Going hungry today because of this choice is a lesser evil when we\u2019re already running out of bread for today because of the other one.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Portuguese, therefore, are now giving very serious consideration to leaving the euro. The fact is that Cyprus\u2019s \u2018corralito\u2019 has caused the rest of the periphery to begin shedding their naivety and innocence. Before, everyone believed in European bailouts. Faced with an extreme situation, if we promised to behave ourselves and heed the Troika, Daddy EU would come to the rescue with his EFSF \u2013 now his ESM \u2013 or even with his LTROs and other forms of virtual money resulting from the combination of financial engineering and political Euro-bureaucracy, and would bail us out endlessly and indefinitely. Faced with that scenario,\u00a0All the governments on the periphery preferred internal economic adjustments in exchange for external bailouts<\/strong>, amongst other reasons because this at least allowed them to serve out their respective terms in office. That was where the tug-of-war began \u2013 the cunning manoeuvring to try and outwit the MiB (Men in Black), who acted as the Eurozone\u2019s financial police. In short\u00a0A sickening cycle in which some of us faked whatever we could, whilst others absent-mindedly put in money that didn\u2019t exist. But that cycle has come to an end now that the demand for real money has outstripped the ability to keep pretending to leverage more and more virtual money.<\/strong><\/p>\nWith the Cyprus bailout, the masks came off. What had always been promised as an external bailout will now have to be an internal bailout (bail-out or bail-in). And from that point on, the periphery has begun to react and to assess whether or not it is still worth it<\/strong>. Portugal is the first on the list of peripheral countries to be asking whether it is worth continuing to make sacrifices for the sake of a bailout that the Portuguese people themselves will now have to pay for.\u00a0It no longer makes sense for us, those on the periphery, to continue brutally sacrificing the middle class to pay off a debt that only inflation, internal devaluation, a vast wasteland stretching back many years, and the hope that the Virgin Mary will keep us as we are, can wash away<\/strong>.<\/p>\nIf the Eurozone as a whole continues to tremble at the prospect of uncontrolled defaults in the periphery, it will have to offer much more than a bail-in in return (although I do not believe it is even in a position to choose). Because the economic situation in the periphery is already so dire that simply remaining in the euro no longer justifies the ordeal of continuing to try to pay off our debts. That\u2019s the thing about being poor: we have little left to lose. And it was probably never worth the effort of trying to stay in a Eurozone which, when push comes to shove, neither wants nor is able to save us from bankruptcy.\u00a0Let us not lose sight of the fact that in the event of a default (or an \u2018orderly debt restructuring\u2019, as politicians would call it), the periphery would have nothing left to lose that would be worse than the penitent ordeal of the bail-ins<\/strong>. A word of warning.<\/p>\nP.S. At the moment, precious metals such as silver are plummeting by 11% this morning, and that signals a change in the situation \u2013 a turning point to which we must adapt as soon as possible.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Este fin de semana lleg\u00f3 a mis manos\u00a0una entrevista a la economista de Harvard,\u00a0Carmen Reinhart, realizada por Spiegel Intl. En ella, como siempre, Reinhart da en el clavo cada vez que abre la boca. Explica que los bancos centrales facilitan las condiciones del cr\u00e9dito a tipos casi cero, como forma de default ordenado y sutil.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,45,39,40,52,37,48,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actualidad","category-asesoramiento-deportistas-artistas","category-crear-mi-propio-family-offices","category-gestion-financiera","category-asesoramiento-patrimonial-multi-family-office","category-reflexion","category-asesoramiento-patrimonial-multi-family-office-crear-mi-propio-family-offices","category-necesito-un-family-office"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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