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As Soon As The First Nation Leaves, A Trickle Will Turn To A Cascade…

If enacting a levy on Cypriot depositors was a call for a bank run, then saying that the actions in Cyprus are a “template” for future recapitalisations in other Eurozone countries — as the Dutch Euro Group President Jeroen Djisselbloem did yesterday —  was screaming it from the rooftops awash in a demented stupour, drunk on bullshitty Smets-Wouters DSGE and the ridiculous notion that the Euro is sustainable.

Dijsselbloem

This question, I think, needs answering:

Dijsselbloem is yet to respond to the question, other than to say that his claim that it was a “template” did not in fact mean that he meant that it was a template. 

Tyler Durden jokes that the only conceivable reason for this could be an insane pseudo-Keynesian conspiracy to trick people and businesses holding cash to go out and spend or invest it, thus raising aggregate demand and generating recovery:

Last week, when we commented on the absolutely idiotic Eurogroup proposal (now voted down and replaced by an equally idiotic “bank resolution” proposal which will see uninsured deposits virtually wiped out) to tax uninsured and insured deposits, we jokingly suggested that this may be merely the latest ploy by the legacy status quo to achieve one simple thing: force depositors across the continent (and soon, world) to pull their money out of a malevolent, hostile banking system and push that money into stocks, or simply to spend it.

Given the utter folly of the levy itself and the subsequent comments, this might as well be as good an explanation as any. The easiest and quickest way to destroy the fractional financial system is to convince depositors around Europe or the world that their deposits are under threat. The European policy elite has displayed a slavish tendency to protect bondholders from losses, but not depositors upon whom the banking system is utterly dependent. If bondholders do not buy bonds, then it becomes harder for governments to finance themselves (although it must be noted that around the world, interest rates are at all-time-lows in every developed country with its own currency, suggesting a run on bonds by bond vigilantes is a relatively small possibility). But if depositors withdraw their money en mass, the banking system collapses.

I believe that this slavish devotion to preventing losses is fundamentally unhealthy, as capitalism without the potential for loss is robbed of any internal stabilisation mechanism. If bondholders or depositors cannot lose their money, they have no incentive to be prudent with it. But with the danger of a Eurozone bank run looming putting bondholders ahead of depositors is unhealthier still. Protecting government borrowing at the expense of confidence in the banking system is a dire error.

And it is not like there is really a hard choice between the interests of bondholders and depositors. If the European policy elite would deal with the huge social upheaval that the Euro system has created — namely, very high unemployment, youth unemployment and slack resources following the burst housing bubble in the periphery — then both depositors and bondholders could sleep easier at night. All this would take is a firm, long-term commitment from domestic and supernational governments to lending, tax incentives and spending to support business growth. A Europe that is growing, producing additional goods, services, energy and resources that people want and need will be far more stable than one that is shrinking and weakened (in both supply and demand) by forced and centrally-planned fiscal consolidation imposed by the policy elite. People want jobs, contrary to the assumptions of certain neoclassical economists who believe that all unemployment is voluntary. People want business, not to be subject to humiliation and subjugation to meet an arbitrary debt target set by delusional central planners actively weakening economic activity. And, the only way for peripheral nations to get this is through leaving the Euro, which may very well soon start to happen. And once it does, a trickle will turn to a cascade as the leavers begin to quickly recover from their Merkel-inflicted wounds.

In the long run, 25% unemployment in Spain and Greece (as well as elevated unemployment throughout the periphery) will come back to hurt the core, whether that is through weak demand for core-produced goods and services, social unrest, Eurozone-rupture, etc. And Dijsellbloem may yet see how foolish his template was.

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Whose Insured Deposits Will Be Plundered Next?

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According to Zero Hedge, it could be Spain:

 Spain, it would appear, has changed constitutional rules to enable a so-called ‘moderate’ levy on deposits.

New legislation in New Zealand suggests that depositor funds could be used to bail out banks there, too.

Far more worrying for American and British depositors though is this paragraph Golem XIV brings up from a joint Bank of England and FDIC paper from 2012 which points to the possibility of using deposit insurance funds to bail out illiquid banks:

The U.K. has also given consideration to the recapitalization process in a scenario in which a G-SIFI’s liabilities do not include much debt issuance at the holding company or parent bank level but instead comprise insured retail deposits held in the operating subsidiaries. Under such a scenario, deposit guarantee schemes may be required to contribute to the recapitalization of the firm, as they may do under the Banking Act in the use of other resolution tools. The proposed RRD also permits such an approach because it allows deposit guarantee scheme funds to be used to support the use of resolution tools, including bail-in, provided that the amount contributed does not exceed what the deposit guarantee scheme would have as a claimant in liquidation if it had made a payout to the insured depositors.

Of course, if deposit insurance money is used as a resolution tool to bail out a bank which then goes on to fail anyway (as we have already seen multiple times since 2008 — a bank receives a large liquidity injection, and goes onto fail anyway) depositors could end up moneyless.

As Golem XIV notes:

The new system makes the Deposit Guarantee fund available for use as bail out money.

The rationale is that if using your deposit guarantee fund for propping up the bank ‘saves’ the bank from collapse then you wouldn’t need that deposit guarantee would you? This overlooks the one lesson we have all learned from the bank bail outs of the last 5 years, that the bail outs are never, ever, ever, a one off. The first one fails to save the bank as does the second and third and and and.

So if I have read the above correctly – the new system raids the Deposit Protection scheme, gives it to the bank instead of you  and when that fails to save the bank…then what? The bank fails again and there is no money left in the Deposit Guarantee scheme.

Now, in the case of this kind of scenario actually happening, it seems probable that governments and central banks would try to replenish the deposit insurance fund. Whether the fund would be replenished to its full extent, or whether insured depositors would suffer an effective haircut remains to be seen.

These kinds of policy suggestions coming from governments and central banks are extremely worrying for depositors, because it implies that what is happening to Cypriot depositors and Cypriot banks could be forced onto British and American depositors. In a worst-case-scenario, criminally minded bankers (of which there seem to be many) could even use this provision to intentionally run off with deposits.

We know that the TBTF banking sector (or G-SIFI’s — global systemically important financial institutions — as they are now known) remains fragile, over-connected and dependent on insider advantages. That means that over the next few years, it remains possible that there could be another severe banking crisis in Britain or America or both.

Just what in the world do financial regulators think they are doing even implying that depositor guarantee funds could be used to bail out banks under such an eventuality? Such a recommendation — and the attendant possibility of insured depositor haircuts — could severely impact confidence in the banking sector, just as it has done in Cyprus. The possibility that insurance money may go down the toilet to bail out illiquid banks will make some uneasy to invest their money in the banks. If a severe banking crisis looms, it could lead to bank runs, just as is happening in Cyprus. The trend, if events in Cyprus and Europe continue to escalate, and if other jurisdictions do not take steps to protect depositors from banker greed, is toward depositors losing faith in the banking system, and seeking other stores of purchasing power — mattress stuffing, bitcoin, tangibles.

Essentially, if there is to be any confidence in the banking system, the possibility of depleting liquidity insurance funds to bail out banks needs to be taken off the table completely. The possibility of insured depositor haircuts needs to be taken off the table completely. If banks need bailing out, the money must not come from insured depositors, or funds designed to compensate insured depositors. If banks fail, the losers should be the uninsured creditors.

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“Get Your Money Out While You Can”

One can only wonder how long it will take before Europeans particularly in Spain, Greece and Italy, begin to take that advice.

The Euro system amplifies shocks. Monetary union without fiscal union, economic integration without high levels of interstate mobility, enforced austerity in the weakest economies. And now the precedent of deposit confiscation. The only indicator that seems to be rising throughout the Eurozone is the number of protest signs comparing Angela Merkel to Hitler.

Romano Prodi famously noted that the Euro system was weak, and that necessary reforms would be made when the time came in order to make it sustainable. Well, the Cyprus bailout and deposit levy, the national and international outcries and the subsequent “no” vote in the Cypriot parliament are all signs that in the wake of all the bailouts of the periphery that Europe is far from fixed. The necessary measures have not been taken. While the ECB may have taken measures to lower government borrowing costs in the periphery, the situation is in many ways — especially unemployment — still deteriorating. In fact, it seems like Eurocrats are trying to enforce the opposite of what might be necessary for sustainability — rather than installing a mechanism to transfer money to weakened economies suffering from high employment, Eurocrats seem to be trying to do everything to drive unemployment higher in the periphery, spark bank runs, as well as aggravate tensions with Russia.

This is a crisis of institutions and a crisis of leadership as well as a crisis of economics. Merkel cannot lead Europe and Germany at the same time, because taking steps to revive the ailing Southern economies hurts her standing with the German and Northern public.

The Eurocrats have asked for a bank run by demanding depositor haircuts in Cyprus. The public would not be at fault for giving them one. Farage’s advice is wise.

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Why Europe Is Still In Peril, In Two Charts

A lot of analysts, including myself, have given the European situation a rest since last year. There were certainly some signs that the ECB and IMF had slowed (if not stopped) the deterioration by providing liquidity backstops to the addled banking system. But perhaps that was just the calm before the storm.

In truth, things were still was probably just as perilous as ever up until yesterday when the ECB and IMF decided to start a banking panic by enforcing a haircut of up to 10% on bank depositors. That was literally the stupidest thing that anyone has done since the Euro crisis began, and while it may not lead to utter disaster, there is a significant chance that it will. Not only is it excruciatingly unjust (it’s theft!), it is also incredibly suicidal. Many, many Spaniards, Italians, Greeks and Portuguese will have looked at the Cyprus haircut in horror, and wondered “Am I next?” Some of those will withdraw their money from the bank and stuff it in a mattress or into tangible assets, furthering stressing the already-fragile and highly-leveraged European banking system. Even a 1% drop in European deposits would lead to over €100 billion of withdrawals.

The background to this is soaring European unemployment:

EuroUnemployment

The people running the European financial system and engineering the bailouts and austerity (ECB, EU, IMF, Germany) have ploughed on through with more and deeper austerity even as European countries (other, of course, than Germany) have run up to higher and higher unemployment levels. Spain and Greece are above 25%. Italy is above 10%, and Portugal above 15%. Hiking taxes and cutting spending is leading to more and more people in unemployment oblivion. That isn’t healthy. Let’s not forget what happened to Germany the last time when over 25% of its people found themselves unemployed:

Chart-German-Unemployment-and-Nazi-Links

If bank runs materialise across Europe next week, the unemployment situation is most likely to worsen even further. If that happens, expect more and more unemployed, underemployed and angry Europeans to start voting for increasingly radical political parties. This is suicidal. Europe needs to not only reverse the awful, stupid Cypriot haircut, but also to put fiscal consolidation on hold (it has, lest we forget, so far been counterproductive) and start worrying about unemployment levels.

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The Welfare Kings of Europe

In spite of the fact that 85% of Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone, I was reasonably confident that Greeks would support Syriza to a first-place finish, and elect a new government willing to play chicken with the Germans. However Greeks — predominantly the elderly — rejected change (and possible imminent Drachmatization) in favour of the fundamentally broken status quo.

But although Syriza finished second, the anti-bailout parties still commanded a majority of the votes.

And New Democracy may still face a lot of trouble building a coalition to try to keep Greece in the bailout, and in the Euro . There has long been a rumour that Tsipras wanted to lose, so as to (rightly) blame the coming crush on the status quo parties. What fewer of us counted on was that the status quo parties wouldn’t want to win the election either. The pro-bailout socialists Pasok have thrown a monkey wrench into coalition-building by claiming they won’t take part in any coalition that doesn’t also include Syriza. This seems rational; when the tsunami hits, all parties in government will surely take a lot of long-term political damage. Pasok have already been marginalised by the younger and fierier Syriza, and Pasok presiding over an economic collapse (for that is undoubtedly what Greece now faces) would surely have driven Pasok into an abyss. The economy is such a poisoned chalice that parties seem willing to fight to keep themselves out of power.

And with more austerity, it’s only going to get worse. Once a society is hooked on large-scale debt-fuelled state spending, austerity in the name of government deleveraging is tough enough when the economy is booming, but during a depression as spending falls, tax revenues fall, very often producing (as has been the case in Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK) even bigger deficits.

So let us not forget who the most welfare-dependent nations (i.e. the ones who would be hurt the most by attempting an austerity program during an economic depression) are in Europe (clue — it’s not Greece):

International economics is a fast game. It’s only sixty years since America was exporter and creditor to the world. It’s only fifteen years since the now-booming German economy was described as the “sick man of Europe”.

The same Euro system that is slamming Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy today — in the aftermath of bubbles caused by easy money flowing into these countries as a result of the introduction of the Euro — could (if it were to somehow survive)  do the same thing to Germany in ten or twenty or thirty years.

A monetary union without a fiscal union is a fundamentally unworkable system and Westerwelle, Schauble and Merkel insisting that Greece play by the rules of their game is just asking for trouble. And trying to introduce a fiscal union over a heterogeneous, tense and disagreeable land as Europe is just asking for political trouble.

No matter how many nations are browbeaten by fear into committing to the status quo, it still won’t be sustainable. Greeks (and the other peripheral populations) can commit to austerity from here to eternity, but it won’t stop those policies resulting in deeper contraction, and more economic catastrophe.

But the collapse of the Euro would at most-recent estimates cost the core and particularly Germany a lot more than handing over the money to the PIGS. Eventually they will hand over the money to shield themselves from falling masonry. The real question is whether or not the entire system will spiral into pandemonium before Germany blinks.

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Will Tsipras Blow Up Europe?

The world’s eyes are on the Greek election, and whether or not Greeks will elect New Democracy’s Samaras (widely-assumed to be pro-bailout, pro-status quo), or SYRIZA’s Tsipras (widely-assumed to be anti-bailout, anti-status quo).

The Eurocrats have very sternly warned Greece against voting against austerity. Merkel said:

It is extremely important for Greeks to elect lawmakers who would respect the terms of the bailout.

In recent days, opinion has swung back toward the status quo, with Intrade rating New Democracy’s chances of winning the largest number of seats at 65%, and SYRIZA at just 33%.

While I cannot rule out New Democracy winning, I think that I’d flip those odds. Greece widely reviles German-imposed austerity, but fears the consequences of leaving the Euro — 85% of Greeks want to stay in. A vote for New Democracy would reflect fear of Drachmatization. Meanwhile, a vote for SYRIZA would seem to reflect the idea that through brinkmanship and the threat of Euro collapse, Greece can negotiate their way to a much more favourable bailout position.

So why do I think SYRIZA are the likelier winner? The election is on a knife-edge, so I think the difference might be football.

Greece — against all odds — managed to bumble through the Euro 2012 group stage, beating Russia 1-0 and likely setting up a poetic quarter final against Germany. I think that that victory against Russia will fire enough Greeks to try their luck and assert themselves against austerity.

For Greece, this is an important election. Inside the euro, their heavily state-dependent economy will continue to suffer scathing austerity. Outside the euro, they can freely debase, and — as Nigel Farage has noted — enjoy the benefits of a cheaper currency like renewed tourism and more competitive industry. If Greeks want growth sooner rather than much later, they should choose life outside the euro (and by voting for Tsipras and trying tough negotiating tactics, they will be asking to be thrown out).

But for the rest of the world, and the rest of Europe, this is all meaningless. As Ron Paul has noted, when the banking institutions need the money, central banks — whether it’s the ECB, or the Fed, or the BoE, or a new global central superbank — will print and print and print. Whether Greece is in or out, when the time comes to save the financial system the central bankers will print. That is the nature of fiat money, as much as the chickenhawks at the ECB might pretend to have hard-money credentials.

Tsipras, though — as a young hard-leftist — would be a good scapegoat for throwing Greece out of the Eurozone (something that — in truth — the core seems to want).

The real consequence throughout Europe as austerity continues to bite into state-dependent, high-unemployment economies will be more political fragmentation and support for political extremes, as the increasingly outlandish and unpopular political and financial solutions pushed by Eurocrats — specifically more and deeper integration, and banker bailouts — continue to help special interests and ignore the wider populations.