Re: Tema: PPCC - Pisitófilos Creditófagos - Primavera 2023

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/e74c0556-5e60-4ab2-9876-7ac687b1d021

A very Swiss identity crisis

The country’s sense of self as a haven for the world’s money and a beacon of neutrality is being shaken

“No one becomes a murderer more easily than a fatherland,” wrote Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Switzerland’s national playwright.

Last weekend, the country killed one of its own. At a hastily convened press conference in the capital Bern on Sunday evening, the government and regulators announced Credit Suisse’s 167-year run as one of the pillars of Swiss society was over. The huge bank, the locomotive of Switzerland’s industrial miracle, weakened by years of scandal, was to be folded into its bigger rival UBS.

The talk was of staving off an unthinkable financial collapse. There was little time for sentiment. The government “regrets Credit Suisse wasn’t able to master its own difficulties,” said Karin Keller-Sutter, Switzerland’s finance minister.

At the home of the deceased, a single candle flickered in the dawn breeze on Monday morning with a small bunch of flowers beside it — tokens of mourning placed to one side of the entrance to the Lichthof, Credit Suisse’s grand headquarters on Paradeplatz in Zurich.

Over the previous 72 hours, technocrats, bankers and regulators in the capital had shuttled in and out of the Bernerhof — the office of the finance ministry, high on an escarpment above the river Aare — to finesse a solution. But they were working within a strict brief: the state was not going to use taxpayer money to preserve the bank’s independence. The deal shocked many around the world and raised questions about the stability the Swiss system sells itself on.

Normally in times of international economic stress, Switzerland is a haven: however, as gold and the Japanese yen rose against other assets this week, currency traders ditched the franc at the fastest pace in two years.

But the country’s current problems are not merely financial. “Switzerland is in the most serious crisis since the second world war,” the US ambassador to Bern Scott Miller said just earlier this month: Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, he contended in an interview with the newspaper NZZ, has put paid to the myth of Swiss neutrality.

For months now, Switzerland’s neighbours and closest economic partners have been increasing the pressure on Bern over its steadfast refusal to be a part of any military help for Kyiv. The lobbying is becoming rancorous.

“Neutrality has helped the Swiss for centuries on this war-torn continent. But it doesn’t work anymore,” says Thomas Borer, the former Swiss diplomat who wrote the country’s current neutrality policy. Switzerland is now surrounded by friends, he says, and deeply enmeshed with them economically.

“If you are neutral, it’s like going to a funeral, everyone is crying and you are standing around saying what’s the issue? No one likes you.”

With two of the key facets of Swiss identity — its role as the world’s banker, reinforced by its geopolitical impartiality — in question, “We are in a perfect storm,” Borer says. “We have a lot of soul searching to do.”

Centre of banking

Even as the crisis on Paradeplatz reverberates, there is so far little evidence to suggest that Switzerland’s other top-tier banks — which cater to the world’s super-rich — will suffer.

Quite the contrary: many are now eagerly picking over the bones of their rival, looking to hire talented employees and poach lucrative clients. Julius Baer, formerly Switzerland’s third-largest bank by assets, and now its second, saw its share price rise 13 per cent this week.

“This is a very unfortunate situation, there is no doubt about it. But from my perspective, it’s not so pessimistic,” says Hubert Keller, the senior managing partner of Lombard Odier, one of Switzerland’s oldest lenders.

“The strength of Switzerland as a financial place in the world has been built over decades and centuries. We are still the number one centre for cross-border wealth management.”

Keller points to the doubts many had about Switzerland’s future when its banking secrecy was challenged after the financial crash of 2008. (Swiss banks now share skeleton information on foreign clients’ assets with foreign regulators, to prevent tax fraud). “Competitors abroad thought Swiss banking would not last after that, but they were proved wrong.”

For Keller, and many others in Switzerland, Credit Suisse’s problems ultimately stemmed from it becoming less “Swiss” — its push abroad and failed embrace of a foreign banking culture, emulating rivals on Wall Street by pursuing higher risks and higher returns.

“Credit Suisse found itself playing in a different league and sometimes they played very badly,” says Mark Pieth, a legal scholar and founder of the Basel Institute on Governance. “In investment banking they were amateurs.”

But concerns overseas may not be the sole worry for the banking sector. Credit Suisse is a part of Switzerland’s modern national identity story. And with general elections in October, the banking industry has become a political concern.

For the rightwing populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) — the largest in the country’s federal assembly — the bank’s decline, and the to-them-scandalous rescue that collapses it into UBS, are symptoms of subservience to foreign interests.

But for the left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SP), the second largest, it is a tale of inadequate regulation and greed. “We have been trying to have clear and stricter regulations for years, but the rightwing liberal majority in parliament has always refused that,” says Cédric Wermuth, the party’s co-president. “In general we have to recognise that the liberal mainstream thesis of rational financial markets has been again proven to be rubbish.”

The collapse of Credit Suisse could be a turning point, he suggests. “We are witnessing the moment where the financial sector that has been a huge benefit to Switzerland has become a huge liability. In the past, global crises have helped Switzerland strengthen its model — we were a safe haven. War or crisis, whatever happened, you could bring your money here. That didn’t change in 2008, but maybe it has changed this [week] at a very fundamental level.”

The question of neutrality

Banking is not the only area where long-established Swiss values are suddenly in question.

Switzerland’s doctrine of neutrality has been the cornerstone of its foreign policy for centuries, and it has not participated in a war since 1815. But that position has become harder to maintain in an era of European unification and economic interdependency.

“The question over just what neutrality means was always there, in the background,” says Michael Ambühl, former state secretary of foreign affairs. “But it has come out to the forefront due to this war in Ukraine — and it’s obvious both to the political class and society that we need to clarify it.”

At the sharp end of the issue is a question over arms deliveries: Swiss-made weapons exported to neighbours years ago now require permission from Bern to be re-exported.

For months, Bern has refused to allow countries such as Germany to send its mothballed stockpiles of Swiss ammunition to Kyiv. Berlin’s frustration has grown, and other Nato members have ratcheted up the pressure. The message from US ambassador Miller earlier this month was the strongest signal to Switzerland yet.

Polls show a majority of Swiss — 55 per cent — support the re-export of arms. But politicians are sharply divided. And by constitutional design, nothing in Switzerland changes without consensus. The SVP is campaigning hard on the issue as a matter that goes to the core of what it means to be Swiss.

What makes matters peculiar, however, is that Bern has so far matched all of the EU’s economic sanctions against Russia. Indeed, Switzerland was one of the first countries Moscow put on its official list of “unfriendly” nations last year.

Bankers meanwhile warn that clients from certain countries — China foremost among them — are increasingly nervous about leaving their assets in Switzerland. That leaves the country with all the downsides of neutrality and fewer and fewer of the upsides, says one.

“Neutrality is in our books and in our genes, but that doesn’t mean we mustn’t adapt,” says Borer. “We have to.”

Adapt or decline

Those worried about the national character eroding have no shortage of metaphors to point to.

Earlier this month, Switzerland lost an appeal in US courts to give its iconic Gruyère cheese — from the valley of the same name in canton Fribourg — protected geographical status.

Bars of Toblerone chocolate will no longer display the Matterhorn on its packaging after Mondelez, the global food company, announced it would move the manufacture of them from Switzerland to Slovakia.

Even the cherished national sport is suffering. This winter the Swiss Alps had some of the thinnest snowfall on record, with some of its slopes covered in mud and dead grass in the middle of January.

As with Credit Suisse, and as with neutrality, the common thread may be one of how “Swissness” either accommodates a rapidly changing world, or loses its purchase.

Credit Suisse was one point of fracture, but there may be others, says Pieth. He points to the huge number of secretive commodity traders based in Switzerland that seem to operate as laws unto themselves. “Switzerland cannot go on operating under the radar,” he believes.

And yet over years of fierce independence, the country and its model have proved nothing if not resilient.

“The media and [its] contemporaries tend to overestimate the news,” says the Swiss historian Thomas Maissen. “In the autumn of 2001, we had 9/11, a rampage in Zug with 14 politicians murdered, a fire disaster in the Gotthard car tunnel, the crash of a Crossair plane and the grounding of Swissair.”

The airline’s bankruptcy that October “was interpreted as the symbolic end of an era — of peaceful and successful Switzerland”.

Breathless features pondered the demise or slow decline of the nation. The opposite proved true. Switzerland’s freedom and safety endured, and its wealth grew: the Swiss economy, with a GDP of over $800bn annually, is more than twice as large now as it was then.

But if there’s a lesson in the debate surrounding the Ukraine war, says Ambühl, it’s that clinging to old certainties while the world is changing risks leaving Switzerland behind. “We have to adapt to new realities.”

[asustadísimos]

[(A JENOFONTE10) No cabe duda de que la más antisistema de las sobrevaloraciones popularcapitalistas es la inmobiliaria de la vivienda porque es la más destructiva del patrón Producción-Renta-Gasto y de su superestructura ideológica.

La sobrevaloración de la vivienda es una estafa intergeneracional que desequilibra la familia particularmente en favor de las madres, convirtiéndolas en madrastras. Son Saturno y, sobre todo, Saturnina devorando más a sus hijos que a sus hijas.

Adán (el hombre) tenía padre y madre. Pero los dejó para unirse con la mujer de su misma generación.

Génesis 2:21-24:

21 Dios hizo caer en un sueño profundo al hombre, tomó una de sus costillas y cerró la carne en su lugar.

22 Y Dios tomó la costilla del hombre y formó la mujer. Y la trajo a él.

23 Y el hombre dijo: «Esta es ahora hueso de mis huesos y carne de mi carne; será llamada mujer porque del hombre fue tomada».

24 Por eso, el hombre dejará a su padre y a su madre, y se unirá a su mujer; y serán una sola carne.

¡El hombre, para ser, tiene que dejar a su padre y a su madre!

Es evidente que Génesis 2:24 significa que, de una familia, sale otra, y la de cada uno es la que conforman hombre y mujer, al menos inicialmente. ¿Pero solo es eso?

En Deuteronomio 5:16, donde se recoge el Cuarto Mandamiento, los conceptos de padre y madre adquieren más significado:
— no se trata de amar, sino de honrar a padre y madre como Dios manda; se trata de enaltecer y respetar la ‘auctoritas’ o/y la ‘potestas’; y
— dicha honra es finalista, es para que te vaya bien a ti, atención, «sobre la tierra», entendiendo tierra como el paso efímero por la realidad densa, previo a la vida eterna, paso efímero que te da Dios (y es a Él a quien debes agradecer).

Se interpreta que el bien protegido en el Cuarto Mandamiento, que parece referirse solo a la relación hijo/a-progenitores, sin embargo, excluye el ‘culto a los antepasados’ e incluye la honra a las Autoridades (religiosas y civiles, incluido el fisco y el banco central, siempre y cuando sean como Dios manda), toda vez que el sintagma ‘padre y madre’ es el núcleo de la célula básica de la sociedad, que contigo y con Dios conforma un triángulo.

En una familia monoparental, también hay ‘padre y madre’. Y también hay que honrar a ‘padre y madre’ en relaciones familiares tóxicas, incluso aquellas en las que no es inmoral denunciar ante las Autoridades a los propios progenitores. Dicho de otro modo, honrar a ‘padre y madre’ no tiene nada que ver con conductas contrarias al orden moral.

Uno pude tener progenitores, pero estar huérfano de ‘padre y madre’. ‘Padre y madre’ no es papi y mami.

La burbuja popularcapitalista nos ha hecho ver que hay filicidios feministizantes perpetrados por madrastras aproductivas; y que apegarse a estos juegos intergeneracionales de dinero-sin-trabajar no solo es ir contra los Mandamientos Séptimo, Octavo y Décimo, sino también contra el Cuarto.]

[Derby]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-the-superprime-banking-crisis-9ab6b6d2

Welcome to the Superprime Banking Crisis

Rising rates have exposed the problem with building a strategy around serving wealthy clients

Banks for rich people are different from other banks. They used to have more money.

Banking’s last crisis featured subprime borrowers, specifically people with troubled credit who were given mortgages by bankers who ignored the risk that the borrowers wouldn’t realistically be able to afford them. Banks that got into trouble were ones that churned out such loans or gorged on them in securitized form.

The current emerging turmoil is, so far, featuring the opposite. Banks such as Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that catered to some of the wealthiest, most creditworthy clients—those with superprime credit scores—are the ones running into the biggest problems.

This is quite the turnaround. After 2008, banking the rich was often touted as a far better model. Even the biggest banks began aiming more of their consumer lending and wealth management at relatively better-off customers, and they scaled back on serving subprime customers. Wealthy customers seldom default, they bring lots of cash and commercial banking business and pay big fees for investments and advice, the thinking went.

But when interest rates shot up last year, it exposed weaknesses in the strategy. It isn’t that the rich are defaulting on loans in droves. But the most flush depositors with excess cash last year started taking their cash and seeking out higher yields in online banks, money funds or Treasurys. On top of that, startups and other private businesses started burning more cash, leading to deposit outflows.

When depositors began to panic about bank safety this month and withdrew their money, the most exposed were the people with uninsured deposits over the $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. limit. Uninsured deposits represented a large share of deposits at SVB, which had encouraged clients to keep the majority of their cash at the bank. Rich customers came for the perks—then left with their cash.

Compounding deposit risk is the problem of banks having lots of loans and securities that are now yielding far less than market rates. Many of these can’t be easily sold if needed to cover deposit outflows. One reason banks loaded up on securities was because they got a flood of deposits during the pandemic but didn’t see an equivalent surge of loan demand. This may have been especially the case at banks catering to the wealthy, as rich customers usually don’t need a lot of bank borrowing for day-to-day needs.

A major way that the better-off do borrow from banks is to buy homes, and often in the form of what are known as jumbo mortgages. Jumbos are for loan amounts over $726,200 in most places, and over $1,089,300 in high-cost cities such as New York or San Francisco. Jumbo mortgages bring wealthy customers with lots of cash. They also are typically more difficult to sell to the market, in part because they aren’t guaranteed by government-sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. So banks often sit on them. But the value of these mortgages, many of which are fixed at low rates for the foreseeable future, have dropped as interest rates have risen.

To be sure, not all banks that focus on wealthier individual clients are under intense pressure. Shares of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, are down less than half as much this month as the nearly 30% decline for the KBW Nasdaq Bank index. But those banks are more diversified and focus more on the steadier, fee-generating parts of the wealth business, such as stock trading and asset management, than on mortgages or deposits.

An easing of interest rates and liquidity support by the Federal Reserve could calm nerves for now. But the bigger pressures on banking the wealthy may persist. Deposit movements may further motivate customers to seek out the best rates on cash. Some people might refinance if they have mortgages that reset at higher rates, but homeowners with sub-3% mortgages aren’t very motivated to move and generate new loans.

Wealthier customers aren’t immune to economic problems, either. While they still will be better off, events such as corporate layoffs along with declines in the market will be felt relatively more by white-collar workers than blue-collar ones, who may be enjoying a far stronger labor market. This phenomenon has been dubbed the “richcession.”

Of course, a deep regular recession and a widespread jump in unemployment, accompanied by falling interest rates, might even out the pain. But for now, the problem starts at the top.

[puede ser]

En Deuteronomio 5:26, donde se recoge el Cuarto Mandamiento, los conceptos de padre y madre adquieren más significado:

5:16, si no me equivoco

[puede ser]

https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/economia/2023/03/25/alemania-levanta-veto-apoya-final-coches-emitan-co2-2035/00031679748843741954277.htm

Alemania levanta el veto y apoya el final de los coches que emitan CO2 en el 2035

La Comisión Europea (CE) anunció este sábado que ha alcanzado un acuerdo para que Alemania levante su veto de última hora a la legislación ya negociada y pactada para que a partir del 2035 solo puedan venderse en la Unión Europea coches que no emitan CO2.

Deutsche Bank, cambio de postura... Aquí no se salva ni El Tato

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-24/should-i-buy-a-home-mortgage-premium-vs-renting-is-highest-since-2006

Buy-or-Rent Premium Is Highest Since 2006 Housing Bubble

With real estate prices still elevated and borrowing costs high, paying the monthly mortgage outpaces rent more than it has since before the financial crisis.

The buy-to-rent premium hasn’t been this big since 2006, at the peak of the housing bubble.

With mortgage rates high and home prices still elevated, the monthly payment for a newly purchased home — assuming a 10% down payment and a 30-year fixed rate mortgage — was $1,176 more than renting an apartment at the end 2022, according to an analysis from the National Multifamily Housing Council, a trade group that represents owners of professionally managed rental buildings.

The cost of homeownership has surged 71% over the past three years, or an average of about 20% per year, compared to average annual rent growth of 6.3% over the same period. As a result, the premium owners pay over renters is now wider than it’s been since third quarter of 2006, the report said.

US housing costs surged in the pandemic. Buyers struggled to find affordable properties in a frothy housing market marked by bidding wars and cash offers and renters faced higher costs across the US. Now, things have cooled down a bit.

Still, there’s limited inventory available and mortgage rates remain high despite slipping slightly in recent weeks.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion/noticias/12202148/03/23/Intervenir-los-precios-no-abarata-la-vivienda.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/12200854/03/23/Solo-dos-distritos-madrilenos-esquivan-la-subida-en-el-precio-de-la-vivienda.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/12202235/03/23/Barcelona-unico-gran-mercado-donde-cae-el-precio-de-venta-y-sube-la-renta.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/12200174/03/23/Comprar-y-alquilar-casa-en-Baleares-es-mas-caro-que-en-plena-burbuja.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/12196836/03/23/La-nueva-Ley-de-Vivienda-de-Portugal-preocupa-al-ciudadano-.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/el-economista-ecobolsa/20230325/page/6/textview

El 54% de expertos cree que la crisis bancaria acaba en deflación o recesión

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/retail-consumo/noticias/12202145/03/23/La-hosteleria-batira-record-de-ventas-en-Semana-Santa-pero-la-falta-de-trabajadores-le-hace-la-Pascua.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion/noticias/12202197/03/23/Errores-y-patinazos-de-los-bancos-centrales-cual-es-el-siguiente.html

Saludos.

[wanderer]

Dejo esto y que cada cual saque sus propias conclusiones:

Más de 100 históricos socialistas se alían contra un PSOE "irreconocible"
El colectivo "Fernando de los Ríos" busca poner en valor a los dirigentes que contribuyeron a las victorias de los gobiernos del PSOE y que hoy "han sido borrados". Critican la "deriva" y los pactos de Sánchez

https://www.larazon.es/espana/mas-100-historicos-socialistas-reunen-reivindicar-legado-partido-irreconocible_20230325641ee7e596c07c0001a1594d.html

[muyuu]

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion/noticias/12202197/03/23/Errores-y-patinazos-de-los-bancos-centrales-cual-es-el-siguiente.html

Saludos.

muy apropiado lo de que van todos remando sobre bananas

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://nypost.com/2023/03/24/progressives-good-cause-eviction-bill-spells-doom-for-nyc-housing/

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

 

[sudden and sharp]