Greece – Page 3 – The Burning Platform

Greece and Other Musings On July 4th

If you become stuck in a boring July 4 hot air speech, distract yourself with this question: Are the values that Western civilization allegedly represents still extant? You don’t need to get heavy into philosophy. See if you can find any of the professed values reflected in current events.

For example, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks was granted asylum by Ecuador in order to protect Assange from persecution by Washington. Washington is determined to persecute Assange, because he did his job as a journalist and published leaked information that revealed US government crimes and machinations against other countries including US allies. Assange did what the New York Times did in 1971 when the newspaper published the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.

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Assange has now spent three years inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London, because Washington has instructed its UK vassal state not to honor Assange’s grant of asylum and allow him free passage to Ecuador. What is happening to Assange is precisely what happened to Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, who was granted political asylum by the United States in 1956 and spent 15 years inside the US embassy in Budapest because the Soviet government instructed its Hungarian vassal state not to honor the grant of asylum. The Anglo-American world has morphed into the Soviet world.

Currently the US is attempting to overthrow the government in Ecuador in order to return the country to Washington’s control. If Washington succeeds in establishing a vassal state in Ecuador, Assange’s asylum will be revoked, and he will end up in Washington’s hands.

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Athens On The Potomac – It Could Never Happen Here, Right?

Submitted by John Gabriel via Ricochet.com,

Financial experts in New York, London, and Brussels have tut-tutted Greece’s economic travails as Athens considers its future with the European Union. Why did they borrow so much money? How can they ever pay it back? Do they think that much debt is sustainable?

Instead of pointing fingers at the innumerates running Athens, they should consider our own situation. Jason Russell of the Washington Examiner shows how America’s debt projections look suspiciously like Greece’s recent history.

With all the chaos unravelling in Greece, Congress would be wise to do what it takes to avoid reaching Greek debt levels. But it’s not a matter of sticking to the status quo and avoiding bad decisions that would put the budget on a Greek-like path, because the budget is on that path already.

A quarter-century ago, Greek debt levels were roughly 75 percent of Greece’s economy — about equal to what the U.S. has now. As of 2014, Greek debt levels are about 177 percent of national GDP. Now, the country is considering defaulting on its loans and uncertainty is gripping the economy.

In 25 years, U.S. debt levels are projected to reach 156 percent of the economy, which Greece had in 2012. That projection comes from the Congressional Budget Office’s alternative scenario, which is more realistic than its standard fiscal projection about which spending programs Congress will extend into the future.

If Congress leaves the federal budget on autopilot, debt levels will soar. Instead, spending must be reined in to avoid a Greek-style meltdown.

While we’re right to be concerned about 2040, the U.S. is in deep trouble now. Yet if you mention the debt to most Americans, they’re either confused or indifferent. “But Obama lowered the deficit.” “Just print more money.“ “It’s Reagan’s fault!”

Since most graphs look like this, I created my own user-friendly debt chart focused on three big numbers: Deficit, revenue and debt. (My first version was published a couple of years ago. This one is updated with the most recent figures).

It’s an imperfect analogy, but imagine the green is your salary, the yellow is the amount you’re spending over your salary, and the red is your MasterCard statement.

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Shoot the Dog and Sell the Farm

Thoughts from the Frontline: Shoot the Dog and Sell the Farm

By John Mauldin

“If this were a marriage, the lawyers would be circling.”

The Economist, My Big Fat Greek Divorce, 6/20/2015

Greece is again all the buzz in the media and on the commentary circuit. If you’re like me, you are suffering terminal Greece fatigue. You just want Greece and its creditors to “do something already” rather than continually coming to the end of every week with no resolution, amid finger-pointing and dire warnings from all sides about the End of All Things Europe – maybe even the world.

That frustration is a common human emotion. Perhaps the best and funniest illustration (trust me, it is worth a few minutes’ digression) is the story about one of my first investment mentors, Gary North, who was working in his early days for Howard Ruff in Howard’s phone call center before Gary began writing his newsletters and books. (Yes, I know I am dating myself, as this was the late ’70s and early ’80s, just as I was getting introduced to the investment publishing business. And for the record, I knew almost everyone in the publishing business in the ’80s. It was a very small group, and we got together regularly.)

Howard set up a phone bank where his subscribers could call in and ask questions about their investments and personal lives. One little lady had the misfortune to get Dr. Gary North on the line. (Gary was the economist for Congressman Ron Paul and went on to write it some 61-odd books, 13,000 articles, and more – all typed with one finger. He is a human word-processing machine.)

This sweet lady lived way out in the country and was getting older. She asked Gary if he thought it would be a wise idea for her to move into the city (I believe it was San Francisco) to live with her daughter. Not knowing the answer, Gary helped her work out the pros and cons over the phone, and she decided to move. A few days later she called back and said that she couldn’t bring her dog with her because of the rules at her daughter’s apartment. It turns out she couldn’t live without her dog, so Gary helped her come to the conclusion that she could stay in the country.

A few days later she called him back asking whether she should change her mind, and Gary once again help her to come to a conclusion. This went on for several weeks, back and forth, move or not move, dog or no dog. Finally she called one last time. Gary, in utter exasperation and not being infinitely tolerant of indecisive people, said, “Look lady, just shoot the dog and sell the farm.” (For the record, I hope she didn’t really shoot the dog. I like dogs.)

That is where most of us are with the Europeans and Greeks. I have devoted a great deal of space in this letter to Greece over the past five years and have visited the country and corresponded with many analysts and citizens about the situation. And while I want to briefly outline the Greek situation again today, as there are some subtle nuances to consider, I think this juncture is a teaching moment about the larger picture in Europe. In fact, watching this process, I have come to change my mind about the timing of what I see is the endgame for Europe and European sovereign debt. I think exploring that issue will make for an interesting letter.

Economic crises go through cycles. Here’s a chart from the clever folks at Valuewalk.com (via my friend Jonathan Tepper on Twitter).

https://twitter.com/valuewalk/status/612948290267688960

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An Inadvertent Warning From BlackRock – Get Your Money Out Of Mutual Funds ASAP

SITUATION HOPELESS, BUT NOT SERIOUS

Your keepers will not be warning you before the collapse. They will be taking actions behind the scenes to protect their wealth, while throwing you under the bus. Obama and your corrupt congresscritters will demand that you bail out the .1% to preserve your way of life. Will you allow it to happen again? Or will you string up the perpetrators from lampposts? The great reset is coming. Social disorder, chaos and civil strife are just over the horizon. Are you prepared?

Via Investment Research Dynamics,

BlackRock Inc. is seeking government clearance to set up an internal program in which mutual funds that get hit with client redemptions could temporarily borrow money from sister funds that are flush with cash. – Bloomberg News

We may have been early on warning about leaving your savings in the financial system. It’s okay to be too early getting your money out of the system but it’s fatal to be just one second too late. The gates are already in place in money market funds just waiting for the signal to be lowered

BlackRock’s filing with the SEC to enable “have cash” funds to lend to “heavy redemption” funds should send shivers down the spine of anyone with funds invested in any BlackRock fund. In fact, it should horrify anyone invested in any mutual fund.

Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive officer, said in December that U.S. bond funds face increased volatility, adding that he expected a “dysfunctional market” lasting days or even weeks within the next two years. – Bloomberg

I warned last summer when the money market funds received authorization to put redemption gates in place that it was time to remove your money from these instruments. The only reason a gate would be needed is if the people running the funds believed that there were risk events coming that would necessitate the gates.

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The Greek Butterfly Effect

Submitted by Northman Trader

The Greek Butterfly Effect

Many times nothing happens for a long time. Then all of a sudden everything happens at once. Like a dam break. It builds slowly and then it bursts. Example: Who would have ever thought the Confederate flag would be taken down across the South during the same week that a rainbow flag is symbolically hoisted across the entire country? Just because things seem unthinkable doesn’t mean they won’t happen.

Take the global debt construct as another example. For decades the world has immersed itself in ever higher debt. The general attitude has been one of indifference. Oh well, it just goes higher. Doesn’t really impact me or so the complacent rationalize.

When the financial crisis brought the world to the brink of financial collapse the solution was based on a single principle:

Make the math workable.

In the US the 4 principle “solutions” to make the math workable were to:

1. End mark to market which had the basic effect of allowing institutions to work with fictitious balance sheets and claim financial viability.

2. Engage in unprecedented fiscal deficits to grow the economy. To this day the US, and the world for that matter, runs deficits. Every single year. The result: Global GDP has been, and continues to be overstated as a certain percentage of growth remains debt financed and not purely organically driven.

3. QE, to flush the system with artificial liquidity, the classic printing press to create demand out of thin air.

4. ZIRP. Generally ZIRP has been sold to the public as an incentive program to stimulate lending and thereby generate wage growth & inflation. While it could be argued it had some success in certain areas such as housing, the larger evidence suggests that ZIRP is not about growth at all.

If ZIRP’s true goal were to stimulate growth the result of this:

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