Display:
banks are buying dollars rather than borrowing them - this is highly unusual behavior - and at some point they'll sell them back.

Plus, there's a kind of revenge Schadenfreude at play: the Anglos have not been happy to be mocked or criticized or blamed, and are keen to point out that things are not doing great in Europe (which fits in a "normal" narrative anyway) - so right now the story is that Europe is in a worse shape than the US: its banks are more leveraged, just as full of toxic waste, and with weak, uncoordinated, hapless governments trying to do something about them.

This flies in the face of reality in many ways:

  • European institutions and governments have acted: the ECB has been near flawless, and it's hard to say that the part nationalizations we've seen so far are worse than the No Banker Left Behind Paulson Plan;
  • The US economy is going to crash violently: there's no way large numbers of households can survive the current housing meltdown, unemployment is shooting up, and activity in finance and construction, the two mainstays of past "growth", is, how to put it delicately, stalling. They still need to borrow massive amounts from foreign creditors while servicing ballooning liabilities;
  • meanwhile, the eurozone has no obvious imbalances, the countries that do have a housing bubble are either very small (Ireland) have healthy public finances (Ireland and Spain) or strong banks (Spain), while the others have no reason to worry at all about such a crash. The economy is much less dependent on finance as an activity (they need banks, but that's going to be solved very soon by de facto or outright nationlaisation) and they produce goods that are attractive to the parts of the world that do have money.
  • inflation is more of a risk in the US than in europe in the medium term.


In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 07:50:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I agree, as far as I can tell, that Europe is in much better shape economically than the U.S. (to which the yen seems overly tied), which is why I had been waiting so long for a good time to convert savings into euros.

The unbelievable and annoyingly relentless rise of the euro seemed to bear this out -- and made it seem ever more hopeless that it would drop to more "sensible" levels again.

Looking at the big picture you've painted, I'll choose to continue having faith that in the long mid run, Europe is the best bet economically.

Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of this --

Fran:

After days of squabbling, the leaders of the largest European economies vowed to work together to stop a growing financial panic

-- and this --

dvx:

British officials were furious with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. They said she gave no indication of the move at a summit in Paris on Saturday designed to coordinate a European response to the economic crisis.

-- was a bit unsettling, on top of all the sudden bad economic news in Europe that seemed to explode out of nowhere.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco (cowannar at gmail punkt com) on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 09:16:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I guess there are quite a lot of relieved ETers rating this comment of yours in numbers. "Oh if J thinks we're going to squeak through this, then I might go out for another bottle of Caol Ila"

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 01:26:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Shit. And I've been learning to ferment shark all day.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 03:14:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Was it a banker?

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 03:26:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
They said it was a lone shark. Does that make it a banker?
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 03:42:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Lawyers are tastier. They come pre-fermented..

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 03:50:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hence the High Court.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 03:57:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Sharks never eat lawyers: professional courtesy, they say..

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.
by Bernard on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 04:11:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Banker Shark? Relative to the hammerhead, I believe.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
by geezer in Paris (risico at wanadoo(flypoop)fr) on Mon Oct 6th, 2008 at 03:51:43 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:
Login
. Make a new account
. Reset password
Occasional Series