Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I meant to work in something about the Sword of Damocles and Pandora's Jar, but I was in a terrible hurry. You'll have to take my word for that. I'm sorry :'-(

I have to stop commenting on my own posts. But I believe it was Owen who coined the phrase, "in for a pfennig, in for a Deutsche Mark Euro-denominated debt issue." Or something to that effect.

October is a famous month for financial armegeddons. I'm guessing the euro house of cards will fall sometime around then. It's all built on lies and when the winter months approach people start to pay attention.

We'll see.

I'm thinking that has to do, maybe (?), Drunk Pundit, with the September fiscal year end of governments (September for the UZ), though I haven't a clue as to the fiscal year ends of the european governments.

So interesting (to me) how Autumn has been tagged The Fall ...

(and you just further explained, my question as to that historic 'tag' (I think), Drunk Pundit. Thank you, very much!)

Auerback is working with out a complete wiring diagram here

Nothing about this entire soap opera over at the euro corral strikes me as
Much more then a squeeze play on various national budget policies
Specifically the transfer payment systems
Aka the social safety net and social wage or dividend system

yes Owen has a full set of diagrams

Why and how ?

bro Royal ..its always Royal

As he likes to say

If yer only
In for a piece
Your in for a short

Here that suggests those expecting a sudden calamity
And so short
Are in for a ...shock indeed

If they can activate ELA temporarily to save the eurozone-er, Greece, why can't the ECB just provide direct financing all the time?

On the other hand, I don't see what choice they had. Even w/ austerity Greece can't give the lenders what the want. It was either risk embarrasment by effectively showing private banks to be useless middlemen or let Greece default and potentially refute the nominal premise of a debt-based money supply. I think the chose the lesser evil.

Owen, Auerback's speculation can be on the money without excluding the squeeze play. The squeeze play itself is now more to blame for the crisis than the bubble collapse. The financial fiddle progression here isn't anything all that spectacular, Auerback's apparent surprise notwithstanding. I see it as an end-run around the posturing of Merkel et alia.

Peter, the ECB could and most likely will. On terms that include provisions for recourse to "Look, Ma! No hands!" emergency privatization and austerity schemes across the entire Eurozone. That's the way the zone has been trending.

"What I can say, however, is that it's hilariously funny."

If you don't happen to live here! erm: laugh

Steven, there is that. I've reserved my schadenfreude entirely for disgruntled technocrats.

Damned if I know how this could be untangled to the benefit of actual Europeans. For the Eurocracy to get anywhere worth going, as it exists, the ECB would have to have what amounts to a fairy tale conversion and discover a propensity for social democratic largesse. They don't look like the kind who can manage anything more than vicious IMF austerity— and will do so even if it winds up putting tanks in the streets.

What's Wrong With The Eurozone? is worth reading.

@Al: I'm in Berlin and we already had tanks in the streets (no, not *that*) a few years back... panzers parked in front of Synagogues. But I don't expect the IMF tanks any time soon.

What I find interesting, though (and I've discussed this with a couple of notoriously edgy academics, one of whom is Google bait for the secret police and will not get a mention here) is how economic "reportage" on the general topic is obviously there to drive certain market reactions. We can't believe it's legal.

Personally, my Wife and I earn our living (and support our kid) providing luxury services (she's a classical musician, I'm a composer)... incomes you'd expect to be the first to go if things were all that dire. We've squeaked through genuine wobbles but this doesn't feel like that. This feels like targeted wobbling. And a power struggle.

What confuses the matter further is the fact that the topic is popularly discussed in terms of nations, when the key players are, in fact, supra-national. Ie: I know total fuckall about what's really going on, and why... but the city is *flooded* with Spaniards. Laugh. Not so many Greeks...

...and then there's Iceland. Nothing in the "news" recently about good old Iceland, eh?

Steven, I'd hazard a guess that the periphery alone is on the menu and the "core" nations are relatively safe. Those with the wherewithal to relocate from the periphery are doing so.

Your insights on the targeted wobbling and the media manipulations are borne out, I believe, by the Counterpunch article. The leaks are clearly strategic. But this is puzzle, definitely. I doubt I can piece it together with any coherence.

One thing, though, I think you and your family are not at any great risk. Bad things happen when Germany is put on the rack.

Didn't Iceland toss a few neoliberals into prison?

They sure did, Al! Or that's what was reported

I think that partially answers one nagging question. Their economy has rebounded too. It would appear that telling the IMF to go fuck itself and imprisoning neoliberals is good for whatever ails you.

Shhhhh!

There's no danger of that happening here, unfortunately. The sincere reformers are toothless. There's no radical initiative able to coalesce. I've got some entertaining fantasies, if anyone wants them, but they're only blog fodder.

The best hope for the US is dismal indeed: Romney wins the election. The pwogs would focus less on defeating the left and more on preserving the remaining scraps of social insurance.

SA

The big corporates of the corral are after the transfer system
Much as here
Though the systems are more robust in the euro corral of course

But the beauty of this is precisely the popularly unreachable position of the ECB
As Al Greenspan sex
Make real day to day economic uber power unelectable and alls well

Star chamber -macronomincs

--------------------------
Al u of course can trust Royal on this

The only move that really could get something going
Is for the pigs to go Iceland on the whole gig

Blow the euro to he'll
But humanist considerations suggest that might prove too drastic
To be attempted
So long as national safety nets exist

There's the irony off noticed

The sagely nets hold the exploitation systems together
And yet
Some of The big cross border corporate arbitrage players

emboldened by success pruning S nets in hard times
want to uproot their own trees of life so to speak

Peter you got it right

However there is a way to both cut the S net back euro corral wide
While retaining enough hocus pocus to keep the rubes benighted about the gimmicks here

Think about the ECB and the zone-corral member national banks as our fed
With its regional outlets

But without the super national transfer and tax system

Like the supra state T and T system set up by Frank Roosevelt

steven, i'm reading a little here this morning ,late now . .., only a little , on way out , and to a meeting in another part of this walk up later , i see your mention of what you and your companion do , and that you are living over near davidly , i have a voice and a body in dance that is towering in it's able to move mountains in a crowd , more on what i mean with saying this and what i am up to here where i am in time / i responded to your comment in on the .. box .. . post ,