ODDS AND SODS

Don't know where to begin so probably it's best to start where we left off.

Greek banks are open and Greece apparently has paid what it owes up to this point.  Of course, if you as a depositor need 500 Euros, that may take a couple of trips back to the teller's window or the cash machine, but hey, it buys the Ouzo.  The Greeks can now sit back and watch the Euros tear each other to shreds, agreeing only on the uselessness of the IMF, which has proven to be just that...useless.  Anyway, it's a start but the heavy lifting is in front of the Greek people for if the country is to work at all it will have to change the entire way it works right now, which was always the case but is now the reality.  Forget the debt owed...that will have it's own solution--or resolution if you prefer--it is the restructuring of the entire economy that will occupy the head-lines and dialog over the next six months if not six years.  Greece will have help in this if they so choose for what they are beginning has already begun in Portugal, Spain and Italy...and surprisingly in the north as well.  The times are different and if the EZ is to survive--and that remains an open question--structural change must come.

In that regard, there are "green shoots."  Little Paulie Krugman revealed today in the Times that he is terrified of having been proven wrong.  An all-out assault on the concept of the Euro which in his mind EVERYBODY on this side of the pond knew wouldn't work (he was not particularly vocal at the time of conception, you can look it up) and will eventually kill the EZ.  I mean sez he, look at what's happening in Greece and what happened in the Southern tier and what happened in Finland.  Wait...Finland?   Oh yeah, sez Paulie, Finland is in the tank and it's the Euro that did it.

Now Paulie is right in that the Euro is a lousy idea but it hasn't killed anything just yet.  It's made life harder to be sure but it was not the currency that caused the Great European Collapse (ex Germany) but the systemic structural deficiencies of the collective economies.  These are now being addressed.  As for Finland, Lil' Paulie seems to conveniently forget that the great Finnish success, for the most part, depended on two things; the enormous growth in consumer trade with Russia and Nokia.  Putin decided to invade the world and damn the economy and Apple killed Nokia and everything connected with it.  Steve Jobs...murderer.  But when Paulie starts getting scared thinking that things just might work out without anyone listening to him, it's time to start believing that things just might work out.  Unless, of course that this mob that has a history of trying to kill each other for the past thousand years reverts, which of course is the real problem.  Ain't that the damnedest.

On a darker note, the Federal Reserve today decided that the "systemic banks" it regulates need $12.5 billion in additional tier 1 capital with Morgan leading the way with the need for a 4.5% increase.  They also want to include the capital requirement test into future "stress guesses...ah...tests."  Yes sir re, as if there isn't enough uncertainty in the system, let's create some more.  Now we will have much more on this I am sure but what I've been trying to figure out is would there be enough capital in the system right now if the system hadn't been forced to pay extortion to the Holder Justice Department and every two-bit state regulator breathing over the past 8 years? Just another little something mixed in among the odds and sods in my mind today.