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Sunday, March 11

11th Mar - Weekender: ECB getting squeezed

The European ratings look...kind of sad?

Good weekend everyone! No Greek news here, I push all of them to Greek Deal Roundup. I have published several linkfests during the weekend, check them if you are new here.For my views, read this, this and this. I would love to get some feedback and requests: I am on Twitter, Facebook, email and paper.li

EURO CRISIS: GENERAL
Finns Party Soini: Make The Greek Collateral Deal PublicDow Jones
Finland demanded collateral to participate in Greek rescue, government declared collateral deal classified, Finns Party wants documents made public

There Will Be ContagionJohn Mauldin / The Big Picture
Sarkozy: Problem Solved, Or… Germany to Sarkozy: It’s Not Over · The ISDA Steps Up · No Winners in Ugly Greek Debt Deal, Only Lessons  · And By the Way, Close Your Borders ·
The Next Greek Tragedy · Orlando, Stockholm, Paris, and Staying Young


Dutch Freedom Party pushes euro exit as €2.4 trillion rescue bill loomsThe Telegraph
The Dutch Freedom Party has called for a return to the Guilder, becoming the first political movement in the eurozone with a large popular base to opt for withdrawal from the single currency.

EURO CRISIS: PIIGS
Sustainability of Italy’s sovereign debtvoxeu.org
The clouds hanging over the Eurozone seem to have cleared – for now. But it wasn’t long ago that people were looking at Italy and calling for debt restructuring. This column argues that such a move would have triggered bank runs, financial instability, and perhaps the break up of the euro. It says that Italy’s debt is sustainable at current levels so long as the government manages its spending.

Legal skull-duggery in Greece may doom PortugalThe Telegraph
Europe has ring-fenced Greece's debt crisis for now but its escalating recourse to legal legerdemain has shattered the trust of global bond markets and may ultimately expose Portugal, Spain, and Italy to greater danger.

Prepare for Haircuts on Portuguese DebtMish’s
Portugal is poised to blow up anytime now. Greece is already pricing in further writedowns. Expect Ireland and Spain to ask for writedowns. Eventually voters in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, or possibly even France will get fed up with these repeated bailouts at taxpayer expense and demand action. So will voters in Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, all bleeding profusely from "help".

Two lessons from the Greek crisisvoxeu.org
1) Delay is costly 2) “More Europe” is (not) the solution

EURO CRISIS: ECB
Germany Turns Up Pressure on ECBWSJ
Growing more confident that the acute phase of the euro-zone debt crisis may be passing,
Germany is beginning to put pressure on the ECB to start mopping up the extra cash that it has flooded into European markets to stem the spread of financial contagion. h/t Alea

All of Europe's a stage... Humble Student of The Markets
Draghi's message to the politicians was, "We've done our part, it's time for you to do yours" as he hinted that not only would there be no further LTROs, but the next ECB step would be some form of tightening. How much of that is to be believed?

Fed versus ECB: How Target debts can be repaidvoxeu.org
Hans-Werner Sinn: In Feb 2012, the Bundesbank had a Target claim of €547 billion on the Eurosystem. This column proposes a US-like system of marketable covered treasury bills that could be applied to a yearly settlement of Target liabilities. h/t “Kessu”

Why JPM Sees A "Lot More Printing" By The ECBZH
JPM: The ECB may need to print a LOT more…the net balance of payments in the periphery shows money flowing out and ECB financing covers these flows only partially. More will come.

Draghi Oil Dilemma Risks Worsening Recession: Euro CreditBB
Mario Draghi is trapped between accelerating inflation and slowing growth, making it hard for him to defend countries such as Italy and Spain from the ravages of recession.

OTHER
Another call for an end to China driven industrial commodities "super-cycle"Sober Look
After the Credit Suisse report, now Capital Economics comes out with their own.

Is China's inverted curve a sign of worsening economic conditions?Sober Look

Shipping is a leading deflationary indicatorMacronomics
Very nice roundup from our regular guest poster

The Great PMI MatrixAlpha Now / Thomson Reuters
Only couple of countries (Canada, Brazil, South Korea) are expanding AND improving.

Seasonal factors distorting dataDanske (pdf)
The collapse and ensuing rebound in economic data caused by the 2008/09 financial crisis seems to have affected the seasonal adjustment of two key US data series – the ISM manufacturing index and the payrolls report. The change in  seasonal factors  has generally lifted data during the winter months and now we expect to see some payback, which has already materialised in February’s manufacturing ISM.

Bank Of America Throws Up All Over Friday's Jobs NumberZH

OFF-TOPIC
A Unified Theory of Social ChangeHBR
Most conversations about changing the world eventually degenerate into despair or, after a hands-in-the-air "well, anyway..." segue, they lapse into a conversation about something more practical or pressing. That's because most discussions related to big change are about tactics rather than strategy at the scale of the question

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup IdeasPaul Graham
One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. Any one of them could make you a billionaire. That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them.

Miniature E-Books Let Journalists Stretch LegsNYT
They’re works of long-form journalism that seek out that sweet spot between magazine articles and hardcover books.

The Personal Analytics of My LifeWired
Stephen Wolfram: One day I’m sure everyone will routinely collect all sorts of data about themselves. But because I’ve been interested in data for a very long time, I started doing this long ago.

Neurons versus Free WillIntelligent Life
The notion of free will is under attack again, this time from the advance of neuroscience. Anthony Gottlieb explains...

Teen Exploits Three Zero-Day Vulns for $60K Win in Google Chrome Hack ContestWired
Just hours before the end of Google’s $1 million hack challenge, a teenager who once applied to work at Google without getting a response, hacked the company’s Chrome browser using three zero-day vulnerabilities, one of which allowed him to escape the browser’s security sandbox.

Why the iPad 3 Won't Replace Your Laptoppcmag.com

Twitter’s Secret History As the World’s Worst Tech or Media BusinessGawker

FeastBPS Research
Tuck into our round-up of the latest and best psych and neuro links

Searching for aliens: The wow factorThe Economist
A new citizen-science project will improve the chances of finding ET

Meeting Of Central Bankers, “Godfather” StyleThe Big Picture
We thought it might be interesting to reconstruct the scene and substitute the heads of the Five Families with the heads of some central banks and finance ministries.

Book Bits For SaturdayThe Capital Spectator