Sunday, June 10, 2012

UPDATED--A Quick Note on Spain

At the moment I haven't a clue whether

a) it matters
b) it's enough
c) it matters

It's going to take someone far smarter than I to tease out the details. Just as there is some truth in Balzac's statement:
Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu'il a été proprement fait. 
(The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.)
Usually paraphrased "Behind every great fortune there is a great crime,"

There is some truth in the thought that behind every bailout is a scam.
It's all in the details and right now I don't have the time. If I come across someone who seems to have a handle on both the mechanics and the secondary/tertiary effects I will, of course, link.

Best bet, probably Alphaville. Maybe IBEX Salad if he decides to go deep.
UPDATE:
Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution had a similarly titled post yesterday:

 Quick Spain thoughts
Is there actually any news in the “deal”, summarized here?  It’s long been known that Spain would end up getting a chunk of ESM and/or ESFS (indeed they had a quota of 93 billion euros and this is barely more at 100 billion euros), and now they have, although the details still are not announced.  And Spain already had been given an extension on their austerity target, so not attaching “austerity conditionality” to this deal isn’t quite news either.  Their obligations are already “floating” in this regard, because even the previous target could not be met.

Did I mention there were already a trillion euros lent from the ECB since December (not all to Spain)?...MORE
ZeroHedge, as is their wont, takes a very dim view of the machinations.
But also delivers "The Spanish Bank Bailout: A Complete Walk Thru From Deutsche Bank".
We'll link in the next post.