The Automatic Earth

Is The EU A Tide That Lifts All Boats?

THURSDAY, MAY 23, 2013 8:11 PM

Last weekend, a group of influential British business people published a letter in the Independent which attempts to "make the economic case" for having the UK stay in the EU. The letter of course is a reaction to unrest within PM David Camer [More...]

Widely Visible Symbols Of Human Folly

SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013 11:59 AM

Jack Delano Union Station January 1943
The waiting room of Union Station in Chicago

Why do we do it? Sure, we discount the future, and consensus is that's genetic, but it's not just our own future we discount. In fact it's not even the one we discount most: that would be our children's future. We don't just take what we need, we take all we can, and leave them with the consequences. After us the deluge. Even though love and protection for our children, and their children, is supposed to be at least as hard-wired into our genes as discounting the future is. Science even suggests that our main subconscious aim in life is simply to propagate our genes. Go forth, multiply and go away.

So, assuming this love for our children thing is valid, why is it that we burden the children we apparently love so much with these endless heaps of waste left over from our activities, many of which have nothing to do with our survival as such? At best [More...]

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...]

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 Untouchables of the 21st Century

MONDAY, MAY 06, 2013 7:55 PM

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 als [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...]

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.