MIchael Lewis on Greece Plus a Note to EU Readers

     No one delves into capitalism like Michael Lewis, including us.  From Liar's Poker, based on his experiences at Salomon Brothers, to Flash Boys, about which Bloodbath Mary Jo White at the Securities and Excuses Commission infamously felt compelled to respond with, "The markets are not rigged", Lewis has turned financial journalism into an art form, at which he may well be the sole master.  Whether your tastes turn to Moneyball, his one-of-a-kind take on Billy Beane's revolutionary new-math approach to our National Pastime, or The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, a wrapt nuts-and-bolts look within the Wall Street/MainStreet mechanisms cranking out the Financial Holocaust of 2008, be assured, Lewis deftly delivers the real story in ways his reader will totally understand.

     Recently we clicked onto the latest Lewis masterpiece, a short Vanity Fair piece entitled Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds, anticipating a seminal work on the tragedy unfolding there, and the author did not let us down.  We waited a while passing along the link to our valued subscribers because MacDougal came away from this tale with the following insight, but couldn't quite put it into words at first.

     Readers, what we have here is the aftermath of liberal Chicago-style politics taken to a world-class extreme; read up and heed:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010

NOTE TO EU READERS:

     Staff just received the following notice, posted to our blog website after we signed in this morning:

European Union laws require you to give European visitors information about cookies used in your blog.  In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent.

As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies.

You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays.  If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you.

     If you are an EU reader, be advised that no one at The MacDougal Post has any idea what a cookie is, does not understand the above reference to Google Analytics and AdSense cookies, couldn't employ other cookies because like we just $#&*ing said, we don't know what this notice is going on about, and could care less, and do not live on your silly $#&*ed-up continent anyway.

      From time to time, we do buy chocolate chip cookies, mostly at Fry's, a popular supermarket here at Pancho's Crossing, and one or more of us may well be munching away on a chocolate chip while we write a blog.  If that offends you, get the $#&* outta here and go read someone else's blog.

     $#&*ing EU.  Who the $#&* do these commie &^%$#)($ think they are?

The Need for a Militia in Your Hometown Just Got Obvious

     In the wake of Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez's deadly assault on a neighborhood storefront military recruiting center, following years of abject failure by the Barry Soetoro White House to take any kind of appropriate action whatsoever against widening gains by a lunatic Islamic war machine in what can only be described as Mohammed's bloody, centuries-old battle against Moses and Jesus, armed patriots across the nation have had to step up to defend their own local recruiters from further attack.

     We support this positive development and call for Soetoro's impeachment and an end to the treasonous immigration policies he and his ilk have been using to spread this Looney-Tunes warfare onto our shores.

     One account of the latest goings-on can be found at the following link:

http://news.yahoo.com/tennessee-shootings-armed-citizens-guard-recruiters-055810618.html

Will Sweden Fall, then All Europe?

     Wherever Islam takes over, its barbaric ideology demands that everyone be pulled in, killing all who refuse.  Once Muslims swarm a neighborhood, the tactics are as brutal and inhuman as that sounds.  This horrific threat now darkens Europe, imminently so in Sweden.  America needs to confront these realities and incorporate an understanding of the inevitable consequences into its own political consciousness.  Here are some YouTube links to help get you started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbdZV9PMzMw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thXCb1VUBDg&spfreload=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHsXWYaTlik&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlbBOHOI-Ls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhstVDWsetM


      

China

     The Shanghai Composite, held as comparable to our S & P 500 by the totally clueless, has tumbled 32% since June 12, including 6% yesterday after a late bounce from down 8% earlier in the session, while over in Shenzhen, that market, spoken of as their NASDAQ where complete imbeciles are want to run on with their imbecilic analogies, is down 41% over those 25 days.  Around a quarter of the companies listing shares on the Shanghai have suspended trading in them, and government officials have announced an investigation into short-sellers.

     Explanations for the bloodletting vary, but for years it's seemed to us that gambling over "common stock" in enterprises controlled by an arm of a communist government with the pinko mindset to build giant cities that nobody lives in may have something to do with the sense of urgency compelling those dice-rollers to get the hell outta Dodge now and again, and now will invariably look like a really, really good time whenever the question comes up.

Greece

     We read that bank offices are now closed throughout Greece, but bankers are graciously letting customers stand in line all day to withdraw up to 60 Euros every 24 hours from ATM machines that, as one would expect, add to your banking experience by periodically running out of money.  Reliable sources hold that the largest institutions are insolvent, and Andreas Andreadis, President of the Greek Tourism Confederation, just opined that tourists "obviously" need to bring cash with them if vacationing there.  Such may not be much of an issue, however, as hotel bookings are reported to have dropped to zero pretty much everywhere.

     Minutes ago, we were informed that plans are afoot to "bail-in" the Greek banking system, that is, tap bank deposits to cover the losses currently being improperly carried on industry books as assets under the kind of dubious terms these disreputable charlatans use to describe their worthless paper, such as "questionable" or "problem" or "non-current" loans, whenever the scoundrels want to avoid reporting inconvenient write-downs.  If the enormity of that problem turns out to be as high as 40% of the portfolios, as one estimate has it, depositors could be facing haircuts in the order of 15-25%.

     A bail-in like that would turn accounts of E100,000 into accounts of something like E75,000, with the difference lost and gone forever, akin to what went down in Cyprus a while back.

     Be forewarned.  This is what happens when the kind of wastrels we see in the Barry Soetoro White House and his commie-minded buddies on the Hill run your country into the ground with their wild-spending ways.
     

The Curious Case of P. R. Bonds

     Most debtors unable to make loan payments run for protection under one bankruptcy provision or another, usually meaning their creditors and stockholders get ripped off while one way or another they keep their jobs.  Thing is, it's always you and I who take these hits.  As shareholders, bondholders, or depositors in financial institutions lending our hard-earned money to these rapscallions, nobody protects us.  Recent market meltdowns have shown how much you truly are at risk simply by keeping a savings account basically anywhere these days.

     Should a nation with its own sovereign currency run into fiscal trouble, leaders can paper over the mess by simply printing more money, thereby flooding the land - and Government coffers - with more than enough inflation-driven cash to cover the old debt.  Think repaying our own 1960's Great Society deficit spending with 1985 dollars.  Piece of cake.

     As pretty near everybody in the civilized world and Iceland knows by now, Greece can't print squat because it got talked into using this goofy multinational Euro, controlled by Frenchmen and Germans (and a few cronies who can stand being in the same room with Frenchmen and Germans) instead of their foresaken Drachma.

     Which gets us to P. R. bonds.  As an unincorporated territory, whatever that is, we're told that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has no bankruptcy mechanism, meaning we could finally get our money back from somebody missing payments which the Commonwealth is about to do on its bonds.  Even if it's only unincorporated territories, of which there are just twelve, that's somebody.  Screw with us, Midway Atoll, and we will rip every last dollar out of your conniving hands.  Or American Samoa or Kingman Reef or Wake Island.  We could lend Guam all the money the Guamians want and know we would collect it all if anybody there tried to stiff us.

     Thing is, Puerto Rico says it's broke.  That's okay.  If they're really broke, pay us in rum.  Nobody at the Post cares if we get paid in rum.  Or baseball players.  Send us whatever you've got, Puerto Rico. We'll buy Puerto Rican bonds if you pay them off in Don Q and Bacardi.  Or a lefty pitching prospect with some serious heat.

     It's about time somebody causing the losses took them instead of us.

     Okay, enough fantasizing.  We read that Puerto Rico has already asked Congress for bankruptcy legislation and just hired a guy who helped Detroit with theirs.

     We don't have to tell you how this is really going to end for us.  Well, those of us holding Puerto Rican bonds anyway.