All In

It's Always Been About Saving The Banks And Their Shareholders

There's been a lot of quick-take summing-up about the way in which Our Great Leaders all around the globe have chosen to deal with the titanic amount of toxic debt created by America's financial whorehouse and casino community, giving the rest of the world so many more reasons to love us and want us to be carpet-bombed have soft lives and treats.

Krug Man did it the other day. He said what has happened in the current European debt situation, "it turns out, is that by going on the Euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

The Euro represents not just a currency, but also, too, the idea of A United Europe. If the Euro dissolves, everyone goes back to a multi-currency system. There will be chaos in the international markets -- how do you value shares of Grosser Hund Am Tisch GMBH™ In Neues Duetschmarks? In Francs? In Dollars? In the Japanese and Chinese Yen? What are the relative values of all the new (old) currencies? Tourists, on vacation abroad; what are all their British and Irish Pounds worth in Drachmas, or Thai Bhat?

Even more important, what are all those U.S. and Greek and Italian Treasuries worth in this newly-valued world? Ones the Chinese and the Saudis and the Japanese have (in the case of U.S. Treasuries) been buying like crazy for twenty years? What about all the major currencies each country's central bank has purchased; suddenly, what's it all worth? What happens in companies large and small, from Lisbon to Warsaw, who all have contracts with buyers and suppliers, in Euros?

Well, the European Union headquarters in Brussels would remain open ... for a while, before it's sold to Rupert Murdoch; because the political European Union will effectively be broken, and Konrad Adenauer will roll over in his grave.

Therefore, the major players in Europe have gone All In, staking everything (including their own political futures) on the fate of the Euro.

And that is why the Austerity demands, which accompany loans to Greece, and now Italy, and who knows who's next, must be accepted. If the populations in Europe just submit to having the quality of their lives reduced for more than a decade to save rotten-to-the-core financial institutions (and The lucky One-Per-Centers) -- then what Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy and the international Bankster Brigade are doing might work. We'll all be living in yurts, watching our children play with toys made of dried animal dung.

If the people don't submit, and instead complain and protest, and riot, and eventually vote out the governments who are in favor of saving rotten-to-the-core financial institutions -- then the Euro is toast; the global financial structure goes all higgledy-piggeldy; and we will all be living in yurts watching our children play with toys made of dried animal dung.

A lot of people, such as The Krugster, see what all this is about, and have summed it up pretty succinctly -- it's all about saving the banks, their shareholders, and bondholders.

So, too, also The Great Curmudgeon:

Consensus

Well the consensus seems to be we need to just install bankers as the leaders of all the countries, and the only way any of us can survive is if all the richest countries of the world are turned into 3rd world hellholes after the middle class gives all of their money to rich people.

The frustrating thing is that we could just give free money to rich people. Every time banksters light a pile of money on fire, the ECB and the BOE and the Fed can just say, oh, no worries chap, here's another pile. At least try to get down to the dog track this week instead of just having a bonfire with thousand dollar bills. This isn't my preferred option, but it's a better option than making poor and middle class people suffer just because.

by Atrios at 09:00
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