Spain Runs Out Of Money To Feed The Zombies
One
of the problems with the Hispanic Pandora's box unleashed by a now
insolvent Bankia, which as we noted some time ago, is merely the Canary in the Coalmine, is that once the case study "example" of rewarding terminal
failure is in the open, everyone else who happens to be insolvent also
wants to give it a try. And in the case of Spain it quite literally
may be "everyone else." But before we get there, we just get a rude
awakening from The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that
just as the bailout party is getting started, Spain is officially out
of bailout money: "where is the €23.5 billion for the Bankia rescue
going to come from? The state's Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring (FROB) is down to €5.3 billion."...
And in an indication of just how surreal the modern financial world
has become, none other than Bloomberg has just come out with an article
titled "Spain Delays and Prays That Zombies Repay Debt."
We can only surmise there was some rhetorical humor in this headline,
because as the past weekend demonstrated, the best zombies are capable
of, especially those high on Zombie Dust, or its functional equivalent in the modern financial system: monetary methadone,
as first penned here in March 2009, is to bite someone else's face off
with tragic consequences for all involved. What Bloomberg is
certainly not joking about is that the financial zombies in Spain are
now everywhere.Jens Weidmann, President of the German Bundesbank and member of the ECB Council, ventured into a veritable lion’s den with an interview in Le Monde, the number one liberal daily in France whose editorial bend has been supporting President François Hollande and his “growth” policies. And there, the central banker lashed out at Hollande and what he’d promised during the campaign. And he lashed out at the ECB, and at everything that smelled of a transfer union, and in passing at Paul Krugman and others who wanted the ECB to print with utter abandon to monetize the sovereign debt of debt-sinner countries, even more so than it has already done.
Le Monde called him “guardian of monetary orthodoxy,” whatever it meant by that because a central banker who insists on maintaining price stability rather than printing trillions to prop up the markets and enrich the bankers is closer in today’s crazy times to a monetary novelty than monetary orthodoxy.
“Being in favor of growth is like being in favor of peace in the world,” Weidmann said about the raging debate of growth vs. austerity. “The real debate is which path leads to sustainable growth,” he said. And the answer was clear: “structural reforms.” Debt-fueled spending would just create an “economic straw fire.” And then he added, “In fact, I’m asking myself what these discussions are hiding.”
Read More @ TestosteronePit.com
by Henry Shivley, fromthetrenchesworldreport:
In 2008 the mortgage
derivative fraud/scam was discovered as the bubble burst. The largest
central banks were wiped out, literally by their own hand. Congress
surrendered its power over allocations to the Treasury Department and
Henry Paulson was named Treasury Secretary. Then the American people
were told that they were going to have to replace the wealth that had
been stolen through the toxic derivatives because these privately owned
central banks were too big to fail, thus the failure was dumped onto the
people.
$32 trillion was stolen. $32 trillion was borrowed in the name of the American people, leaving those people in generational bonded servitude. Now the thieves had only to collect the wealth.
Parasites, like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor, who are nothing more than the lapdogs of the international thieves, were left to implement a plan to remove the wealth from the people. You see they could not just declare austerity as in theory the United States is not a socialist country. So they began blaming the fact that our country was broke on we the people. It was Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and food stamps that have caused the collapse, not the international theft.
Read More @ fromthetrenchesworldreport.com
In 2008 the mortgage
derivative fraud/scam was discovered as the bubble burst. The largest
central banks were wiped out, literally by their own hand. Congress
surrendered its power over allocations to the Treasury Department and
Henry Paulson was named Treasury Secretary. Then the American people
were told that they were going to have to replace the wealth that had
been stolen through the toxic derivatives because these privately owned
central banks were too big to fail, thus the failure was dumped onto the
people.$32 trillion was stolen. $32 trillion was borrowed in the name of the American people, leaving those people in generational bonded servitude. Now the thieves had only to collect the wealth.
Parasites, like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor, who are nothing more than the lapdogs of the international thieves, were left to implement a plan to remove the wealth from the people. You see they could not just declare austerity as in theory the United States is not a socialist country. So they began blaming the fact that our country was broke on we the people. It was Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and food stamps that have caused the collapse, not the international theft.
Read More @ fromthetrenchesworldreport.com
Don’t Bet Against The FED, The Big Print is Coming! Also, light commentary on Youtube Bitchezzz
by Shivom Seth, Mineweb
The
Shanghai Futures Exchange’s silver futures contracts, the first of
their type to be offered in China, give Chinese investors a new way to
bet on the precious metal.
In a move that will make the silver market more liquid, the Shanghai Futures (SHFE) has begun trading in silver contracts. The contracts are expected to be bullish for silver prices, with traders stating that it could make market manipulation more difficult.
Although the country is a main producer and consumer of silver, it has remained on the sidelines in silver trading. By initiating silver futures, traders say China clearly wants more control over the precious metal’s pricing policy.
Read More @ MineWeb.com
The
Shanghai Futures Exchange’s silver futures contracts, the first of
their type to be offered in China, give Chinese investors a new way to
bet on the precious metal.In a move that will make the silver market more liquid, the Shanghai Futures (SHFE) has begun trading in silver contracts. The contracts are expected to be bullish for silver prices, with traders stating that it could make market manipulation more difficult.
Although the country is a main producer and consumer of silver, it has remained on the sidelines in silver trading. By initiating silver futures, traders say China clearly wants more control over the precious metal’s pricing policy.
Read More @ MineWeb.com
by Shivom Seth, MineWeb.com
As central banks expand their bullion reserve and gold traders ready
for a bull run, Vietnam has been turning to gold as a safe haven. With
record high inflation, Vietnam is looking to mobilise the large hoard of
gold amongst its people, most of who have been using the precious metal
as an unofficial currency.
The Vietnamese people have been buying gold in order to preserve the purchasing power. Aiming to mobilise this gold, the country’s central bank is in the midst of issuing gold certificates. The region is said to be hoarding upwards of 1,000 tonnes of gold worth around $45 billion, second only to India.
Read More @ MineWeb.com
As central banks expand their bullion reserve and gold traders ready
for a bull run, Vietnam has been turning to gold as a safe haven. With
record high inflation, Vietnam is looking to mobilise the large hoard of
gold amongst its people, most of who have been using the precious metal
as an unofficial currency.The Vietnamese people have been buying gold in order to preserve the purchasing power. Aiming to mobilise this gold, the country’s central bank is in the midst of issuing gold certificates. The region is said to be hoarding upwards of 1,000 tonnes of gold worth around $45 billion, second only to India.
Read More @ MineWeb.com
by Fayen Wong, Reuters Africa:
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd is seeking membership of
overseas exchanges and aims to become a major global bullion market
maker, a senior executive said on Monday.
The world’s biggest bank by market value, ICBC is the top player by volume on China’s gold and futures exchanges, but its participation in foreign markets is limited to over-the-counter trading, which reached a total $90 billion last year.
Emboldened by Beijing’s ambitions to have a bigger say in global commodity prices, ICBC now has an eye on bourses such as COMEX and on joining the 11 market makers of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).
These quote continuous two-way bid and offer prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium throughout the London day, providing a liquid market in which to trade.
Read More @ af.Reuters.com
Jim,
The Spanish bank, Bankia, is looking for a 15-19 Billion euro bailout. Just one bank, and they will get it!
"Based on what happened at Bankia, the recapitalization needs of Spain’s banks could amount to as much as 60 billion euros"
Best regards,
CIGA Christopher
Christopher,
Bankia’s Writedowns Cast Doubts on Spain’s Bank Estimates
May 28 (Bloomberg) — Spain’s two-week effort to overhaul its lenders and estimate what it will cost taxpayers may already look out of date.
Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said May 11 that a law tightening provisioning rules, his second in three months, would require public funds of less than 15 billion euros ($19 billion). BFA-Bankia, the bank nationalized the same week, said on May 25 it was taking 8.5 billion euros of provisions on top of those demanded by the two decrees, as it sought a 19 billion- euro state bailout. Bankia shares fell as much as 29 percent in Madrid trading today.
"They’ve done two reforms already and there will probably be more; I don’t know how many more," Javier Diaz-Gimenez, a professor at the IESE business school in Madrid, said in a telephone interview. "They have zero credibility."
Spain is seeking to clean up banks and help its cash- strapped regions just as its own access to capital markets has narrowed and depends increasingly on domestic lenders. The nation’s bank-rescue fund has 5 billion euros in cash, de Guindos said this month, leaving its ability to bail out lenders dependent on Spain’s access to markets.
The country plans to inject public debt instead of cash directly into the Bankia Group to pay for the bank’s recapitalization and avoid having to go to market with the instruments, El Pais reported yesterday, without citing anyone.
Based on what happened at Bankia, the recapitalization needs of Spain’s banks could amount to as much as 60 billion euros, Daragh Quinn, an analyst at Nomura International said in a report today. "Given the current economic and political uncertainties facing the euro zone, this could see additional pressure on Spain to consider using external funds for the bank recapitalization," he wrote.
The yield on Spanish 10-year debt jumped to 6.42 percent from 6.29 percent on May 25. The spread between Spanish 10-year debt and German bunds rose to 507 basis points, a record, from 491.2 basis points.
More…
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Ex-PM warns Greece risks running out of cash by June: Report May 27, 2012
Former Greek PM Lucas Papademos warns Greece may run out of cash soon if bailout funds are cut off – Agencies
Former Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos warned Greece may run out of money by the end of June if international bailout funds are cut off following next month’s election, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
"From late June onwards, the ability of the government to fund its obligations fully depends on the approval of the subsequent installments of loans from the EFSF and the IMF," To Vima newspaper quoted Papademos as saying in a leaked memo.
"The available funds in the Greek government will be reduced gradually from about 3.8 billion euros on May 11 to about 700 million euros on June 18 and from June 20 will enter negative territory at the level of around one billion euros."
Centre-left To Vima said Papademos made the warning in a memo to President Carolos Papoulias dated May 11 that was then circulated to party leaders as they tried to form a coalition after an inconclusive May 6 vote.
Greece in 2010 committed itself to a reform programme in return for hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) in bailout funds from the the European Union bailout fund EFSF and the International Monetary Fund.
On May 6 voters weary with salary cuts and other austerity measures handed second place to radical left-wing party Syriza, which has threatened to renege on the bailout accords.
If Greece broke the terms of the deal and forfeited its bailout funds, it would likely default on its debts and may leave the eurozone.
More…
Dear CIGAs,
Behind the scenes at the G-8 and NATO summit meetings, some significant decisions were made that will impact over the coming weeks.
The critical decision at the G-8 meeting and several of the bilateral meetings that took place on the sidelines of the Camp David gathering centered on the decision to plunge ahead with the bailout of the European banks in an effort to save the Euro system, with Greece still inside. President Obama is terrified that a financial meltdown of the Euro system will spill over into Wall Street and result in his losing the November elections. Behind the scenes around Camp David, Christine Legarde put the IMF squarely behind a bailout of the European banks, with the full backing of the Federal Reserve and Treasury in the United States to boost the leveraged lending of the European Central Bank (ECB) to prop up the European banks. ECB will take junk bonds and other vastly over-priced assets as collateral for loans to the Spanish, Greek and other European banks. This will offset an additional estimated $500 billion in new write-offs by bondholders of Greek debt.
The bottom line is that if Greece leaves the Euro, the contagion will spread overnight to Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and, perhaps, even Italy. So, the IMF, the Obama Administration and the ECB are all on board to further delay the reality of the financial and banking crisis through hyperinflationary measures. The idea is that the situation will take many months to fully play out, and Obama and his re-election team hope that the system will hold together past the November elections.
In his sideline meeting with new French President Hollande, Obama reached a full agreement on this perpetuation of the Euro. This is an area where Hollande and Merkel will agree to disagree. They both want to defend the Euro, but Hollande will continue to insist that the austerity must be limited and a growth program initiated. This is actually impossible to accomplish, but this is the growing perspective of the Eurosocialists, including Hollande and his colleagues in Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). A majority of Greek voters are in favor of staying in the Euro, so long as the austerity is reduced.
Hollande will make another effort this week at the European Monetary Union heads of state meeting to push for Eurobonds, as one way to implement this bailout plan. Merkel will likely oppose and block this latest Eurobond argument. The total amount of assets on the books of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank fall far short of the currently estimated 4 trillion euro liability of the European private banks.
This was the single-most important decision taken at the G-8 meeting, and it was a deeply flawed decision that will have severe consequences. For Obama, the crucial question is: Will the consequences hit before or after the November elections in the United States? This may be the deciding factor in the outcome of those elections.
Russia’s Presence in Camp David and Chicago
On May 14, Russia’s Prime Minister Medvedev delivered a speech at an international law conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, just before departing for Camp David. In his speech, he announced the “Putin Doctrine,” opposing any attempts to use humanitarian intervention pretexts to violate the national sovereignty of any nation. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was seated on the podium behind him when he delivered these remarks. Medvedev went so far as to say that the attempt to carry out humanitarian interventions without the prior full consent of the United Nations Security Council could lead to regional wars, and, ultimately could lead to thermonuclear conflict.
The U.S. government was not surprised at the Medvedev speech, because Russian ambassadors around the world had been instructed to inform the host governments of the new “Putin Doctrine” of the inviolability of national sovereignty and the threat posed to the world order by attempts to violate that principle. Russia would organize resistance to any such efforts.
At a conference in Moscow on May 3, top Russian government officials, including the Chief of the General Staff Makarov, had warned that NATO’s decision to move ahead with the deployment of the European Missile Defense System could also drive Russia to launch pre-emptive attacks on components of the system, during a later stage when it would pose a threat to Russia’s second nuclear strike capabilities.
These two pointed warnings from Russia resonated at both the G-8 and NATO summit meetings, particularly since President Putin had told President Obama in a telephone conversation soon after the Moscow conference that he would not be attending the G-8 meeting, but would be sending Medvedev instead. The location of the G-8 meeting had been changed from Chicago to Camp David, after the cancellation of the NATO-Russia Council meeting, due to the conflict over the missile defense deployment in Europe.
As the result of the stark Russian warnings, there were two concessions made during the G-8 and NATO meetings. The language of the G-8 communique regarding Syria was altered to remove any implicit calls for regime change against the Assad government. At NATO, there was recognition that Russia has objections to the missile defense deployment, and that there will be efforts to reconcile those differences in negotiations that are already underway, between trusted Russian and American intermediaries.
However, another issue came up at the Chicago NATO meeting, at the initiative of David Cameron and with the full support of President Obama, which will emerge as a major controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. In May 2010, British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered a full strategic review of Britain’s military forces and doctrine. A year later, in April 2011, President Obama ordered the same kind of study. At Chicago, Cameron and Obama pushed for a similar NATO assessment study. The purpose is to present the case that NATO must be able to move more swiftly, particularly in cases of humanitarian interventions, without the delay of formal approval by the 28 parliaments of the 28 NATO member countries. In other words, NATO should have its own military assets and should be free to take action without approval of the sovereign parliaments, if the NATO heads of state reach a unanimous agreement.
This is a dangerous erosion of the sovereignty of all NATO countries, and will meet with serious opposition, once the implications of this move are fully understood. There will be serious resistance in the US Congress from both Democrats and Republicans.
This will also come in conflict with the new “Putin Doctrine” of Russia because it is indicative of further NATO “humanitarian interventionism” plans, based on last year’s Libya intervention.
The US on Wednesday opened its banking market to ICBC, China’s biggest bank, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company.
Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.
The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.
ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding overseas.
According to the Fed the bank has total assets of roughly $2.5 trillion.
It will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.
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Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd is seeking membership of
overseas exchanges and aims to become a major global bullion market
maker, a senior executive said on Monday.The world’s biggest bank by market value, ICBC is the top player by volume on China’s gold and futures exchanges, but its participation in foreign markets is limited to over-the-counter trading, which reached a total $90 billion last year.
Emboldened by Beijing’s ambitions to have a bigger say in global commodity prices, ICBC now has an eye on bourses such as COMEX and on joining the 11 market makers of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA).
These quote continuous two-way bid and offer prices for gold, silver, platinum and palladium throughout the London day, providing a liquid market in which to trade.
Read More @ af.Reuters.com
by John Rubino, DollarCollapse.com:
Europe’s political problems are hogging the headlines, with good reason. So much debt is coming due so soon that big decisions about Greece and Spain have to be made within the next couple of months to avoid a systemic melt-down.
But the US has some deadlines of its own, with no consensus on what to do about them. Consider:
Congress staring over edge of ‘fiscal cliff’
For Congress, the outlines of the pending fiscal crisis are clear: Don’t do a thing, and watch the economy slip into a double-dip recession early next year. Or cancel the looming tax increases and spending cuts, watch the deficit rise, and push the government ever closer to a European-style debt crisis.
Read More @ DollarCollapse.com
Europe’s political problems are hogging the headlines, with good reason. So much debt is coming due so soon that big decisions about Greece and Spain have to be made within the next couple of months to avoid a systemic melt-down.
But the US has some deadlines of its own, with no consensus on what to do about them. Consider:
Congress staring over edge of ‘fiscal cliff’
For Congress, the outlines of the pending fiscal crisis are clear: Don’t do a thing, and watch the economy slip into a double-dip recession early next year. Or cancel the looming tax increases and spending cuts, watch the deficit rise, and push the government ever closer to a European-style debt crisis.
Read More @ DollarCollapse.com
by Rick Ackerman, Rick Ackerman.com:
[We recently featured a guest commentary from Gary Leibowitz,
a frequent contributor to the Rick’s Picks forum. In the essay below,
he explains why, despite Europe’s financial troubles and signs of a
global economic slowdown, a perfect storm of positive factors is likely
to produce a final hurrah for stocks. Don’t hold onto them for too long,
though, says Gary, because 2013 is going to bring disaster for most
investors. RA]
Whatever happened to all that money Helicopter Ben printed? Surprisingly not very much. Between late 2008 and the end of 2011, the Fed injected almost $2 trillion in the financial system. Most of it, however, is parked in banks as reserves. At the same time, the Fed announced it would pay interest on those reserves. They paid $2 billion in 2009 alone. Since the Fed created an incentive for banks to hold that cash, 88 percent of it was still being held as of December 31. There goes the theory that we could inflate our way out of this mess! In fact, the Fed has done exactly the opposite, creating a system that pumps banks full of interest-free money while keeping that money from circulating.
Read More @ RickAckerman.com
[We recently featured a guest commentary from Gary Leibowitz,
a frequent contributor to the Rick’s Picks forum. In the essay below,
he explains why, despite Europe’s financial troubles and signs of a
global economic slowdown, a perfect storm of positive factors is likely
to produce a final hurrah for stocks. Don’t hold onto them for too long,
though, says Gary, because 2013 is going to bring disaster for most
investors. RA]Whatever happened to all that money Helicopter Ben printed? Surprisingly not very much. Between late 2008 and the end of 2011, the Fed injected almost $2 trillion in the financial system. Most of it, however, is parked in banks as reserves. At the same time, the Fed announced it would pay interest on those reserves. They paid $2 billion in 2009 alone. Since the Fed created an incentive for banks to hold that cash, 88 percent of it was still being held as of December 31. There goes the theory that we could inflate our way out of this mess! In fact, the Fed has done exactly the opposite, creating a system that pumps banks full of interest-free money while keeping that money from circulating.
Read More @ RickAckerman.com
from Azizonomics:
President Obama’s teenage gang called themselves the Choom Gang,
choom being their slang word for marijuana. They developed a
marijuana-oriented culture:
As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called “TA,” short for “total absorption.” To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.
Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of “roof hits”: when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.
When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning “numbing tobacco”) instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.
Read More @ Azizonomics.com
President Obama’s teenage gang called themselves the Choom Gang,
choom being their slang word for marijuana. They developed a
marijuana-oriented culture:As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called “TA,” short for “total absorption.” To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.
Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of “roof hits”: when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling.
When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning “numbing tobacco”) instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.
Read More @ Azizonomics.com
Bilderberg Boosting Security
Jim,
The Spanish bank, Bankia, is looking for a 15-19 Billion euro bailout. Just one bank, and they will get it!
"Based on what happened at Bankia, the recapitalization needs of Spain’s banks could amount to as much as 60 billion euros"
Best regards,
CIGA Christopher
Christopher,
Whatever is required here and there will be provided. There will also be 10,000 denials first in MSM.
Jim
Bankia’s Writedowns Cast Doubts on Spain’s Bank Estimates
May 28 (Bloomberg) — Spain’s two-week effort to overhaul its lenders and estimate what it will cost taxpayers may already look out of date.
Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said May 11 that a law tightening provisioning rules, his second in three months, would require public funds of less than 15 billion euros ($19 billion). BFA-Bankia, the bank nationalized the same week, said on May 25 it was taking 8.5 billion euros of provisions on top of those demanded by the two decrees, as it sought a 19 billion- euro state bailout. Bankia shares fell as much as 29 percent in Madrid trading today.
"They’ve done two reforms already and there will probably be more; I don’t know how many more," Javier Diaz-Gimenez, a professor at the IESE business school in Madrid, said in a telephone interview. "They have zero credibility."
Spain is seeking to clean up banks and help its cash- strapped regions just as its own access to capital markets has narrowed and depends increasingly on domestic lenders. The nation’s bank-rescue fund has 5 billion euros in cash, de Guindos said this month, leaving its ability to bail out lenders dependent on Spain’s access to markets.
The country plans to inject public debt instead of cash directly into the Bankia Group to pay for the bank’s recapitalization and avoid having to go to market with the instruments, El Pais reported yesterday, without citing anyone.
Based on what happened at Bankia, the recapitalization needs of Spain’s banks could amount to as much as 60 billion euros, Daragh Quinn, an analyst at Nomura International said in a report today. "Given the current economic and political uncertainties facing the euro zone, this could see additional pressure on Spain to consider using external funds for the bank recapitalization," he wrote.
The yield on Spanish 10-year debt jumped to 6.42 percent from 6.29 percent on May 25. The spread between Spanish 10-year debt and German bunds rose to 507 basis points, a record, from 491.2 basis points.
More…
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
A key to timing.
Ex-PM warns Greece risks running out of cash by June: Report May 27, 2012
Former Greek PM Lucas Papademos warns Greece may run out of cash soon if bailout funds are cut off – Agencies
Former Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos warned Greece may run out of money by the end of June if international bailout funds are cut off following next month’s election, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
"From late June onwards, the ability of the government to fund its obligations fully depends on the approval of the subsequent installments of loans from the EFSF and the IMF," To Vima newspaper quoted Papademos as saying in a leaked memo.
"The available funds in the Greek government will be reduced gradually from about 3.8 billion euros on May 11 to about 700 million euros on June 18 and from June 20 will enter negative territory at the level of around one billion euros."
Centre-left To Vima said Papademos made the warning in a memo to President Carolos Papoulias dated May 11 that was then circulated to party leaders as they tried to form a coalition after an inconclusive May 6 vote.
Greece in 2010 committed itself to a reform programme in return for hundreds of billions of euros (dollars) in bailout funds from the the European Union bailout fund EFSF and the International Monetary Fund.
On May 6 voters weary with salary cuts and other austerity measures handed second place to radical left-wing party Syriza, which has threatened to renege on the bailout accords.
If Greece broke the terms of the deal and forfeited its bailout funds, it would likely default on its debts and may leave the eurozone.
More…
Dear CIGAs,
The following intel came from Harry Schultz this morning: Euro bears be warned. There is more, but this is all I dare post.
Harry remains the main man in gold, currency and economic intel. Bravo to you Harry.
Behind the scenes at the G-8 and NATO summit meetings, some significant decisions were made that will impact over the coming weeks.
The critical decision at the G-8 meeting and several of the bilateral meetings that took place on the sidelines of the Camp David gathering centered on the decision to plunge ahead with the bailout of the European banks in an effort to save the Euro system, with Greece still inside. President Obama is terrified that a financial meltdown of the Euro system will spill over into Wall Street and result in his losing the November elections. Behind the scenes around Camp David, Christine Legarde put the IMF squarely behind a bailout of the European banks, with the full backing of the Federal Reserve and Treasury in the United States to boost the leveraged lending of the European Central Bank (ECB) to prop up the European banks. ECB will take junk bonds and other vastly over-priced assets as collateral for loans to the Spanish, Greek and other European banks. This will offset an additional estimated $500 billion in new write-offs by bondholders of Greek debt.
The bottom line is that if Greece leaves the Euro, the contagion will spread overnight to Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and, perhaps, even Italy. So, the IMF, the Obama Administration and the ECB are all on board to further delay the reality of the financial and banking crisis through hyperinflationary measures. The idea is that the situation will take many months to fully play out, and Obama and his re-election team hope that the system will hold together past the November elections.
In his sideline meeting with new French President Hollande, Obama reached a full agreement on this perpetuation of the Euro. This is an area where Hollande and Merkel will agree to disagree. They both want to defend the Euro, but Hollande will continue to insist that the austerity must be limited and a growth program initiated. This is actually impossible to accomplish, but this is the growing perspective of the Eurosocialists, including Hollande and his colleagues in Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). A majority of Greek voters are in favor of staying in the Euro, so long as the austerity is reduced.
Hollande will make another effort this week at the European Monetary Union heads of state meeting to push for Eurobonds, as one way to implement this bailout plan. Merkel will likely oppose and block this latest Eurobond argument. The total amount of assets on the books of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank fall far short of the currently estimated 4 trillion euro liability of the European private banks.
This was the single-most important decision taken at the G-8 meeting, and it was a deeply flawed decision that will have severe consequences. For Obama, the crucial question is: Will the consequences hit before or after the November elections in the United States? This may be the deciding factor in the outcome of those elections.
Russia’s Presence in Camp David and Chicago
On May 14, Russia’s Prime Minister Medvedev delivered a speech at an international law conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, just before departing for Camp David. In his speech, he announced the “Putin Doctrine,” opposing any attempts to use humanitarian intervention pretexts to violate the national sovereignty of any nation. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was seated on the podium behind him when he delivered these remarks. Medvedev went so far as to say that the attempt to carry out humanitarian interventions without the prior full consent of the United Nations Security Council could lead to regional wars, and, ultimately could lead to thermonuclear conflict.
The U.S. government was not surprised at the Medvedev speech, because Russian ambassadors around the world had been instructed to inform the host governments of the new “Putin Doctrine” of the inviolability of national sovereignty and the threat posed to the world order by attempts to violate that principle. Russia would organize resistance to any such efforts.
At a conference in Moscow on May 3, top Russian government officials, including the Chief of the General Staff Makarov, had warned that NATO’s decision to move ahead with the deployment of the European Missile Defense System could also drive Russia to launch pre-emptive attacks on components of the system, during a later stage when it would pose a threat to Russia’s second nuclear strike capabilities.
These two pointed warnings from Russia resonated at both the G-8 and NATO summit meetings, particularly since President Putin had told President Obama in a telephone conversation soon after the Moscow conference that he would not be attending the G-8 meeting, but would be sending Medvedev instead. The location of the G-8 meeting had been changed from Chicago to Camp David, after the cancellation of the NATO-Russia Council meeting, due to the conflict over the missile defense deployment in Europe.
As the result of the stark Russian warnings, there were two concessions made during the G-8 and NATO meetings. The language of the G-8 communique regarding Syria was altered to remove any implicit calls for regime change against the Assad government. At NATO, there was recognition that Russia has objections to the missile defense deployment, and that there will be efforts to reconcile those differences in negotiations that are already underway, between trusted Russian and American intermediaries.
However, another issue came up at the Chicago NATO meeting, at the initiative of David Cameron and with the full support of President Obama, which will emerge as a major controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. In May 2010, British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered a full strategic review of Britain’s military forces and doctrine. A year later, in April 2011, President Obama ordered the same kind of study. At Chicago, Cameron and Obama pushed for a similar NATO assessment study. The purpose is to present the case that NATO must be able to move more swiftly, particularly in cases of humanitarian interventions, without the delay of formal approval by the 28 parliaments of the 28 NATO member countries. In other words, NATO should have its own military assets and should be free to take action without approval of the sovereign parliaments, if the NATO heads of state reach a unanimous agreement.
This is a dangerous erosion of the sovereignty of all NATO countries, and will meet with serious opposition, once the implications of this move are fully understood. There will be serious resistance in the US Congress from both Democrats and Republicans.
This will also come in conflict with the new “Putin Doctrine” of Russia because it is indicative of further NATO “humanitarian interventionism” plans, based on last year’s Libya intervention.
The US on Wednesday opened its banking market to ICBC, China’s biggest bank, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company.
Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a majority stake in the US subsidiary of Bank of East Asia.
The transaction will make ICBC the first Chinese state-controlled bank to acquire retail bank branches in the United States.
ICBC has been the most aggressive of China’s “big four” banks in expanding overseas.
According to the Fed the bank has total assets of roughly $2.5 trillion.
It will buy up to 80 percent of the US unit of the Hong Kong-based Bank of East Asia, which operates 13 branches in New York and California.
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