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Strategies & Market Trends : The Financial Collapse of 2001 Unwinding -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Silent who wrote (784)	4/15/2018 12:47:05 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	1 Recommendation Recommended By Joseph Silent Respond to of 13791

France is Germany's co-equal partner in the EU but this doesn't give her much influence over France's military policy because there's no EU military, just the military forces of each country. Their forces cooperate under NATO, but again this was France and England acting individually apart from NATO. Macron's actions are popular in France because their voter base is different and because the Russian government has been very uniquely unpopular with the French people for a long time due to a series of ham-handed actions by the Russians. In England they merely love every opportunity to pretend they are still a world power. I hope I don't need to point out that Merkel has always had zero influence over the UK, which is what inevitably led to Brexit. You can't have one state who always insists upon their own special deal in everything, and ultimately not even these special deal were enough. So now the UK will discover what life is like without a collection of special deals. Life's going to be not as special. The one stick Merkel has in Syria is stopping activity which would lead to more refugees, because she can make life difficult for people who have opposed refugees while also taking actions which create the problem. Until this point England has been able to say it was Putin creating the refugees, so it's not their problem, but if they become the refugee driver it becomes clear even to the English that this is would be a shit policy.

To: Joseph Silent who wrote (784)	4/15/2018 3:21:38 PM
From: GPS Info	Respond to of 13791

It would be very strange but strangely fitting if, indeed, Germany steps up to the plate and puts whatever it can to block the way things are going. For the foreseeable future Germany will remain pacifist. Merkel will always recommend restraint even with the use of chemical weapons by Syria or Russia. She did expel four Russian diplomats for the Skripal poisoning and issued a joint statement with France, the UK and the US -- in the name of European and NATO unity. I don't see things going beyond that, FWIW.

To: Joseph Silent who wrote (784)	5/25/2018 1:29:46 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 13791

That EU construction that benefited Germany a lot, is now being demolished. There has been diversion of attention from the EU inner problems as Trade War, DJT and China, Strong USD and the emerging markets are all the rage. See Italy's elections' results. ITALY’S next government, a coalition between the populist Five Star Movement and the far-right Northern League, is giving investors plenty to worry about. Leaked plans, hastily abandoned, suggested it might want to leave the euro or ask the European Central Bank to forgive €250bn ($292bn) of Italian debt. But less attention has been paid to what it might mean for Italian banks, and in particular for their biggest burden: non-performing loans (NPLs). Over €185bn of NPLs were outstanding at the end of 2017, the most for any country in the European Union (see chart). Bad loans remain a concern in Italy and across southern Europe Markets are fretting about the incoming Italian government’s plans for banks Print edition \| Finance and economics May 26th 2018 ITALY’S next government, a coalition between the populist Five Star Movement and the far-right Northern League, is giving investors plenty to worry about. Leaked plans, hastily abandoned, suggested it might want to leave the euro or ask the European Central Bank to forgive €250bn ($292bn) of Italian debt. But less attention has been paid to what it might mean for Italian banks, and in particular for their biggest burden: non-performing loans (NPLs). Over €185bn of NPLs were outstanding at the end of 2017, the most for any country in the European Union (see chart). By comparison with Greece, where NPLs are 45% of loans, Italy looks manageable, with just 11.1%. And it has made progress: in late 2015 NPLs were 16.8% of loans. But any wild policy lurches would put that progress in question. The clean-up of banks’ books has relied on openness to foreign investors. Huge volumes of NPLs (€37bn in 2016 and over €47bn in 2017, according to Deloitte, a consultancy) have been sold by banks, often to specialist American hedge funds like Cerberus Capital Management or Fortress Investment. These so-called vulture funds may find life harder under the new government. Given the importance of being able to repossess the collateral for secured loans, NPL investors have been taken aback by a proposal to prevent any action against a debtor without the involvement of a court. This would run counter to efforts to increase the use of out-of-court settlement for collateral across the EU. The future of GACS, a scheme for providing an Italian government guarantee to the senior tranches of NPL securitisations (with the EU’s blessing), is also in question. Despite a slow start in 2016, it has come to play a large role. An NPL sale last year by UniCredit, a large bank, worth €17.7bn, was subject to the scheme. Another €38bn-worth of Italian NPL deals in progress will be too, according to Debtwire, a news service. But investors now worry that GACS will not be renewed once it expires in September, contrary to previous plans. European regulators have made a concerted effort to deal with NPLs. In March the European Commission proposed laws to make cross-border operations easier for debt servicers, which manage debt collection, and to force banks to hold more capital against new NPLs (and therefore push banks into selling off more such loans). It also produced a blueprint for countries that want to set up a “bad bank” for dud assets (as both Spain and Ireland did in the financial crisis) in a way that dovetails with EU rules. Markets have deepened in tandem. As well as the specialist funds doing large deals, more options for trading NPLs have emerged. One example is Debitos, a trading platform that started in Germany and that allows investors to trade in NPLs from 11 European countries, including Italy and Greece. Most of its sales are between €50m and €200m and interest often comes from local investors, says Timur Peters, its founder—for example, from individuals who buy property-backed NPLs as a way to acquire those properties. A liquid pan-European market in NPLs ought to prevent banks’ bad loans from accumulating and threatening their stability, as during the most recent crisis. But Italy would, because of its sheer size, be the largest source of such loans for the foreseeable future. And any market with real doubts about the largest supplier is almost certain to be a stunted one. This article appeared in the Finance and economics section of the print edition under the headline "Going south"