The Automatic Earth

If The Rest Are Only Half As Bad As Ireland ...

SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2013 4:05 PM

Ireland was one of the first European countries to get hit by the financial crisis. It decided to bail out its banks at the direct cost of the taxpayer. In 2012, those banks were still overleveraged (and still are today) to the same level as [More...]

The Untouchables of the 21st Century

MONDAY, MAY 06, 2013 7:55 PM

Dalit or Untouchable Woman of Bombay according to Indian Caste System - 1942 - Wikimedia Commons

Throughout history and throughout the world, there have been classes of untouchables. Best known perhaps (other than Elliott Ness and Wall Street bankers) are the caste that goes by the name in South Asia, a.k.a. the Dalits, but there are/were also for instance the Cagots in France, the Burakumin in Japan, and the Roma and Jewish populations in medieval Europe though the Middle East. In the US, one could include the black and native populations. Wikipedia has this definition:

Untouchability is the social-religious practice of ostracizing a minority group by segregating them from the mainstream by social custom or legal mandate. The excluded group could be one that did not accept the norms of the excluding group and historically included foreigners, house workers, nomadic tribes, law-breakers and criminals and those suffering from a contagious disease. [More...]

What Do We Want To Grow Into?

MONDAY, APRIL 22, 2013 7:45 PM

"The world’s leading economies acknowledged on Friday that 'further actions are required' to put the global economy on track for strong, stable and balanced growth.", writes the FT. The torture never stops. Not that we had expected it to just [More...]

Dutch Delusion: Europe's Core, She Rots Some More

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2013 1:23 PM

A report published Thursday by the real estate industry in the Netherlands states that the average home price is now 18% lower than it was at the peak in 2008, while detached homes lost 20%-25% (March 2013 YoY prices fell 6.8%, says Eurostat) [More...]

The Only Way Forward For Europe Is Splittsville

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 03, 2013 8:10 PM

Seeing Spanish and Italian bond yields drop over the past few days, it's impossible not to wonder what it is the markets, whoever they're comprised of, can't seem to figure out. Like that the Italian cloud will hang over Europe well into summ [More...]

The Lesson From Cyprus: Europe Is Politically Bankrupt

TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 2013 9:18 PM

Over the past week, Europe, or rather the present EU leadership, has done damage to itself it will never be able to repair.

It seems to escape everbody, but that doesn't make it any less true: people from Portugal to Spain to Italy to Gre [More...]

Bank Run in Cyprus; Who's Next?

SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 2013 1:51 PM

Overnight last night, the Eurogroup (Eurozone executive committee) negotiated a deal for a bailout of the banking system in Cyprus. As part of the deal, a one-time, one-off levy on depositors was agreed: deposits below €100,000 are subject to [More...]

Spain Has A Long Way To Go Down

MONDAY, MARCH 04, 2013 12:59 PM

Ilargi: I received another entry from Dave Fairtex, who delves into Spanish housing data this time around. We had a nice discussion about it, since I question some of the assumptions on which he bases his interpretation of the data. In parti [More...]

Risk Management And (The Illusion Of) Insurance

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2013 8:55 PM

The expansionist post war era has been characterized by the development of the FIRE economy (finance, insurance and real estate), with a greater and greater dependence on leveraged risk. A necessary consequence has been increasingly sophistic [More...]

Beppe Grillo Wants To Give Italy Democracy

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2013 2:15 PM

In the fall of 2011, The Automatic Earth was on another European lecture tour. Nicole Foss had done a series of talks in Italy the previous year, and there was demand for more. This was remarkable, really, since a knowledge of the English lan [More...]

The Automatic Earth Is 5 Years Young

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2013 4:17 PM

It's sort of funny that it had almost even escaped both Nicole and I altogether, but it's true, and we can therefore albeit belatedly remind both you and ourselves that The Automatic Earth turned 5 years young on January 22, 2013. I think per [More...]

Unburnable Carbon Bubbles

MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2013 2:32 PM

A report came out in Britain 10 days ago that deserves more attention than it got. If only because it uses the great term "unburnable carbon", great even before it's defined. It makes me ponder the popular and somewhat crazy claims about shale and [More...]

Nicole Foss In Australia: It's No Use Trying To Build A Better Dinosaur

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013 1:40 PM

The Nicole Foss 2013 tour of Australia is well underway, and since I'm not there, it's a bit hard for me to write about it. But we do keep in touch on a daily basis of course, so I know things are going well, with lots of good people, good ideas a [More...]

The Lady Who Made Greed Look Good

MONDAY, APRIL 08, 2013 7:56 PM

Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street was as much an answer to as a parody of a mind change that had pervaded the world since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power in their respective nations.

But in the upper echelons Gordon Gekko' [More...]

Laiki Bank: Some Depositors Are More Equal Than Others

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 8:57 PM

Yeah, some things in life are inevitable. That's why it was no surprise, though still endlessly amusing, to find that while depositors of Laiki Bank (aka Cyprus Popular Bank) on the island itself have been unable to get to their money for 10 days [More...]

Daily Links
- Spanish prelate fears 'mutual hatred' over euro crisis
  "We have to change direction, otherwise this is going to bring down whole political systems," said Braulio Rodriguez, the Archbishop of Toledo. "It is very dangerous. Unemployment has reached tremendous levels and austerity cuts don't seem to be producing results," he told The Telegraph. "There is deep unease across the whole society, and it is not just in Spain. We have to give people some hope or this is going to foment conflict and mutual hatred."
- Pedro Almodóvar's Spanish disaster script is all too realistic
  A plane circles in the sky with a damaged undercarriage. The passengers get up to high jinks as they wait for the inevitable crash landing. A cast of call girls, gay cabin crew and a crooked banker on the run says this is your traditional 1970s-style Hollywood airline disaster comedy. In fact, it is how Spain's most renowned film director, Pedro Almodóvar sees the current state of his country. Needless to say, that is not the view of Mariano Rajoy's government in Madrid.