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Monday, February 27

27th Feb - Heavy on the Brain

Source: onefte
Good morning, I will update the Calendar page next. If you are just returning from the w/e, here’s what you have missed:

Greece, LTRO and INFLAYCION normal weekend linkfest
Weekly Support week in review, next on previewed

The Sunday's LTRO post is my all-time most read post - maybe I did something right for once. Now to this morning's links!




News roundup – Between The Hedges
News roundup The Trader 
Emerging London Headlines – beyondbrics / FT
Press digests by Reuters: FT, WSJ, NYT

  -G20 fails to step up aid, Germany votes on Greek bail-out, ECB’s SMP buying
Morning Briefing – BNY Mellon
  -Japan's balance sheet is comfortable now but on a trajectory to a crisis
Market Preview – Saxo Bank

Debt crisis: live – The Telegraph
Europe Crisis Tracker – WSJ
Tracking Europe’s Debt Crisis – NYT

EURO CRISIS: GENERAL
Staring Into The Ukrainian Economic And Political Abyss A Fistful of Euros
Ukraine is once more getting into a mess. Part of the problem is political, part of it is economic, and part is a combination of the two. On top of which Ukraine has one of the most severe demographic problems in the CEE, which is itself a region of severe demographic problems. So what we have are a cluster of problems just waiting for the perfect storm to gather.

Mario Draghi reveals the Grand Plan Humble Student of The Markets
Good, not bad austerity: …notice how the ECB's LTRO program amounts to de facto quantitative easing and money printing, but there hasn't been a single word of protest from the German hardliners? That's an indication that there is a Grand Plan which the elites are executing.

Source: Kaleva
EURO CRISIS: GREECE
Greece, “The Bottomless Barrel,” As Germans SayTestosterone Pit
So the plan becomes clear. And it is now politically correct to pronounce it in public: Greece should decide on its own to leave the Eurozone. This way, no politician outside Greece can be blamed.

Note from Athens: Feeling on the ground has palpably changedeconomistmeg
… in a number of ways that have supported my view that Greece will eventually default and exit the eurozone, but probably not before late 201

EURO CRISIS: ECB / LTRO / TARGET2
German people zero in on TARGET2 imbalances; may derail ESM increases Sober Look
A rising trend and a big spike in late February, probably from Frankfurt.

LTRO programs' impact on sovereign bond purchases by banks Sober Look
So far the 3-year LTRO facility seemed to have only a limited effect on sovereign bond purchases by EU banks, though it may have helped stem the accelerating bond sales.

At the ECB, the Tweak That Quietly Saved the Banking SystemNYT
Then the total amount was fed to the E.C.B.’s market operations room, an open-plan office on a lower floor of the E.C.B. building in
Frankfurt. Employees sit at desks separated by low partitions, scrutinizing multiple data terminals. There is a large flat-screen television overhead tuned to Bloomberg News, and a hand sanitizer near the entrance. Until the last minute, at least some people within the E.C.B. doubted whether the offer would resonate with banks.

OTHER
The Financial Crisis – Is There a Solution? Aalto University (pdf)
Bengt Holmström’s guest lecture from 23-Feb: Have to buy time, but also have to come up with long-term vision. Have to break link between sovereign and bank crises. Better understanding of liquidity, crises and banking system.

Lagarde: “World Economy Not Out of Danger Zone”iMFdirect
Statement after the G20 meeting, nicely hyperlinked.

Things that make you go hmmm Grant Williams via ZH (pdf)
Long newsletter, better than any magazine, funnier than Conan.

Asia is the world's largest petroleum consumerEIA

What High-I.Q. Investors Do DifferentlyRobert Shiller / NYT
Even after taking into account factors like income and education, the authors concluded that people with relatively high I.Q.’s typically diversify their investment portfolios more than those with lower scores and invest more heavily in the stock market. They also tend to favor small-capitalization stocks, which have historically beaten the broader market, as well as companies with high book values relative to their share prices.

Notes on the 2011 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report, Part 1 Aleph

OFF-TOPIC
Adventures in behavioral neurologyEdge
Long article by Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and Distinguished Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California

The true fathers of computingThe Guardian
George Dyson's new book challenges computing's creation myth by highlighting the key role played by John von Neumann

A Curated Linkfest For The Smartest People On The Web!Simoleon Sense

Turing’s school reportsAlex Bellos


Top 400 trance tracks of all timeListology
This post is from 2004, so it is filled with the old-skool classics of the genre.