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Yet, someone's been putting a bid under that market place. Yeah, I'll bet that's retail doing the buying.

If you are referring to Treasuries, the answer is YES! According to something I recently read last month retail bought more than the FED plus international combined

Ouch! Had to look that up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rati....

Three steps down. Still far above the likely reality of their situation, but they don't like anything even approaching reality:

European Banks Preparing To Boycott Big Three Rating Agencies

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/european-b....

how the **** is the Euro still going up?

Peterm99,

You obviously don't get it.

When you've got positive net worth, you're not a credit risk (to simplify my point).

Quick Cliff Notes data dump for you: the Spanish credit "problem" is not public debt (one of the lowest as a percent of GDP in Europe), it's private (at around 160% or so of GDP).

What was I saying in my last post about putting foot in mouth?

Come on ya'll, leave the nonsense to ZeroHedge.

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how the **** is the Euro still going up?

I smell central bank intervention.

Sure Trades, then the question is then what?

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I smell central bank intervention.

...or repatriation

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Quick Cliff Notes data dump for you: the Spanish credit "problem" is not public debt (one of the lowest as a percent of GDP in Europe), it's private (at around 160% or so of GDP).

Public debt is REALLY high if you add all of the insolvent cajas' debt, which Spain loves to absorb. And the regionals? I think you forgot about those.

highrev, in Greece also homeowners (free of mortgage) are a good bunch of the population...

What is a value of an asset as real estate when you have three million vacant lot in spain and 25% unemployment... ?


"Spain is not Greece people. Do a balance sheet analysis of the country both private and public sectors."

and what about the balance sheet local level included ?


"Their net worth, that's right, accumulated riches, is envious. 80% of Spaniards own their own home, and 60% of those homeowners have no outstanding mortgage! That's one hell of a lot of collateral!"

What is the market value of their housing ?

"Spain is to Europe? Again, do a balance sheet analysis of the country before inserting foot in mouth."

For us here in france Spain was the foolest between us blowing the biggest real bubble... ever seen... People taking 50 years loan like candies with variable rate linked to euribor...

When I was in Madrid I saw en alquiler and para venta everywhere. Me not knowing a bit of Spanish I was kind of surprised when I figured out what it was. I knew unemployment was high, but wow at the available living space.

Trichet and Greenspan have both screwed us for the next twenty years.
I cannot see how we will manage this crisis, it will be long and painful.

Thanks to the FED and the ECB.

If they decided to lower the rate after 9/11... and as an answer to 9/11

I am sorry to say it but Al Quaďda has won...

What was left of america (the idea of liberty) has been totally destroyed...
The hope of a thriving Europa... has also been destroyed.
What is left is debt and unemployment.

Switzerland is not in the EU, yet Switzerland is extremely vulnerable to a weak euro.

All those mortgages in Eastern Europe denominated in Swiss francs, have put Switzerland between a rock and a very hard place.

Remember the panic buying of euros after Switzerland de-linked from the euro, when all that Club Med money started pouring into Switzerland?

Well they re-linked.

That begs the question, how many non-eurozone EU members, are being forced to buy huge quantities of euros by the EU, to maintain their link?

This is like Barney the town drunk getting*****ed at the doctor for telling him he has stage IV cirrhosis of the liver. Following the consultation he walks into the bar next door and runs up his tab by ordering 6 more shooters while the bartender tells him the latest doctor jokes.

I feel like I'm living in a Franz Kafka novel.

We have reached an inflection point. The ECB has no choice but to act now. If they start buying up Spanish debt and announce an explicit interest rate target ( for example 4%), Spain will be fine. If they don't, its over for the eurozone.

4%? I want that action! (said the rest of the EU)

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(Spain is not Greece people. Do a balance sheet analysis of the country both private and public sectors. Their net worth, that's right, accumulated riches, is envious. 80% of Spaniards own their own home, and 60% of those homeowners have no outstanding mortgage! That's one hell of a lot of collateral!

Well dammit, let's mortgage those houses out and let the damn Spaniards bail themselves out and quit crying poor!

Karl, sorry to be off topic but I wanted you to see W.K. Black's comments On J Damon.


http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/....
JPMorgan’s Senior Officers’ Addiction to Gambling on Derivatives
By William K. Black
A bank that makes enormous, extremely risky gambles is a bank that desperately needs to have its senior management team removed – immediately – and that is true regardless of how those bets turn out in any particular year.  There is no conceivable social purpose to providing the explicit federal subsidy of deposit insurance and the (much larger) implicit federal subsidy of “too big to fail” that all SDIs enjoy to a bank so that it can take massive gambles on financial derivatives.  The Jamie Dimons of the world know that if they win the gambles they will be made immensely wealthy and that when they lose the gambles massively the federal government will bail them out. 
---

William Black is on a speaking tour
I don’t know how to make this with the video.
Start at 6:00
http://www.canada.com/onlinetv/news/lang....

---
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johns....
As Black puts it, JPMorgan is now defining as a hedge “something that performs in exactly the opposite fashion of a hedge.” A hedge is supposed to reduce risk, but according to Black, the losses came from deals that “dramatically increased risk by placing a second bet in the same direction, which compounded the risk.”
----
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-tic....

More importantly, Black notes JPMorgan is betting on "derivatives of derivatives" and is by far the largest player in the market for the CDX Investment Grade 9 and CDX High Yield 11, the derivatives underlying the trade that earned Bruno Michel Iksil the nickname 'the London Whale.'
"They didn't just gamble, this was a wild, crazy insane gamble," says Black, who calls JPMorgan "the world's largest gambling operation in financial derivatives" in his latest blog at New Economic Perspectives.

It's nearly over...I am more afraid of the system that replaces it...

Jal: Yep, I saw his tweets earlier today

You should be, Loudoungroup.

My biggest wish is that we could just take the "big crap", and be done with it, like Iceland. We'd be a little bit poor for awhile but learn to live within our means.

My fear is that the "reset" many people here are wishing for will be our worst nightmare, and will bring on things even Orwell, as smart as he was, never foresaw.

CAN WE PLEASE GET THIS ****ING **** OVER WITH ALREADY!!!

I'M SICK AND TIRED OF THE STUPIDITY. It's been three f'n years already! C'mon!!

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It's been three f'n years already!

Which is exactly why it's going to be worse.

Damn straight, Land. It's gonna be a ****show for sure, but I'm ready. I've taken my druthers, as many of us on TF have - otherwise we wouldn't be here. I've lost relationships and family over this ****; it's about time the other folks recognize that we're not all just some crazy sons-of-bitches...

Spanish futues back 6630 **** stopped out, ****s

If TARP worked/is working in the States, why not the same in Spain?

Home ownership is but ONE and ONLY ONE example of the underlying strong Spanish balance sheet. Don't belittle that as though it's presented in isolation (even if you could vis-a-vis England, for example). Try to be fair and objective with your analysis - to yourselves before anything else.

I've mentioned many other areas of Spanish solvency, from what the government *could do* tax wise to immediately solve the short term short falls, to the Bankia recap issue, to fire sale entry level prices for those currently buying assets on the market (which is in large part one of the problems for the seller . . . as anyone who's ever been in a pinch knows and the answer as to why they'd like to tap European funds - after all, as I clearly laid out in a recent post about negotiation, what good is Europe if all you do is pay out and don't even get a helping hand in a pinch?). It's not my job to convince you of anything. I share my views and knowledge *once*. After that you either continue as before, or you adjust to new information (that is if it is new for you of course). And if you missed something I said, it's called "Search". You either search to see if your question has already been answered, or you _________?

BTW: I'm going to post a special presentation later on in User Presentations for everyone "lamenting the end" and asking the "what can be done" question.

Get ready to take your blinders off.

___________________________________________________________

Add:

Since I’m a nice guy, and since I like you all, I’m going to try things from another angle by dumbing this down.

What would you be saying about Spain if there had been no real estate bubble? Does it get any clearer with that?

Well, when you look at the base population homeowner statistics, it looks like there was no bubble, doesn’t it? DON’T PROJECT!!! The Spanish real estate bubble was nothing like the U.S. real estate bubble. It wasn’t broad based! There was no Home ATM mentality! The liabilities, or toxic assets if you like, were in, and stayed in, the hands of a relatively few speculators (percentage wise). Do you dare take off the blinders and look more closely at how many of those speculators aren’t even Spanish?

Is than understandable?

Don’t bring out the unemployment rate on me now. What’s the REAL unemployment rate in the States? Compare apples with apples. The unemployment rate reported in Spain is the real unemployment rate. Benefits keep getting extended and people don’t roll off. And then if I asked another “if there were” question like if there were no illegal migrants on the dole? How many illegal migrants were allowed invited to enter Spain during the past 7 years of Socialist idiocy? If they weren’t here? If they were deported? (Don’t worry, they’re not going to be deported. They’re what is going to constitute a huge, cheap labor pool that’s not only going to be one of the pillars of Spain’s competitive advantage, but also what’s going to ultimately kill the unions. Once again, the Socialist hand backfires.)

On top of that, on top of reality (that I hope has been made a little clearer anyway with that mental exercise), I’ve said it before, but I’m not sure if I’ve said it here: the current government is implementing Reaganomics. Yep, you heard me right. Study what they’re doing, then google Reaganomics, and then try to tell me they’re not.

Is this the moment?