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Wednesday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: Greece eyes 162 bln euro of German war reparations; Volcker's money printing misgivings'; Central banks are 'carpet bombing zombie economies with cash; Bitcoin and game theory; Dilbert

Wednesday's Top 10 with NZ Mint: Greece eyes 162 bln euro of German war reparations; Volcker's money printing misgivings'; Central banks are 'carpet bombing zombie economies with cash; Bitcoin and game theory; Dilbert
<a href="http://bit.ly/107VHl0">Five key reasons people buy gold and silver</a>

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 am in association with NZ Mint.

As always, we welcome your additions in the comments below or via email to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.

See all previous Top 10s here.

My must read today is #9 on why budget deficits aren't so bad. Worth a read. I used to think they were. Now, maybe not so much. 

1. 'Don't mention the war' - Der Spiegel reports on a Greek government inquiry that has found Germany still owes Greece (not the other way around) billions in reparations for damage caused in the Second World War.

How convenient.

And how explosive this might be. 

The officials involved spent months scouring the archives and came up with a figure of €162 billion or 80% of Greek GDP. Now the government is not so sure it will ask the Germans for the money in case they get grumpy. Too late now, thanks to a leak...

Compounding interest is indeed the most powerful force in the universe.

Here's the detail.

A top-secret report compiled at the behest of the Finance Ministry in Athens has come to the conclusion that Germany owes Greece billions in World War II reparations. The total could be enough to solve the country's debt problems, but the Greek government is wary of picking a fight with its paymaster.

The headline on Sunday's issue of the Greek newspaper To Vima made it clear what is at stake: "What Germany Owes Us," it read. The article below outlined possible reparations payments Athens might demand from Germany resulting from World War II. A panel of experts, commissioned by the Greek Finance Ministry, spent months working on the report -- an 80-page file classified as "top secret."

2. 'Central banks are no longer central banks' - CNN reports former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, the man who slayed America's inflation dragon in the early 1980s, has come out with some strong comments on the deluge of money printing now going on in the Northern Hemisphere.

Central banks, including the Fed, could eventually inflict more harm by "what they're doing with their portfolio to save the world economy," said Volcker. "Central banks are no longer central banks," said Volcker. "I think it gets dangerous when they lose sight of the basic function of the central bank."

Volcker said that rather than trying to stay out of the market as much as possible and simply tinker from the sidelines, central banks have been aggressively trying to influence economic growth and even inflation. "The central bank is not an all-powerful tool," he warned.

3. 'Carpet bombing Zombie economies' - Here's the Danish Central Bank Governor Lars Rohde telling Bloomberg he also is worried about inflation and asset bubbles in particular. He should know though. He has set Denmark's official deposit rate at below 0%.

Policy makers steering the global economy have pumped the financial system with so much liquidity that any exit risks popping potential asset bubbles or stunting a recovery, Danish central bank Governor Lars Rohde said.

“The risk is we stay in this climate too long and that the carpet bombing of liquidity spurs inflation,” Rohde, 59, said in an April 5 interview from his office in Copenhagen. Though there are no current signs of consumer price inflation “there is inflation, perhaps a bubble, in some asset classes,” he said.

“The risk is that we’ll have companies that are only able to survive because interest rates are extremely low. But these are companies that ought to have gone down,” he said. “We’re seeing projects going through that wouldn’t be sustainable at higher interest rates. We’re seeing zombie companies and zombie economies because of the extremely low interest rates.”

4. Lower US food prices in real terms - This table from AEI is interesting in that it points out US food prices in real terms are mostly lower than they were 20 years ago.

However, it's clear when you look at the detail that most of those prices are subsidised by enormous government handouts.

I'm always stunned at how much big US food conglomerates get in subsidies for corn and, in particular, high fructose corn syrup.

5. Off the reservation in 'Passageway business' - Reuters has an excellent backgrounder here on China's shadow banking system, which we should all keep an eye on.

The detail on 'passageway business' is a tad concerning. China's shadow banks are now worth 44% of GDP.

China's banks are feeding unwanted assets into the country's "shadow banking system" on an unprecedented scale, reinforcing suspicions that bank balance sheets reflect only a fraction of the actual credit risk lurking in the financial system.

The key question is no longer how much risk banks are carrying. Rather, it's how many risky loans have been shifted to the lightly regulated shadow banking institutions - mainly trust companies, brokerages and insurance companies. In 2010 and 2011, analysts began fretting about the large volume of loans to local governments and state firms - doled out as part of China's massive economic stimulus plan from 2008 to 2010 - that were due to mature in 2012. But the wave of defaults never materialized, in large part because banks, working with trusts and brokerages, provided fresh funds to enable borrowers to refinance their debt.

Industry executives say at least half of trust company assets and 80 percent of brokeages' entrusted funds are related to so-called "passageway business." In passageway deals, trusts and brokerages cooperate with banks to act as passive reservoirs for loans that banks originate but cannot keep on their own balance sheets without running afoul of lending quotas, capital adequacy requirements, and loan-to-deposit ratios.

6. First there was LIBOR - Now is it swaps too? Bloomberg reports America's CFTC regulator is investigating allegations of the maniupulation of a key interest rate swaps index.

Remember, our Commerce Commission is investigating the possible mis-selling of such swaps to farmers in New Zealand and many businesses and banks here rely on the pricing for these swaps.

The CFTC plans to interview about a dozen current and former brokers at ICAP’s Jersey City, New Jersey, office as well as dealers that contribute prices used to set the daily ISDAfix swap rates, said three of the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. The regulator is probing whether ICAP brokers are colluding with dealers who stand to profit from inaccurate quotes, including failing to update published market prices after trades occur, one of the people said.

The ISDAfix levels, which the Federal Reserve includes in a daily report on money-market rates, are used by everyone from corporate treasurers to money managers to determine borrowing costs and to value much of the $379 trillion of outstanding interest-rate swaps globally.

7. More on bitcoin - Here's a useful backgrounder from FTAlphaville on the amazing bitcoin phenomenon. I'm still getting my head around it, but it certainly makes you think about the nature of money.

Although it does seem like a currency that is one hacking episode away from oblivion.

The first way is to create or “mine” Bitcoins for yourself, but the downside here is that it takes a lot of computer power (and know-how) to do this effectively*. The amount of CPU dedicated to Bitcoin creation is in a sense directly proportional to the number of Bitcoins in circulation. The more Bitcoins exist, the greater the CPU power needed to mine new coins — meaning there is only an incentive to mine new coins if and when the Bitcoin price is high enough to cover your computer costs.

There is theoretically also a possibility to hack, replicate or steal existing independent Bitcoin warehouses. However, there is a bit of game theory involved in the programme which encourages everyone to play the rules. The game theory works on the basis that if a major hacking did take place, this would only knock confidence in the system, crashing the price of all units, including the stolen ones, rendering the efforts to steal them pointless in the first place. All in all, there should always be a greater incentive to mine new coins and play by the rules — especially, if you have the tech know-how to hack stuff in the first place — than to hack or destabilise the system.

8. If only we could eat Bacon all of the time - Apropo of not much except it made me chuckle, a new fast food joint that only offers bacon has opened in Toronto called Rashers. HT BusinessInsider.

Warning: This Top 10 item is not Kosher.

It’s Rashers’ mobile strategy, however, that really brings home the bacon.  If customers can prove — via a smartphone app —  that they have traveled a route around Toronto in the shape of a pig, they can claim 30 per cent off their next order.

Rashers also uses more traditional marketing techniques: The restaurant recently posted fliers featuring tear-off strips (of “bacon,” naturally), offering a free bacon sandwich for anyone who brought one in.

9. 'A balanced budget is an extreme outcome' - Here's Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post detailing why voters (and therefore most politicians) seem so obsessed with getting rid of government budget deficits, and why they needn't worry so much.

The 90 percent figure comes courtesy of Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart in their paper “Growth in a Time of Debt.” They found that debt loads above 90 percent were associated 1 percent lower growth rates. That’s pretty bad. But there are a lot of potential pitfalls in this analysis. “If one reads their paper carefully, it is clear that Reinhart and Rogoff picked the 90% figure almost arbitrarily,” Yale’s Robert Shiller haswritten. “They chose, without explanation, to divide debt-to-GDP ratios into the following categories: under 30%, 30-60%, 60-90%, and over 90%. And it turns out that growth rates decline in all of these categories as the debt-to-GDP ratio increases, only somewhat more in the last category.”

Shiller, John Irons and Josh Bivens, and Mike Konczal have also noted that’s it’s much more likely that causality runs in the other direction. That is, countries have high debt-to-GDP ratios because they have slow growth, rather than the other way around. This makes sense. Slow growth means lower tax revenue, greater social service payouts, and a whole lot of other factors that contribute to increased deficits and debt. It’s possible to tell a story where high debt hurts growth, but it’s much less intuitive and only holds when interest rates are high and choking off private investment.

10. Totally Jon Stewart on Barack Obama's still-born budget proposal.

 

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21 Comments

7. Bitcoins

Bitcoins are a way to store/transfer your money outside a shaky Banking system(see Cyprus/OBR/depositor haircuts/templates for banks in trouble)

The basic foundation of a bank revolves around deposits. The recent actions of the IMF/EU are decreasing peoples trust in Banks. This is partly why Bitcoins are getting popular at the moment.    

 

 

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re bitcoin

All in all, there should always be a greater incentive to mine new coins and play by the rules

 

mwahuahahahahahah.  First one to do it wins.  Big. That is an incentive that I think will be hard to ignore.

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2. Money printing

 

Japanese Money Flooding European Bond Markets   The mystery, at least in my mind, of the rising Euro is now clear. Outflows of Japanese institutional money is pouring into the European bond markets in search of higher yield. 

Consider the following - the yield on a 10 year Japanese government bond has fallen to 0.525%. Yes, that is not a typographical error. If you buy one of those things, you are locking money up in an IOU for TEN YEARS to obtain a half a percentage point of interest. If that is not bad enough, the underlying currency is also freefalling in value. Now, who in the world would want to do that besides the monetary authorities in Japan who are becoming and likely are going to end up staying that way, as the largest, if not sole buyer of Japanese government debt?

Believe it or not, with all the massive problems in Spain and Italy, the yield on the Spanish 10 year bond has now fallen to its LOWEST level in a year. Italian bond yields are down to 4.36%! Dow Jones is reporting that last Friday and this Monday, the yield on the 10 year notes of France, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium hit RECORD LOWS! This is Japanese money fleeing into European bonds.

http://traderdannorcini.blogspot.ca/2013/04/japanese-money-flooding-european-bond.html

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It's the positive carry in every sense Japanese carry trade - both the ECB and Federal Reserve called in their markers to get Japanese taxpayers to bolster the local printing programmes. More the merrier.
 
Bill Gross was not slow to take advantage:
 
Bill Gross raised the holdings of Treasuries held in his $289 billion flagship fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. to 33 percent of assets last month, the highest level since July.

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New Scientist reports on an analysis of bitcoin exchanges. Take home- whatever you think of the currency, the locations holding and trading are none too reliable (ignoring the external hacks of sites).

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/04/bitcoin.html

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Are "passageway deals" the bank term for "skeletons in the closet"????

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BitCoin's are quickly becoming just another tradeable (manipulatable) commodity - it's hope of being a currency is now being dashed on the rocks of speculation.

Once the first BC ETF arrives - it's done for and people are already talking about it!

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"“I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife,” said Jacques Chirac, a future French president in 1987. He should have. Look at France now."
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/04/euro-skepticism-was-thatchers-most.html#uAA3QHHuKgv5CHm6.99

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Yes, the stupidity of playing the woman instead of the ball.  The fact someone is a housewife is irrelevant, it only matters whether what they say is true or not.

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Unilateral reparations - brilliant!

A solution to all financial problems.

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#3

When a bubble bursts it deflates to zero = ruined, destroyed, unrepairable

A new bubble can be created from zero inflation

When there is a collapse it can be total or partial and can be rebuilt

Inflation rises prices and deflation decreases prices.

 

Are house prices

In a bubble that are about to burst?

About to collapse?

Inflated and about to face deflation?

Or whatever combination you prefer

Equity markets are also said to go into bubbles, but, like property, never collapse to zero. Property and Equity markets, like all consumer products are influenced by supply and demand. As such too much demand causes inflation.

The rise in equity markets, over time, is due to inflation.

 

All this QE is increasing the demand side of the investment markets. We can, and will have, inflation in the investment area while sluggish or deflation in all other areas of the market.

 

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http://www.boombustblog.com/blog/item/9054-another-day-another-irish-bank-busted-concealing-encumbrances-to-assets

 

EU Says Bank Money's Safe After Threats To Take It, Ireland Still Looks Next Up, Contagion Ready To Spread To Bigger Countries

(Reuters) - Big bank depositors could take a hit under planned European Union law if a bank fails, the EU's economic affairs chief Olli Rehn said on Saturday, but noted that Cyprus's bailout model was exceptional.

Okay, I get it now. Cyprus was exceptional, it's just that we are preparing for exceptional to be codified into law to make it common place. Of course!

"Cyprus was a special case ... but the upcoming directive assumes that investor and depositor liability will be carried out in case of a bank restructuring or a wind-down," Rehn, the European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, said in a TV interview with Finland's national broadcaster YLE.

The only thing "special case" about Cyprus was that it was first!

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indeed it is Mike B

 a bit like having the corpse on the table while watching the artificials do the work

pump it in , let it out. pump, exhale, pump deflate

The intrigued speculative  get to look upon this

 As, life as we know it .....Jim.

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Hugh

Please keep your comments on topic or at least tangentially connected to the links in the Top 10.

This just feels like spam and I notice it has been copied and pasted into other comment streams too.

cheers

Bernard

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Savers to see deposits stolen again!

"Slovenia insisted on Tuesday that it could avoid an international bailout as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned Ljubljana to tackle more rapidly a “severe banking crisis” whose costs it might have underestimated".
 http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/04/slovenia-rules-out-bailout-translation.html#MYotPYeq5QfXul0F.99

Cyprus was just a warmup!

 

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"France, the eurozone's second biggest economy, has been singled out for harsh criticism by the European Commission with a warning that low French competitiveness and high debt threaten the EU's single currency".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9984614/French-failure-to-reform-threatens-euro-warns-Brussels.html

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The finger pointing and blame game seems to be heating up.....look at those cracks widen.  I think the french know full well they will be supported because any serious weakness in/for france will finish the EU.  Problem with "competitivness is of course a) there needs to be demand and b) its a race to the bottom...

regards

 

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"we have once again arrived back at that can"
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article39876.html

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Good link...and I agree on those profit margins....they will drop back especially given 70% of the US economy is consumerism....and if many americans are finding it hard spending is going to stay down. So you can only do the short term gain for so long....

 

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Good link...and I agree on those profit margins....they will drop back especially given 70% of the US economy is consumerism....and if many americans are finding it hard spending is going to stay down. So you can only do the short term gain for so long....

 

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The status quo banking system has a direct interest in removing competition in the form of digital currency such as BitCoin. Therefore the hoped for protection against hacking, because it would devalue it for all owners of BitCoin, looks a bit thin. Wouldn't  this  be the same as the obvious manipulation in the gold market

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