Y que dicen los libertarios?

hasta ahora la viene pegando, el tipo no es famoso, pero es un libertario puro y duro

Meanwhile, Greece is coming apart at the seams, not just economically but socially. Remember that as recently as the mid-70′s Greece was still involved in a hot civil war, and it won’t take much more to reignite that conflict. The media has described the confrontations that have already occurred as “protests”, but in fact they’ve been full-blown riots. Only our politically-correct media could describe people overturning cars and throwing Molotov cocktails as “protesters”. But Greece has so far seen only a tiny fraction of the pain that it will inevitably suffer when it is abandoned by the EU and defaults. There will be blood in the streets, literally.

And then there’s Italy, which just had a bond auction with disastrously bad bid-to-cover ratios and catastrophic yields. Italy is now grasping at straws, with the latest straw being the hope that China will bail out Italy by purchasing mountains of worthless Italian debt. But China has already made clear that it has no intention of doing that. What China intends to do is buy Italy, or at least the parts that are still worth buying. What money China decides to invest in Italy will be in the form of equities purchases, not debt purchases. To the extent that China buys any Italian debt, it will be a strategic move, in return for the EU granting China full trading status with the EU.

Meanwhile, the FANG nations are sitting on the sidelines watching all of this take place and no doubt wondering why they ever believed it was a good idea to tie themselves economically to the profligate, irresponsible southern-tier nations. And the UK is just happy that it was wise enough to refuse to join the eurozone in the first place, and considering what concessions it should demand in return for supporting the EU treaty changes that are currently being discussed. If the UK has any sense, it will distance itself as far as possible from the EU, negotiating common market status for itself with regard to the EU, but no financial or regulatory ties.

By definition, it’s difficult to predict what will happen in a disorderly Greek bankruptcy. Right now, Greece awaits the decision of the troika that will determine if Greece receives the next tranche of the current bailout. If that decision goes against Greece–which it should based on the facts but may not based on the politics–Greece no longer has anything to lose, and I would expect it to default within days of the decision. If the next tranche is approved, I would expect Greece to wait until it has its hands on that money and then default in short order.

The immediate effects of a Greek default will be catastrophic for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, all of which will topple quickly into formal default as their banks fail. France and Belgium won’t be far behind, immediately losing access to capital markets, leaving only the FANG nations standing. Those nations will be badly hurt, and will have little option but to re-establish their own local currencies. The euro will plummet through parity with the US dollar, and eventually settle at some small fraction of its current value. Investors in euro-denominated instruments will be wiped out.

Fortunately, the US and UK have limited exposure to euro sovereign and bank debt, but that doesn’t mean we’ll not be badly hurt. Our own industries will be hammered coming and going. Exports from the US and UK to the eurozone will fall off a cliff, as eurozone countries will no longer be able to afford US and UK products. And sales by US and UK companies to their local markets will also suffer as a flood of cheap eurozone products floods those local markets.

And the real bitch is that no one can do anything to stop all this from happening. As Milton Friedman and others warned at the time, this collapse was inevitable because the euro itself had and has a fatal design flaw. The next few years are going to be interesting times in the sense of that old Chinese curse.

me lo robe de ttgnet.com