(By Karl Denninger)
This should be good for Confidence, especially after Monti (Hall?) was running around telling everyone that Italy was "just fine" and "didn't need help."
LOS CABOS, Mexico, June 19 (Reuters) - Italy put forward a proposal at a G20 summit in Mexico on Tuesday for the euro zone's rescue funds to start buying the debt of distressed European countries, and the idea is expected to be discussed at a meeting of leaders in Rome on Friday.
The Italian proposal foresees using the EU's rescue funds, known as the EFSF and the ESM, to buy bonds of countries such as Spain and Italy in the secondary market to help bring down bond yields and lower refinancing costs.
So we've gone beyond "liar liar pants on fire!" to "and behind Door #1 we have...."
You know the jackass is back there too.
I'm well beyond the point where I register surprise -- say much less shock -- when "leaders" get caught lying like this by their own hand. We're into this odd Kafkaesque realm where the bigger the lie the more it is believed, where Presidents of drunk nations prescribe cases of whiskey for the pounding headache and puke-fest taking place the next morning and where the citizens wave multi-colored flags pretending that John and Steve's public expression of intent to screw each other in the ass or Jeff's desire to smoke a joint on the courthouse steps is the most-important issue in the upcoming election.
Pass that whiskey please, it will make me forget that I'm broke and the only calories down my pie hole in the last 72 hours have been ethanol-based -- and liquid! Oh, it will also make me forget the hemorrhoids from last night's boffing too - and where did I put that joint?
Yeah. This is what passes for "political discourse" on the issues of the day. Blatantly unconstitutional usurpations of power by the President (under the guise of "prosecutorial discretion") either garners no comment (from Romney) or worse, a plan to do even more unconstitutional things (by Wayne Root) in response. Nobody raises the quite-simple point that a person who's first act upon entry to the United States was to break the law should not be rewarded, as whatever behavior you reward in the law you will get more of!
Never mind that the nation's economy has collapsed (not "is about to collapse") and is being propped up by explicit debasement of everyone's wealth through government deficit spending -- a path that will eventually lead to the collapse of the government itself if it continues for too long, and for every day it goes on it increases the economic damage that must be recognized to "detox" from our credit-induced craze.
As such the morning news flow, including this little tidbit from the G-20, no longer elicits even a wry smile from me. I do, however, take some solace in the fact that yesterday Bloomberg finally came around to the idea of sound(er) banking and had the audacity to publish it -- a drum I've been beating on since The Ticker began publication.
It's been a lonely five years, but this morning, as I sip my coffee in expectation of the heroin dealer extraordinaire, Ben Buttafackie himself, pontificating on how we shall all be fine if we just take another slug of that case of whiskey, I will ponder whether that tiny second drumbeat from Bloomberg yesterday might -- just might -- turn into a cacophony of sufficient volume to halt that which, at this point, appears inevitable.
Incidentally, if you are in the Orlando area I am speaking this evening at The 2012 Business Convention and Expo of The Deaf at 7:30 PM.