Tag: Euro

Doug Casey: Why the Euro is a Doomed Currency

Doug Casey: Why the Euro Is a Doomed Currency

By Doug Casey

For a long time, I’ve advocated that the world’s governments should default on their debt. I recognize that this is an outrageous-sounding proposal.

However, the debts accumulated by the governments of the U.S., Japan, Europe and dozens of other countries constitute a gigantic mortgage on the next two or three generations, as yet unborn. Savings are proof that a person, or a country, has been living below their means. Debt, on the other hand, is evidence that the world has been living above its means. And the amount of government debt and liabilities in the world is in the hundreds of trillions and growing rapidly, even with essentially zero percent interest rates. This brings up several questions: Will future generations be able to repay it? Will they be willing to? And, if so, should they? My answers are: No, no and no.

The “should they” is one moral question that should be confronted. But I’ll go further. There’s another reason government debt should be defaulted on: to punish the people stupid enough, or unethical enough, to lend governments the money they’ve used to do all the destructive things they do.

I know it’s most unlikely you’ve ever previously heard this view. And I recognize there would be many unpleasant domino-like effects on today’s overleveraged and unstable financial system. It’s just that, when a structure is about to collapse, it’s better to have a controlled demolition, rather than waiting for it to collapse unpredictably. That said, governments will perversely keep propping up the house of cards, and building it higher, pushing the nasty consequences further into the future, with compound interest.

With that in mind, a few words on the euro, the EU and the European Central Bank are in order.

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The Beginning of the End for the Euro

Guest Post by Mark Nestmann

A little over two decades ago, the elites of Europe met in Maastricht, the Netherlands, to realize a long-held dream. It was to create a common currency that could be used throughout Europe, and possibly, the world.

The “euro” arrived, with great fanfare, in 1999, as a trading-only electronic currency. Three years later, the “eurozone” officially came into being. 11 national currencies were abolished and exchanged for euros at a fixed exchange rate.

Over the next decade, a growing number of European countries clamored to get on board. The eurozone eventually grew to 19 members.

Like so many other grand plans, the intentions of the European elites were good, albeit self-serving. The European Union (EU) itself was cobbled together after World War II to help prevent the rise of super-nationalists like Adolph Hitler. The euro was another step along the way. As former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl often said: “We seek a European Germany, not a German Europe.”

And the promised benefits were impressive:

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There is Only One Way Out For Greece

Guest Post by

ECM Greece

Brussels has been dead wrong. This stupid idea that the Euro will bring stability and peace as it was sold from the outset, has migrated to European domination as if this were a game of Thrones. Those in power have misread history almost at every possible level. The assumption that the DMark’s strength was a good thing and this would be transferred to the Euro, has failed because they failed to comprehend the backdrop to the DMark.

LongBranchNJ-DepressionScrip

Germany moved opposite of the USA and moved toward extreme austerity and conservative economics because of its experience with hyperinflation. The USA moved toward stimulation because of the austerity policies which created the Great Depression and led to such a shortage of money many cities had to issue their own currency just to function. The federal government thought, like Brussels today, that they had to sure up the confidence in the bond market and that called for raising taxes and cutting spending at the expense of the people. The same thinking process has played out numerous times throughout history. Our problem is, nobody ever asks – Hey, did someone try this before? Did it work? This is why history repeats – we do ZERO research when it comes to economics. It is all hype and self-interest.

1000 drachma

Greece should immediately begin to print drachma. By no means has the introduction of a new currency been a walk in the park. There is always a learning curve as in the case of East Germany’s adoption of the Deutsche mark, the Czech-Slovak divorce of 1993, and the creation of the euro itself . However, the bulk of transactions today are electronic. That means we are dealing with an accounting issue more than anything.

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The Coming Cashless Society/Greek Tragedy

Guest Post by

Electronic-Euro

Now you are watching newspaper and TV shows all preparing the public for the coming cashless society. This is a marketing campaign and this may be indeed what October 1st, 2015 is all about – 2015.75. I doubt that the USA will be able to move to a cashless society as easily as Europe. The dollar is used around the world and cancelling that outstanding money supply would bring tremendous international unrest. Additionally, the USA is not in crisis financially as is the case in Europe.

Europe, on the other hand, has an entirely different problem. The failure to have consolidated the debts of member states meant the reserves of the banks were constituted of a politically-correct mixture of debt. Instead of fixing the problem, politicians who are lawyers always move one step forward with laws. To them the logical solution is to eliminate cash to protect banks from a panic run that would collapse Europe and take Brussels with it.

This is a deliberate marketing campaign now. I know who these things work and just pay attention. They are selling this idea everywhere and that is the preparation for the inevitable action. With the speed at which they are moving, it certainly appears they are gearing up for October 1st on out model. It is also interesting that some German press misquoted our date as October 17th. I was not sure why they would do that, but perhaps that was intentional as well. This is very curious for when they take that final step, it will most likely be sudden and overnight. This would announce it and give everyone some time period to take your paper currency and deposit it into you bank account.

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S&P 500 EARNINGS COLLAPSE

Stocks are already overvalued by 100% by every historically accurate valuation model used over the last 100 years. The S&P 500 EPS dropped by 3.7% last quarter versus the previous year. Their actual earnings dropped by more than 5%. These mega-corps have been buying their stock back at a record rate, even though the market is at all-time highs, reducing the number of shares and artificially boosting EPS. It’s good for their Executive bonuses, don’t you know.

The Atlanta Fed is already estimating only a 1.2% GDP in the first quarter of 2015. It will be negative when everything is said and done. Manufacturing new orders have declined for 6 consecutive months. This only happens just prior to a recession or during a recession. Take your pick.

One of the major reasons manufacturing is faltering, besides the global recession, EU disintegrating, Japan blowing itself up, and China’s real estate boom going bust, is the tremendous appreciation of the USD. Companies selling US made goods in foreign countries see the price of their goods rise, as the dollar appreciates. It has appreciated 20% in the last 8 months against the basket of all foreign currencies, and now sits at an 11 year high. It is now 33% higher than the 2008 lows.

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IT’S A TSUNAMI OF BLACK SWANS

Betcha didn’t see that coming.

THE GREAT CURRENCY WAVE (revisited)

“It’s A Tsunami” – Swiss Franc Soars Most Ever After SNB Abandons EURCHF Floor; Macro Hedge Funds Crushed

Tyler Durden's picture

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/15/2015 06:07 -0500

“As if millions of macro hedge funds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”

Over two decades ago, George Soros took on the Bank of England, and won. Less than two hours ago the Swiss National Bank took on virtually every single macro hedge fund, the vast majority of which were short the Swiss Franc and crushed them, when it announced, first, that it would go further into NIRP, pushing its interest rate on deposit balances even more negative from -0.25% to -0.75%, a move which in itself would have been unprecedented and, second, announcing that the 1.20 EURCHF floor it had instituted in September 2011, the day gold hit its all time nominal high, was no more.

What happened next was truly shock and awe as algo after algo saw their EURCHF 1.1999 stops hit, and moments thereafter the EURCHF pair crashed to less then 0.75, margining out virtually every single long EURCHF position, before finally rebounding to a level just above 1.00, which is where it was trading just before the SNB instituted the currency floor over three years ago.

Visually:

The SNB press release:

Swiss National Bank discontinues minimum exchange rate and lowers interest rate to –0.75%

 

Target range moved further into negative territory

 

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is discontinuing the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro. At the same time, it is lowering the interest rate on sight deposit account balances that exceed a given exemption threshold by 0.5 percentage points, to ?0.75%. It is moving the target range for the three-month Libor further into negative territory, to between –1.25% and -0.25%, from the current range of between -0.75% and 0.25%.

 

The minimum exchange rate was introduced during a period of exceptional overvaluation of the Swiss franc and an extremely high level of uncertainty on the financial markets. This exceptional and temporary measure protected the Swiss economy from serious harm. While the Swiss franc is still high, the overvaluation has decreased as a whole since the introduction of the minimum exchange rate. The economy was able to take advantage of this phase to adjust to the new situation.

 

Recently, divergences between the monetary policies of the major currency areas have increased significantly – a trend that is likely to become even more pronounced. The euro has depreciated considerably against the US dollar and this, in turn, has caused the Swiss franc to weaken against the US dollar. In these circumstances, the SNB concluded that enforcing and maintaining the minimum exchange rate for the Swiss franc against the euro is no longer justified.

 

The SNB is lowering interest rates significantly to ensure that the discontinuation of the minimum exchange rate does not lead to an inappropriate tightening of monetary conditions. The SNB will continue to take account of the exchange rate situation in formulating its monetary policy in future. If necessary, it will therefore remain active in the foreign exchange market to influence monetary conditions.

The resultant move across all currency pairs has seen the EUR and USD sliding, the USDJPY crashing, and US futures tumbling even as European stocks plunged only to kneejerk higher as markets are in clear turmoil and nobody knows just what is going on right now.

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