an eye-watering 27 billion euros.
  Greek readers of The Slog (who now number quite a few I’m glad to say) should not take these accusations as a slur on their people. The German press is fond of portraying the average Greek as bone idle, but the EU’s own stats give the lie to this: the average Greek worker puts in 1.2 hours per day more than his Teutonic counterpart. Rather, I am saying that the worst kind of corruption is endemic in Greek Government – it often involves, I must add, German suppliers – and that the pols have effectively indemnified themselves against any comeback on every front. No man in Greece is more up to his neck in that cover-up than Evangelo Venizelos.
  So these are not people you’d want to leave alone with an unguarded ballot box, to do a vital multi-billion dollar audit crucial to the country’s survival. Yet that’s exactly what the Troika – so keen just three weeks ago to put its own Kommissars into Athens – did. How very odd that is coming from people whose most telling feature is an inability to stop ordering people around.
  And finally my Greek friends, I must acquaint you with a very serious allegation. I have no evidence to support it, but if you do, please get in touch with me at Jawslog@gmail.com. I assure you that you can do so in confidence of complete anonymity.
  I understand that, as the country’s leading consitutional expert, Evangelo Venizelos has taken personal control of the trickiest poison pill put into the Brussels Accord: that of changing the speed at which Constitutional changes can be enacted in order to satisfy the control freaks in Brussels, Washington and Berlin. (Under current Law, the changes demanded by the Troika are impossible in the time frame of the bailout).
  It is alleged that Mr Venizelos has extracted an extremely high price from the EU, for his personal use, in order to be a dutiful servant and good European in getting the legislation changed. This may of course be entirely scurrilous and completely untrue. But anyone who has intelligence to offer me on that one, send it to the email address above.
  «Μαζί μπορούμε να κερδίσουμε!”"
  
  The Greek is beyond me.
  Beware of Greeks bearing gifts?
  
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CiaoBella50
- Looking Beyond the Glittery Baubles
  “Looking Beyond the Glittery Baubles - http://bit.ly/7L5ZmZ”
  I know a few people.
  I also know some people who have had good connections.
  I know something of Baroque stones.
  I know something of the stone marketplace.
  I will take advice.
  You should get a stone that pleases you.
  The setting is best bought separately.
- CiaoBella50 posted to Twitter an article:
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  Organizing the Chaos of Online Travel Tips
  “Organizing the Chaos of Online Travel Tips - http://bit.ly/6UZ0ZZ”
  As I look at them most are planned experiences. There is very little to be learned in such. Unplanned experiences could get you dead.
  Books and films are made by people who survived to that point.
  The last voyage of Joshua Slocum did not end well.
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  Pogue & Friends 2009 Holiday Guide
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  Pogue is a smart man with a hunger for fashion.
  When he is enthusiastic, read him with caution.
  When he is negative read him with care.
- CiaoBella50 posted to Twitter an article:
  Dec 3, 2009
  
  Comcast Gets NBC From G.E. in Deal That Reshapes TV
  “Comcast Gets NBC From G.E. in Deal That Reshapes TV - http://bit.ly/5suvwU”
  
  I think management at NBC and G.E. have acted stupidly in an induced panic.
  I know of no way to correct stupidity in individuals.
  All I can do is take advantage while not spreading the panic.
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Michel Sidibe
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/charm-offensive-is-unaids-chiefs-strategy.html?_r=1

Again there is much more in the text than can be packed into a two plus minute video.

No individual or group should be punished for what is not under their direct control or is not voluntary.
How to deal with religion under this principle is the subject of endless debate.
Witch hunting must end.
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An Interview With Carlos Miele
"More time designing
less time managing my company.
That is _ my dream."
Mine Too.