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🔔 Europe's Complacency Trap
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Shamelessly stole borrowed today's title...
It's from this superb Project Syndicate article on EU complacency - I've grabbed a couple of snippets for you here:
Whenever such problems arise, the overwhelming consensus is that Europe should simply muddle through.
Rarely is there any willingness to change things, either by creating a genuine European government with the necessary fiscal muscle to reverse the continent’s relative economic underperformance, or by reversing the integration process.
Instead, institutional purgatory makes Europe a poor cousin to its friends and allies.
As US interest rates rise on the back of a relatively buoyant economy, the ECB will once again be reduced to a now-familiar position.
The flow of capital into higher-yielding dollar instruments will weaken the euro, and Europe will use that depreciation to eke out whatever growth it can by tapping external demand, rather than by materially boosting domestic demand.
Even if European citizens prove ready to live with this tired state of affairs, the United States and others cannot be expected to tolerate it forever.
The whole piece is really worth a read...
Against this backdrop, the deepening of institutional fault lines in the European Union has created the sense that something must give.
Today’s hybrid arrangement of federalism (through the European Central Bank), supranationalism (through the European Commission), and traditional national governance has both strengths and weaknesses.
While it seems to reflect most Europeans’ preference for some limited degree of shared governance, it rules out effective policy action.
Those deepening institutional fault lines have only grown in recent years, and the recovery fund STILL isn't approved...
ECB's Schnabel gave an interview to Der Spiegel & summarised on Twitter 👇
@Isabel_Schnabel
Will something finally give, or will the Eurozone continue to muddle through?
🔥 Hot and 🚫 Not
🔥🚀 Global Equity Markets: More inflows in the past 5 months than the past 12 years...
🚫 SPACs and second order consequences: The SPAC boom was never going to be sustainable, and something as big as the Archegos saga doesn't just disappear quietly - it leaves a mark...
Credit Suisse were clearly the biggest losers, taking a $4.7bn hit, and their recent history has been... eventful 👇
It's OK though, they can make it all back...
What are those recent successes?
It also took advantage of the boom in listings of special purpose acquisition companies, which raised a record $39 billion during the quarter, more than 10 times the same period in 2019. Credit Suisse was the No. 1 adviser on IPOs of such blank-check companies during the quarter with a 16.7% market share, ahead of Citigroup Inc.’s 9.5% share, the Bloomberg-compiled data show
Now they're tightening the margin requirements for hedge funds and family offices, will they do the same for the SPACs that have been so profitable for them...?
Huge business has been done already 📈
FT - March 31st 2021
“There is a lot of indigestion,”
“There’s only so much illiquid exposure investors are going to want to take”
“The pendulum has swung to where if you’re in the market with a Pipe right now, it’s going to be really hard and painful.”
A Spac goes back into the ocean if you can’t get a Pipe done.”
Pipe = Private Investment in Public Equity: Simply put, if banks can't sell private investors on the value of the deals, those deals don't get done, and banks can't collect advisory fees
So, big losses for Credit Suisse AND a large revenue stream drying up, what's the new CEO going to make of it...? My guess:
The U.S. earnings season is upon us: The Veteran published his preview - check it out below and RT for a chance to become a lifeime Macrodesiac member!
⛳ RT and we'll pick one person to join us forever and ever.— David Belle (@davidbelle_) April 9, 2021