Disquiet in Downing Street. Many of you will have read about the Digger’s attempt with Abu Dhabi chums to take a crack at buying the FT. The Antipodean porn star no more needs the FT than I need a sixth cranial orifice, but as the poor memory-failed, humble old man is by nature a monopolist, you can see where he’s going re this one: a total grip on all Western financial opinion. Yes, I think I can see Roop’s third nationality-switch looming over the horizon: El Ur’doc of Arabia. Not too sure the flowing robes will suit him, but you never know.
There is nevertheless, I can now confirm, tension in Number Ten – which let’s face it, makes a change from shagging and white powder. For the ‘thinkers’ in there have correctly divined Merdeschlock’s other motive: to destabilise Cameron further by throwing down yet another media market-share gauntlet. In Johnson, Hunt, and Gove, he who must be obeyed perhaps feels that he has enough allies this time to finish the job on Dave.
Excitement in Espagne. Luis Barcena, the ex-treasurer of the right wing governing Partido Popular, has been sent to prison, pending a trial for just about every form of financial fraud conceivable….but chiefly that of having a morbidly obese bank account in Zurich which, one way or another, he seems unable to explain away. The refusal of bail is effectively an admission by the Judiciary that they want him safely locked up and unable to ‘visit people’ while their investigations continue. Very recently, the public prosecutor alleges, Bárcenas had been transferring money out of his Swiss accounts into new ones in the US, Bahamas and Uruguay: either trying to cover his tracks and avoid those pesky bailins….or simply redistributing wealth in the best traditions of all philanthropists. Trickle-down wealth and all that.
Mariano Rajoy is making all the right noises and affecting a total lack of concern about the case, but there is every chance that the cosh and cigarette approach will now come to the fore, resulting in a plea bargain. To get a break, Barcenas will have to reveal what he knows. The word on the street is that he knows rather a lot that could be embarrassing for Prime Minister Rajoy…and the PP as a whole. As my correspondent there puts it, “This could have huge implications should Mr. Barcenas sing like a canary and confirm what most of us already know: the PP is corrupt to its core and almost every minister is guilty of having accepted envelopes of undeclared cash on a routine basis.”
Troikanaut tiffs over Cyprus. Last week, this impenetrable media briefing popped out of the Cyprus Finance Ministry:
‘The Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Cyprus announces that on June 27, 2013 the Republic of Cyprus will offer to exchange a number of existing local government bonds with a total nominal value of €1,0 bn, which mature during the economic adjustment programme period (2013-2016Q1), with 5 new bonds with correspondingly equal coupon rates and 5-10 year maturities.’
Putting that into English, the move is to help the citizens manage their cashflow, and give them a break on the repayment schedule: bonds maturing in, say, 2014, will now mature in 2024. The EC and the IMF gave it their warm approval: but in Frankfurt, the ECB prong run by Il Draghi wasn’t best pleased. This little fizzer came out shortly afterwards:
‘The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to temporarily suspend the eligibility of marketable debt instruments issued or fully guaranteed by the Republic of Cyprus for use as collateral in Eurosystem monetary policy operations. This decision takes into account the changes in the credit rating of the Republic of Cyprus as a result of the transactions announced by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Cyprus on 27 June 2013.’
Or, put more succinctly, f**k you. It’s an effective exclusion of Cypriot banks from access to ECB credit. It’ll force Cypriot banks to resort to Emergency Liquidity Assistance in order to meet their liquidity needs making the debt and economic problems worse because of the greater cost and uncertainty it will evoke. And it’s pure power politics.
As The Slog pointed out last week, Draghi is now The Man….and he is in a different league to the muppets at the EC and IMF. The Brussels clowns fail to realise still what they did in giving the ECB boss a free hand to dole out dosh and override elected politicians. The Troika has now been made to look utterly foolish. I don’t think it’s long for this world.
The Slog 