I’m at risk of getting whiplash from watching the speed at which Greece is changing its position on key issues. And while I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, there are reasons to think this pattern does not bode well for the government’s ongoing negotiations.
Read more...More regulators are getting serious about finding ways to hold individual bank executives responsible for misconduct.
Read more...Elizabeth Warren subjected Fed chairman Janet Yellen to one of her fiercest interrogations ever in Congressional hearings yesterday.
Read more...We warned readers who are still keen to take the Syriza “Hope is coming” slogan as something more promising that a subconscious echo of the Obama 2008 “Hope and change” campaign, that the memo that Greece signed with the Eurogroup last week did not represent a victory or a lessening of austerity. The comments by the ECB and the IMF on the reform list from Greece submitted Monday confirmed our earlier readings, that austerity is still very much on in Greece.
Read more...This tidbit from HSBC reveals a new low in the standards of banking, which given how low those already are, amounts to an accomplishment of sorts. Perhaps we should create a Stuart Gulliver Award for other instances of creative extreme seaminess. Nominees?
Read more...Rose focuses on an issue that reader Swedish Lex and other have pointed out: the heavy-handed actions of Germany in the tempestuous negotiations between the Eurozone and Greece have wound up being a major own goal.
But the bigger issue that Rose raises is that last week’s ugly negotiations, in combination with the fiasco in Ukraine, is exposing Germany as a lousy hegemon, which he argues is producing a political crisis in Germany and fracture lines in Europe.
Read more...As most readers may know, Greece and the Eurogroup ministers agreed to a memorandum last week that would replace the bailout that expires on February 28 with a four-month deal that the memo stresses is in the same framework.
But as much as the memo language was agreed by the ministers, it is not yet a done deal. And it is already looking like we might have a wild ride among the negotiators today.
Read more...In a bit of synchronicity, two new papers confirm the long-held suspicion that Wall Street is sucking the life out of Main Street.
Read more...Things are not going well for Greece. It appears Syriza has largely capitulated to the demands of the Troika.
Read more...Greece is facing a cash shortfall even sooner than expected.
Read more...The ECB seems to be keeping Greece on a short leash by approving only a small increase in the ELA.
Read more...As Greece’s struggles to secure relief from impossible-to-pay-debt that served to prop up otherwise insolvent French and German banks, and to be permitted to implement measures to reduce distress and restore growth, more and more observers are recognizing that this is really a struggle over democratic self-control versus rule by an unaccountable technocracy with inflexible rules, using finance as their enforcement weapon. This speech in the European Parliament today by UKIP leader Neil Farage echoes some of the themes of Mathew Rose’s post. Rose also explains how the many Germans justify the counterproductive destruction of a society that they have turned into a vassal state.
Read more...Some Republican Senators are having a field day, and rightly so, over the fact that Obama’s attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch, looks to have allowed bank giant HSBC, and more important, its executives and officers, off vastly too easy in a massive money-laundering and tax evasion scheme. And where are the inquisitive Democratic senators to be found?
Read more...The negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup are on a worse trajectory than conventional wisdom would have you believe.
Read more...his is an excellent background piece on how Greece got where it is and how its various bailouts were structured. It also helps explain the past and current roles the various members of the Troika play and discusses the prospects for Greece achieving its aims.
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