Tag: EU

Holiday

And not the fun kind, in Greece:

Bank of Cyprus, Cyprus’s largest lender, is preparing for an extended bank holiday in Greece as continuing deposits outflows may force authorities to take this type of step and impose capital controls.

“We are preparing to facilitate our customers with operations in Greece with additional liquidity,” a Bank of Cyprus source with knowledge of the situation said on condition of anonymity. “This is something we don’t want to see happening”.

The source said that in recent days the bank saw an increase in deposits inflows, both from Cypriot and Greek depositors, amounting “hundreds of million euros”. Reuters reported on Thursday that European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure told euro area’s finance ministers that he was not sure whether Greek bank will be able to open on Monday.

The Bank of Cyprus source also said that the bank cannot be ruled out that a bank holiday in Greece could also affect the Cypriot banking system via the units of Greek banks operating on the island in the form of deposits outflows. The source was not in position to name the amount in additional liquidity the bank will need in the case of a bank holiday in Greece nor the number of its customers that would be affected.

“In that case, a bank holiday in Greece could also prompt Cypriot authorities to also impose a bank holiday in Cyprus,” the Bank of Cyprus source said.

To say nothing of Spain, then Italy…. I strongly suspect we are witnessing the slow unwinding of first the Euro, then the European Union. As untenable as the Euro now is, the EU is even worse off due to its immigration policies that nearly everyone except the EU Commission, the media, and the invaders hate.

UPDATE: Phoenix Capital Research explains that the Greek bailouts had little to do with Greece per se:

The Greek situation actually had nothing to do with helping Greece. Forget about Greece’s debt issues, or protests, or even the political decisions… the real story was that the bailouts were all about insuring that the EU banks that were using Greek bonds as collateral were kept whole by any means possible.

Back to the drachma

This may be one of the few times I will ever actively endorse the radical wing of a hard left party, but Syriza’s radicals are absolutely doing the right thing with regards to the EU and the Euro:

The radical wing of Greece’s Syriza party is to table plans over coming days for an Icelandic-style default and a nationalisation of the Greek banking system, deeming it pointless to continue talks with Europe’s creditor powers. Syriza sources say measures being drafted include capital controls and the establishment of a sovereign central bank able to stand behind a new financial system. While some form of dual currency might be possible in theory, such a structure would be incompatible with euro membership and would imply a rapid return to the drachma.

The confidential plans were circulating over the weekend and have the backing of 30 MPs from the Aristeri Platforma or ‘Left Platform’, as well as other hard-line groupings in Syriza’s spectrum. It is understood that the nationalist ANEL party in the ruling coalition is also willing to force a rupture with creditors, if need be.

“This goes well beyond the Left Platform. We are talking serious numbers,” said one Syriza MP involved in the draft. We are all horrified by the idea of surrender, and we will not allow ourselves to be throttled to death by European monetary union,” he told the Telegraph.

Syriza’s Left Platform has studied the Icelandic model, extolled as a success story by the International Monetary Fund itself.

“The Greek banks must be nationalised immediately, along with the creation of a bad bank. There may have to be some restrictions on cash withdrawals,” said one Syriza MP.  “The banks will go ape-shit of course. We are aware that there will be a lot of lawsuits but at the end of the day we are a sovereign power,” he said.

Syriza has a strong ideological motive to strike at the financial elites. They view the banks as the nerve centre of an entrenched oligarchy that has run the country for more than half a century as a family business. Forcing these institutions into bankruptcy provides cover for a socio-political purge, best understood as a revolution.

Without national sovereignty, absolutely no other political position or policy matters. Golden Dawn, ANEL, and the other Greek parties should support the Syriza radicals in this. As should nationalists in Spain and Italy. I would love to see Italy back on the lira. Heck, I still have some.

The banks remind me a little of the SJWs in science fiction.

The creditors argue that ‘Grexit’ would be suicidal for Greece. They have been negotiating on the assumption that Syriza must be bluffing, and will ultimately capitulate. Little thought has gone into possibility that key figures in Athens may be thinking along entirely different lines. 

That was fast

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a faster government U-turn:

Breaking: David Cameron climbs down on ‘back me or resign’ Downing Street has forced into a climb-down over whether Government ministers will have to resign if they want to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, reports our Political Editor Peter Dominiczak.

Number 10 insisted that David Cameron “has not set out” whether “collective responsibility” will apply at the in-out referendum, which could be held next year.

Mr Cameron’s spokeswoman insisted that the Prime Minister had only said that members of the Government would have to resign during the renegotiation phase leading up to the announcement of a referendum if they wish to campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

Mr Cameron has not made a decision about whether ministers would have to quit if they campaign for a British exit, Downing Street claimed. It appears to leave open the possibility of ministers being able to campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

It sounds rather like the Prime Minister learned that he was about to lose most of his ministers and find himself facing a vote of no confidence only weeks after his big electoral victory.

I don’t think the usual kabuki is fooling anyone this time around. The EU isn’t going to cut Britain any slack, and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because they could take it back anytime in the future. Sovereign or slave-state, that is the only relevant question.

Approaching endgame

Is there one last kick in the can? It doesn’t look like it:

Greece admitted its sovereign coffers are totally empty this week when it “bundled” its modest €345 million payment to the IMF along with others, for a lump €1.5 billion payment, which may well never happen.

And the bigger problem for Greece is that after testing yesterday the faith and resolve of its depositors (not to mention the Troika, aka the Creditors) and found lacking, said depositors no longer believe in the full faith (ignore credit) of the Greek banking system.It may have been the Greek government’s final test.

Because according to banking sources cited by Intelligent News, things today went from bad to horrible for Greek banks, when Greeks “responded with massive outflows to the Greece’s government decision to bundle the four tranches to IMF into one by the end of the June.”

According to banking sources, the net outflows sharply increased on Friday and the available liquidity of the domestic banking system reduced at very low and dangerous levels.

    The same sources estimate the outflows on Friday around 700 million Euros from 272 million Euros on Thursday. The available emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) for the Greek banks is estimated around 800 million Euros. In addition, the outstanding amount of the total deposits of the private sector (households and corporations) has declined under 130 billion Euros or lower than the levels at early 2004.

    The total net outflows in the last 7 business days are estimated 3.4 billion Euros threatening the stability of the Greek banks.

This means 2.5% of all Greek deposits were pulled in just the past 5 days! Indicatively, this is the same as if US depositors had yanked $280 billion from US banks (where total deposits amount to about $10.7 trillion)

Greece didn’t default yesterday because they said they would make the payment at the end of the month. It appears, however, that the government is merely giving the Greek people time to empty out their accounts so that they will not be bailed-in as creditors when the default takes place.

The can resists the kickers

Greece appears almost ready to do what they should have done years ago and default:

Greek premier Alexis Tsipras has accused Europe’s creditor powers of issuing “absurd demands” and come close to warning that his far-Left government will detonate a pan-European political and strategic crisis if pushed any further.

Writing for Le Monde in a tone of furious defiance after the latest set of talks reached an impasse, Mr Tsipras said the eurozone’s dominant players were by degrees bringing about the “complete abolition of democracy in Europe” and were ushering in a technocratic monstrosity with powers to subjugate states that refuse to accept the “doctrines of extreme neoliberalism”.

“For those countries that refuse to bow to the new authority, the solution will be simple: Harsh punishment. Judging from the present circumstances, it appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim,” he said.

The Greek leader, head of the radical-Left Syriza government, issued a stark warning that his country will not submit to these demands and will instead take action “to entirely transform the economic and political balances throughout the West.”

Alexis Tsipras made his thoughts known in a piece for Le Monde, the French newspaper

“If some, however, think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake. I would suggest that they re-read Hemingway’s masterpiece, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”,” he said.

Hey, the debt-funded Euro party was fun. But it’s over. Now it’s time to default, bring back the drachma, and return to the world of real world economics.

Detonating the EU

Greek has their finger on a bigger trigger than most people realize:

The political detonating pin for Greek contagion in Europe is an obscure mechanism used by the eurozone’s nexus of central banks to settle accounts. If Greece is forced out of the euro in acrimonious circumstances – a 50/50 risk given the continued refusal of the creditor core to acknowledge their own guilt and strategic errors – the country will not only default on its EMU rescue packages, but also on its “Target2” liabilities to the European Central Bank.

In normal times, Target2 adjustments are routine and self-correcting. They occur automatically as money is shifted around the currency bloc. The US Federal Reserve has a similar internal system to square books across regions. They turn nuclear if monetary union breaks up.

The Target2 “debts” owed by Greece’s central bank to the ECB jumped to €49bn in December as capital flight accelerated on fears of a Syriza victory. They may have reached €65bn or €70bn by now….

The Eurogroup insists that the primary budget surplus be raised from 1.5pc of
GDP in 2014, to 3pc this year and 4.5pc next year. As Nobel economist Paul
Krugman says, they want to force a country that is already reeling from six
years of depression – with the jobless rate still near 50pc – to triple its
surplus for no other purpose than paying off foreign creditors for decades
to come. They are doing to Greece what the Western allies did to a defeated
Germany at Versailles in 1919: imposing unpayable and mutually-destructive
reparations on a prostrate nation.

Combined with the fact that ISIS is planning to flood southern Italy with “immigrant” invaders, it becomes readily apparent that the EU may not last another eight years. The difference between 1933 and 2023 is that the enemy is no longer defined as other Europeans, but Islamic and African invaders.

Italians are already demanding that the Italian navy start sinking boats coming across the Mediterranean and attacking refugee holding centers. The Spanish are looking at the Greek situation and wondering why they should not do the same. The Front National is rising quickly in France; the rise of PEGIDA has been arrested but it will resume soon enough, along with support for AfD once the news of Germany being on the hook for up to €515 billion penetrates the electorate.

No wonder Juncker, the unelected Head of the European Commission has turned openly anti-democratic. But he is as delusional as Hitler in the bunker. Gunnar Beck from London University makes an equally apt comparison: “Germany’s leaders can’t let Greece leave the euro, and the Greeks know
it. They will die in a ditch to defend the euro. This is our Eastern Front,
our Battle of Kursk, and I’m afraid to say that it will end in unconditional
surrender by Germany,” he said. 

Like gravity, economics always wins in the end.

The post-democratic EU

In keeping with their one-vote, one-time philosophy the Eurofascists have openly turned against democracy:

Alexis Tsipras believes the existing deal is a disaster and says he has a democratic mandate to demand changes. And this exposes democracy’s limits within the European Union. The German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says: “Elections change nothing. There are rules”.

The president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said “there can be no democratic choice against the European treaties. One cannot exit the euro without leaving the EU”.

A German Euzi named Juncker speaking out against democracy. Greece is doing exactly the right thing; leaving the EU is hardly a threat, it is the restoration and recovery of national sovereignty from a gang of fascists who have learned to use banks instead of tanks.

Niles Farage of UKIP understands what is at stake here:

A succinct argument

A debate on free speech in Denmark ends abruptly:

One dead in shooting at a Copenhagen cultural centre, where a meeting about freedom of speech was being held – organised by a Swedish artist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad. Police hunt for lone Danish-speaking gunman behind attack.

• 40-yr-old Danish man killed in shooting at cultural centre
• Three policemen reported injured
• Police hunt for lone Danish-speaking gunman
• Danish PM says attack was terrorism
• French ambassador to Denmark inside but unharmed
• Meeting about freedom of speech was being held at the time
• Gathering organised by controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks
• Lars Vilks caricatured Prophet Muhammad in 2007

Well, I guess that is one way to reach consensus.

UPDATE: A man, aged 40, has died after masked gunmen opened fire on the
Krudttoenden cafe in Copenhagen during a meeting
entitled Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Speech. Two people were taken
away on stretchers after the attack after the cafe
was sprayed with 200 bullets. The French ambassador, who was present at
the debate on free speech, has said it was an attempt at a Charlie
Hebdo-style attack in the Danish capital.

200 shots and one kill? It certainly sounds like jihad. By way of comparison, Anders Breivik required 121 shots to kill 77.

Of course they folded

The EU has never been anything except one giant bluff coupled with constant appeals to Ragnarok:

Did Europe just fold?

Moments ago Bloomberg blasted a headline which has to be validated by other members of the European Commission as well as Merkel and the other Germans (and may well be refuted, considering this is Europe), which said that:

    COMMISSION TO PROPOSE 6 MONTH EXTENSION FOR GREECE – SOURCES.

So did Greece just win the first round of its stand off with Brussels? It remains to be confirmed, but congratulations to Greece if indeed it caused Merkel and the ECB to fold.

Once Greece leaves, the EU is a walking corpse. So they will do absolutely anything that will be less immediately destructive than a nation leaving the Euro, or more significantly, the EU.

The real fear of the Eurocrats

Daniel Hannan observes that it isn’t a Greek bankruptcy that would be the real catastrophe as far as the EU is concerned:

A default and devaluation would offer a fresh start. Although the economy has been pummelled by six years of Euro-austerity, some of the fundamentals have improved. The bureaucracy has been slimmed, taxes are now collected and, if debt repayments were taken out of it, the budget would be in balance. In truth, this is what EU leaders fear. Not that Greece will leave the euro and collapse, but that Greece will leave the euro and prosper.

A competitive Greek economy, exporting its way back to growth, might inspire Spaniards and Italians, who have also been paying the price of the euro, to follow. For those Eurocrats who see the single currency as a component of political integration, that prospect is too horrible to contemplate.

We’ve been here before. Two years ago, when it looked as if Cyprus might leave the euro, Brussels went so far as to lift money directly out of private bank accounts to pay off the country’s creditors.

The extreme measure was necessary, the European Central Bank admitted, ‘to prevent worries over the reversibility of the euro resurfacing’.

I observe that Iceland, which rejected the EU’s bank-first dictates, is doing considerably better than Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, which obediently followed the EU’s instructions. I tend to doubt this observation has escaped the new Greek government.