@13:00, 1/7/13

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This piece is very silly.
There is no lender of last resort for the euro. 
These rules do not provide the hope of one. 
We have the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.
Our lender of last resort is in good order as is the Bank of England. 
We need bank regulation but this is not it.
As I read this a great many Europeans will soon loose their savings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/business/global/07iht-banks07.html?hpw

Banks Win an Easing of Rules on Assets

By JACK EWING

Published: January 6, 2013

"A group of top regulators and central bankers on Sunday gave banks around the world more time to meet new rules aimed at preventing financial crises, saying they wanted to avoid the possibility of damaging the economic recovery.

Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

Mervyn A. King, governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the group, said there was no intent to go easier on lenders.

The rules are meant to make sure banks have enough liquid assets on hand to survive the kind of market chaos that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Meeting in Basel, Switzerland, the committee, made up of bank regulators from 26 countries, also loosened the definition of liquid assets.

The decision marks the first time regulators have publicly backed away from the strict rules imposed by the Basel Committee in 2010. The easing takes some pressure off banks, which have complained that the new guidelines would throttle lending and hurt economic growth.

Mervyn A. King, governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the group, said there was no intent to go easier on lenders. “Nobody set out to make it stronger or weaker,” he said of the rules in a conference call with reporters, “but to make it more realistic.”

Still, the decision was a public concession from the authors of the so-called Basel III rules that the regulations could hurt growth if applied too rigorously. It was endorsed unanimously by participants, including Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.

The rules were drafted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, named after the Swiss city where many of the discussions have taken place. The Basel rules are not binding on individual countries, but there is substantial international pressure for countries to comply.

Much of the debate so far has focused on increasing the amount of capital that banks hold in reserve to absorb losses. After Lehman’s collapse, trust among financial institutions evaporated and banks refused to lend to one another. Many banks discovered that they did not have enough cash or readily salable assets to meet short-term obligations. In some cases, banks that were otherwise solvent faced collapse.

The rules require banks to have enough cash or liquid assets on hand to survive a 30-day crisis, like a run on deposits or a credit rating downgrade. They will not take full effect on Jan. 1, 2015, as originally planned, but will be phased in more gradually and not take full effect until Jan. 1, 2019.

This so-called liquidity coverage ratio also defines what qualifies as liquid assets: the assets cannot be already pledged as collateral, for example, and they must be under the control of a bank’s central treasury, so it can act quickly to raise cash if needed.

On Sunday the central bankers and regulators broadened the definition of liquid assets. For example, banks will be allowed to use securities backed by mortgages to meet a portion of the requirement.

A large majority of big banks already meet the requirements, but some do not, Mr. King said. The decision reduces pressure on those banks to hold more cash or buy high-quality government bonds to meet the rules on liquid assets.

The panel said it was continuing to discuss another set of regulations aimed at preventing banks from becoming overly dependent on short-term funds. But it did not announce any new decisions Sunday.

Before the Lehman bankruptcy, some institutions made long-term loans using money borrowed for very short periods. The practice is a normal part of banking, but it can, if carried to extremes, make a bank vulnerable to market disruptions.

Depfa, an Irish bank owned by Hypo Real Estate of Germany, issued long-term loans to governments using money it borrowed in short-term money markets. The bank made a profit from the difference between what it could charge for the long-term loans and what it paid to borrow short term. But after Lehman collapsed, Depfa was no longer able to roll over its obligations by borrowing on international money markets. Its parent company required a taxpayer bailout to survive.

The new rules seek to ensure that banks have a variety of fund sources and are not overly dependent on one market or lender.

Although the Basel Committee drafts global banking rules, it is up to individual countries to write them into law. The United States has lagged countries including China, India and Saudi Arabia in putting the rules into force, according to an assessment by the Basel Committee in September. The American delay has led to some grumbling from other members.

Bank industry representatives have argued that stricter capital and liquidity requirements increase banks’ financing costs, which they must pass on to customers. One of the most vocal critics of the new regulations is the Institute of International Finance in Washington, whose members include many large American and European banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.

In October, the institute issued a report arguing that the rules would make banks less willing to issue longer-term loans or hold debt issued by smaller companies, whose bonds usually have lower credit ratings. The rules would also penalize banks in emerging countries, the institute said, because they have less access to low-risk assets.

Proponents of the new rules argue that banks will be able to raise money more cheaply if they are perceived as being less vulnerable, thus offsetting the cost of the new rules. They point out that American banks have generally recovered from the crisis more quickly than European banks because United States regulators forced them to raise new capital."

"Proponents of the new rules" do not believe in liquidity traps or in government debt as a way out of them.

Usually rescue by the Federal Reserve has meant unemployment for bankers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/opinion/greeces-rotten-oligarchy.html?hp

Op-Ed Contributor

Greece’s Rotten Oligarchy

By KOSTAS VAXEVANIS

Published: January 6, 2013

"DEMOCRACY is like a bicycle: if you don’t keep pedaling, you fall. Unfortunately, the bicycle of Greek democracy has long been broken. After the military junta collapsed in 1974, Greece created only a hybrid, diluted form of democracy. You can vote, belong to a party and protest. In essence, however, a small clique exercises all meaningful political power.

For all that has been said about the Greek crisis, much has been left unsaid. The crisis has become a battleground of interests and ideologies. At stake is the role of the public sector and the welfare state. Yes, in Greece we have a dysfunctional public sector; for the past 40 years the ruling parties handed out government jobs to their supporters, regardless of their qualifications.

But the real problem with the public sector is the tiny elite of business people who live off the Greek state while passing themselves off as “entrepreneurs.” They bribe politicians to get fat government contracts, usually at inflated prices. They also own many of the country’s media outlets, and thus manage to ensure that their actions are clothed in silence. Sometimes they’ll even buy a soccer team in order to drum up popular support and shield their crimes behind popular protection, as the drug lord Pablo Escobar did in Colombia, and as the paramilitary leader Arkan did in Serbia.

In 2011, Evangelos Venizelos, who was then the finance minister and is now the leader of the socialist party, Pasok, instituted a new property-tax law. But for properties larger than 2,000 square meters — about 21,000 square feet — the tax was reduced by 60 percent. Mr. Venizelos thus carved out a big exemption for the only people who could afford to pay the tax: the rich. (Mr. Venizelos is also the man responsible for a law granting broad immunity to government ministers.)

Such shenanigans have gone on for decades. The public is deprived of real information, as television stations, newspapers and online news sites are controlled by the economic and political elite.

Another scandal involves the so-called Lagarde List. In 2010, Christine Lagarde, then the French finance minister (and now the head of the International Monetary Fund), gave the Greek government a list of roughly 2,000 Greek citizens with Swiss bank accounts, to help uncover tax fraud. Greek officials did virtually nothing with the list; two former finance ministers, George Papaconstantinou and his successor, Mr. Venizelos, reportedly even told Parliament they did not know where it was. Meanwhile, several media outlets falsely accused some politicians and business figures of being on the list in order to conceal the ugly reality: rich people were evading taxes while their desperate fellow citizens were searching the trash for food.

When Hot Doc, the monthly magazine I edit and publish, made the list public in October, I was arrested and charged with violating personal privacy, but was acquitted. The result didn’t please those in power. So I am being brought back for a second trial (a date has yet to be set) on similarly vague allegations. Throughout the entire process — the publication of the list, my arrest, my acquittal — the Greek media were absent. The case was a top story in the international press, but not in the country where it took place.

The reason is simple. The Lagarde list implicates a corrupt group that answers to the name of democracy even as it casually nullifies it: officials with offshore companies, friends and relatives of government ministers, bankers, publishers and those involved in the black market.

After my magazine released the list, the Greek government made not a single statement about the case.

When Mr. Venizelos left the Finance Ministry last March, he failed to turn the CD with the list over to his successor. He took it with him. Only when his successor, Yannis Stournaras, told The Financial Times in October that he had never received the list did Mr. Venizelos turn it over to the prime minister’s office. He was never asked about the delay, and leaders of the three parties in the coalition government have not referred his conduct to Parliament’s investigatory committee.

Meanwhile, a newly released version of the list made clear that someone had removed the names of three relatives of Mr. Papaconstantinou, who was the finance minister from 2009 to 2011, before Mr. Venizelos. Last month, Mr. Papaconstantinou was expelled from Pasok. He now faces a Parliamentary investigation, the potential lifting of his immunity from prosecution as a former minister, and charges of tampering with the data. It appears that he may become a new Iphigenia, a scapegoat sacrificed so that the corrupt political system can survive.

This is all unfolding at a time when Greece is walking a tightrope above the abyss of bankruptcy, while the coalition government is instituting new taxes on the lower classes. Half of young Greeks are unemployed. The economy is shrinking at an annual rate of 6.9 percent. People are scrounging for food. And a neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn, is on the rise, exploiting the resentment and rage toward the ruling class.

The Greek people must remount their bicycle of democracy by demanding an end to deception and corruption. Journalists need to resist manipulation and rediscover their journalistic duties. And the government should revive Greece’s ancient democratic heritage — instead of killing the messenger. 

Kostas Vaxevanis is a magazine publisher and television journalist. This essay was translated by Karen Emmerich from the Greek.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/

"January 7, 2013, 9:05 am37 Comments

Be Ready To Mint That Coin

Should President Obama be willing to print a $1 trillion platinum coin if Republicans try to force America into default? Yes, absolutely. He will, after all, be faced with a choice between two alternatives: one that’s silly but benign, the other that’s equally silly but both vile and disastrous. The decision should be obvious.
For those new to this, here’s the story. First of all, we have the weird and destructive institution of the debt ceiling; this lets Congress approve tax and spending bills that imply a large budget deficit — tax and spending bills the president is legally required to implement — and then lets Congress refuse to grant the president authority to borrow, preventing him from carrying out his legal duties and provoking a possibly catastrophic default.
And Republicans are openly threatening to use that potential for catastrophe to blackmail the president into implementing policies they can’t pass through normal constitutional processes.
Enter the platinum coin. There’s a legal loophole allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination the secretary chooses. Yes, it was intended to allow commemorative collector’s items — but that’s not what the letter of the law says. And by minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling — while doing no economic harm at all.
So why not?
It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.
So if the 14th amendment solution — simply declaring that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional — isn’t workable, go with the coin.
This still leaves the question of whose face goes on the coin — but that’s easy: John Boehner. Because without him and his colleagues, this wouldn’t be necessary."

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/moral-obligation-coupons/

"January 7, 2013, 11:37 am31 Comments

Moral Obligation Coupons

Don’t like the platinum coin option? Here’s a functionally equivalent alternative: have the Treasury sell pieces of paper labeled “moral obligation coupons”, which declare the intention of the government to redeem these coupons at face value in one year.
It should be clearly stated on the coupons that the government has no, repeat no, legal obligation to pay anything at all; you see, they’re not debt, and therefore don’t count against the debt limit. But that shouldn’t keep them from having substantial market value. Consider, for example, the fact that the government has no legal responsibility for guaranteeing the debt of Fannie and Freddie; nonetheless, it is widely believed that there is an implicit guarantee (because there is!), and this is very much reflected in the price of that debt.
So the government should have no trouble raising a lot of money by selling MOCs. It’s true that if they’re sold on the open market, they would probably sell at a substantial discount from face value, so this would in effect be high-interest-rate financing. But that’s better than either default or giving in to blackmail.
And maybe the coupons wouldn’t have to be sold on the open market; why not just have the Fed buy them? Bear in mind that the Fed doesn’t always buy safe assets; it’s buying a lot of mortgage-backed securities (from Fannie and Freddie; see above), and during the worst of the financial crisis it bought lots of commercial paper. So why not slightly speculative pieces of paper sold by the Treasury?
Again, while this may all seem kind of dodgy, it’s important to realize that unless the president does something like this he will be forced to do something illegal: namely, fail to spend money that, by act of Congress, he is legally obliged to spend. Fancy footwork is by far a better alternative; and if it enrages Mitch McConnell, well, that’s just an extra bonus.
Update: If there is a legal problem even with selling these coupons, there are still alternatives, such as paying suppliers with these coupons and then having the Fed buy them. The mechanics really don’t matter; as long as we’re in a liquidity trap, printing money, printing conventional debt securities, or printing funny money with no legal standing that nonetheless lets the government pay its bills are all equivalent."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/07/ipad_theft_microsoft_campus/

Microsoft burgled, only the APPLE iPADS stolen - cops confirm

Choosy thief leaves Redmond gear on the table

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/07/nullcrew_dhs_hack/

US Dept for Homeland Security shafted by trivial web bug

New year resolution: Go back to PHP school

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/07/windows_rt_security_hacked/

Windows RT jailbreak smash: Run ANY app on Surface slabs

No need for Microsoft's software store

I will run Bill in to Pratt and probably take him home.
I will be back on line about 22:00.