On an iPad yet which makes it doubly hard.
The chairman went before the Senate today and spoke in code which as of this moment the market has deciphered to mean that when he can get all of his colleagues more or less on board he will engage in some more interest rate manipulation...ah...monetary easing which will of course result in absolutely nothing. Getting no real answer on that the Senators moved on to the latest political football, the L'Affair Libor and with one or two exceptions an appalling lack of understanding which of course no real surprise.
The thing that I don't get about all this is whether the Democrats, in their haste to wage another assault on the financial service industry have decided to throw The Suit overboard which appeared to be the case last week or portray him as a Hero for "informing" the Bank of England back in 2008 as to irregularities in Libor reporting. That seemed to be the theme today. The Chairman actually took a swipe at the Brits in saying that it was their job to do something. Now, now children.
Notably in the Chairman's testimony today was his remark that the method of determining Libor was "fundamentally flawed." Memo to the Chairman: It has always been fundamentally flawed. It has been fundamentally flawed for the past 50 years or so. Everyone in the business has known that; anyone who says they are surprised to hear that is either a dog catcher or a liar. If this nonsense is still around next week when I get back to a real Machine I'll put out a few war stories about rate settings Ihave known. In the mean time I Sincerely hope the news cycle dies in that period as the looming collapse of the fiscal state of the nation might, as an alternative, get some traction.
It's summer in Euroland but the only thing you really have to know is that the Greeks announced that they will be doing no more belt tiGhtening past what they have already done which was met with somewhat less that shocked disbelief by Greece watchers. Spanish two year yields fell nicely on more talk about support for the banks and as money gets pumped into the institutions German, Dutch and Austrians are grabbing as much of it as they can and running away. As predicted, as the interbank exposures are paid down with the new "capital" infusions, the interbank continues to remain moribund with only cross-border exposures moving...downward...and economies across the zone slide even deeper into recession. A couple of my more Liberal buddies in this town are hopping mad at the Euros: they think only in terms of them messing up the. Reelection campaign of The Leader. It's 101F today. Do you think it might be the heat?
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