In last night’s ATEOTD post, I referred to how ‘the mad world outside balances on its nose (the better to sing Loving you has made me bananas)’. Global criticism like that can too easily sound gratuitous, so perhaps we should start this morning with some ongoing evidence going, as it were, forwards…or not: you decide.
If you’re a flat broke German aiming a gun at those who would rob the Bundersrepublik of its economic success, I suppose it would make sense for your lead EU parliamentary banking union negotiator to be called Gunnar Hökmark. Earlier this week Aircraftsmen Rear Gunner 2nd Class Hockmark pronounced as follows to the European media:(my emphasis is added for reasons of sanity)
“We now have a strong bail-in system which sends a clear message that bank shareholders and creditors will be the ones to bear the losses on rainy days, not taxpayers. At the same time we also established clear rules to deal with the most exceptional cases in which overall financial stability is in danger.”
There it is again, that ridiculous “Fred Taxpayer will not be fleeced, only Creddy Tor-Taxpayer”. Global Looting thus continues under its newly disguised euphemism, the Creditor Bailin. But still, allegedly we were saved from being scalped as taxpayers: it was Episode 784 of the EU’s All Will be Well saga.
There are just one or two teething troubles to be ironed out. As in, 126 people will have to be consulted across the EU on every bailin. Germany has written a letter saying it doesn’t like the deal. The total rescue fund before bailin will be €55bn. All the details will be left to local governments. It won’t start until 2016. And the first line of defence will be the imposition of losses on the bank’s shareholders and creditors.
So it’s a Banking Union run by local governments – but not for three years, and with a tiny fund designed for use before a bailin that won’t be used until every last customer has been fleeced by the bailin.
Oh, you burned your fingers that evening
While my back was turned.
I asked the waiter for iodine
But I dined all alone.
While my back was turned.
I asked the waiter for iodine
But I dined all alone.
Meanwhile, yesterday the Federal Reserve began winding down the era of easy money, saying “the U.S. economy is finally strong enough to start scaling down bond-buying stimulus”….or QE to the likes of us. The monthly crack injections were cut by 12.5% to $75bn, and won’t be shut down until the end of 2014, but if things turn unpleasant again it won’t be shut down, probably. Said Bernanke: “The stimulus will be cut at a measured pace through much of next year if job gains continue as expected.The recovery clearly remains far from complete, but we’re hopeful that we’ll begin to see the whites of the eyes of the end of the recovery, and the beginning of a more normal period of economic growth.”
In order to avoid mass stampeding panic, the Fed Reserve chairman also extended Zirp from As Long as it Takes to “even further than that”, which presumably means forever and a day.
Oh, your red scarf matches your eyes
You closed your cover before striking
Father had the shipfitter blues
Loving you has made me bananas.
You closed your cover before striking
Father had the shipfitter blues
Loving you has made me bananas.
And so, once we stare into the whites of the eyes of the end of recovery, our noses will surely sense the green shoots of growth heading down our nostrils towards the Big Mouth of Ben, from thence further yet down to the beating heart of Hope and – who knows brethren, one day – into the purple valley of piss and wind.
In another slightly less glaring example of self-delusion, UK Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to block any attempts to give the European Union a bigger role in co-ordinating defence policy when he attends an EU meeting this week, on the same day that British General Sir Nick Houghton, Head of the UK’s armed forces, warned that military cuts made by that same David Cameron had left him with too few people to man his new hitech killing equipment.
I particularly enjoyed this last story, because it blends two surrealities with one banana: trying to block an attempt to coordinate the hopelessly uncoordinated – while having too few men to coordinate the equipment necessary to fight the uncoordinated coordination in the event of blocks breaking down – with the unforeseen consequence of hostilities breaking out between the uncoordinated would-be coordinator bloc and the Gallant Few blockers who don’t even represent enough people to be coordinated in the first place.
I should never have waxed lyrical about uninterrupted sunshine last night: it’s raining red scarves and burning fingers here this morning.
The Slog 