PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Primavera 2025

[Saturio]

No se, 250.000 personas al dia, todos los dias del año, es bastante increíble.
Son 1.700 aviones A320 llenos, todos los dias del año.
Entre los aprox. 8 aeropuertos (siendo generoso) que pueden ser destino internacional, son mas de 200 vuelos al dia en cada uno de ellos, llenos de extranjeros, todos los dias del año.

Suena como la droga y las putas en el PIB.
Otra vaca esférica.

Lo que queráis, hombre. A barajas llegan más de 1000 vuelos al día. 1000.
Te puedes poner el flight radar un día y los vas contando.

13:00   08 Apr   LGG   Liege   CA1027   Air China   Unknown
13:00   08 Apr   BOG   Bogota   UX194   Air Europa   Landed 12:33
13:00   08 Apr   HAV   Havana   CU470   Cubana Airlines   Unknown
13:05   08 Apr   MXP   Milan   UX1066   Air Europa 5   Landed 13:28
13:05   08 Apr   FUE   Fuerteventura   FR5469   Ryanair   Landed 12:55
13:05   08 Apr   FCO   Rome   UX1040   Air Europa 5   Landed 12:42
13:05   08 Apr   PRG   Prague   QS1056   Smartwings 1   Landed 12:46
13:05   08 Apr   LIM   Lima   PU302   Plus Ultra   Landed 12:31
13:10   08 Apr   DUB   Dublin   IB1882   Iberia Airlines   Landed 12:54
13:10   08 Apr   DUB   Dublin   I21882   Iberia Express 5   Landed 12:47
13:10   08 Apr   BDS   Brindisi   FR5647   Ryanair   Landed 12:48
13:15   08 Apr   PTY   Panama City   UX56   Air Europa 3   Landed 12:36
13:15   08 Apr   BRU   Brussels   UX1172   Air Europa   Landed 13:04
13:15   08 Apr   BRU   Brussels   AP1172   Alba Star 3   Unknown
13:20   08 Apr   BCN   Barcelona   UX7706   Air Europa 8   Landed 12:53
13:25   08 Apr   VCE   Venice   UX1082   Air Europa 1   Landed 12:49
13:25   08 Apr   SAW   Istanbul   PC1099   Pegasus Airlines   Landed 13:11
13:25   08 Apr   ORD   Chicago   AA126   American Airlines 3   Landed 12:25
13:25   08 Apr   RZE   Rzeszow   UX815   Air Europa   Landed 12:38
13:30   08 Apr   LGW   London   UX1014   Air Europa 2   Landed 13:22
13:30   08 Apr   DXB   Dubai   EK141   Emirates 2   Landed 13:27
13:30   08 Apr   VLC   Valencia   UX4064   Air Europa 6   Landed 13:22

[Benzino Napaloni]

700.000 mortadelos los más caros, y eso que apenas superan los 100 m2 sin contar la terraza del lado mar.

Es justo de esta promoción donde rastreé un supuesto anuncio particular que sólo tiene una foto del plano, y que el teléfono de contacto lleva directamente a la oficina de la promotora. No han acabado de construir y ya están teniendo problemas para vender lo que lleva tiempo terminado.

Y sí, pegadita a los bloques está la vía del tren. Los pisos del otro extremo aún tienen un cierto aislamiento, los que están pegados se lo comen con patatas.

De frenopático.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/1df217c4-2732-41d5-89a2-9f51fbd45e7e

The Treasury basis trade rears its head again

Bills and bonds and Treasury basis trades, oh my!

Someone just saw the aggregate size of the net Treasury short positioning

Yesterday our MainFT colleagues published an important story about some of the US government bond market’s weird behaviour lately, which, unfortunately, quickly got buried by the unending avalanche of other news.

Fortunately, it also helps explain why US Treasuries are selling off again today, despite the stock market dipping back down again on more bad tariff headlines. From Monday’s story:

US government debt sold off sharply on Monday as hedge funds cut back on risk in their strategies and investors continued shifting into cash during a third day of acute tumult on Wall Street.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield jumped 0.19 percentage points on Monday to 4.18 per cent, the biggest daily rise since September 2022, according to Bloomberg data. The 30-year yield jumped 0.21 percentage points, the biggest move since March 2020.

. . . Investors and analysts pointed in particular to hedge funds that took advantage of small differences in the price of Treasuries and associated futures contracts, known as the “basis trade”. These funds, which are large players in the fixed-income market, unwound those positions as they cut back on risk, prompting selling in Treasuries.

“Hedge funds have been liquidating US Treasury basis trades furiously,” said one hedge fund manager.

The sell-off has now continued into Tuesday, with the 10-year Treasury yield climbing up 4.25 per cent at pixel time. We’re not talking an huge sell-off (yet), but it’s up 9 basis points on the day, and has now see-sawed up 37 bps since its low on April 4. That’s pretty noticeable, given that “risk-off” remains the dominant sentiment

As many Alphaville readers will know, we are above-average interested in the Treasury basis trade, and have been ever since it scared the bejesus out of us back in March 2020. For the uninitiated, here’s a quick explainer of what the Treasury basis trade is, and why it’s potentially problematic.  

Treasury futures contacts typically trade at a premium to the government bond you can deliver to satisfy the derivatives contract. That’s mostly because they are a convenient way for investors to gain leveraged exposure to Treasuries (you only have to put down an initial margin for the nominal exposure you’re buying). Asset managers are as a result mostly net long Treasury futures.

However this premium opens up an opportunity for hedge funds to take the other side. They sell Treasury futures and buy Treasury bonds to hedge themselves, capturing an almost risk-free spread of a few basis points. Normally, hedge fund managers don’t get out of bed for a few measly bps, but because Treasuries are so solid you can leverage the trade many, many times.

Let’s say you put down $10mn for Treasuries and sell an equal value of futures. You can then use the Treasuries as collateral for, say, $9.9mn of short-term loans in the repo market. Then you buy another $9.9mn of Treasuries, sell an equivalent amount of Treasury futures, and the repeat the process again and again and again.

It’s hard to get firm idea of what is the typical amount of leverage that hedge funds use for Treasury basis trades, but Alphaville gathers that as much as 50 times is normal and up to 100 times can happen. In other words, just $10mn of capital can support as much as $1bn of Treasury purchases.

And how significant is the trade in aggregate? Well, it’s an imperfect measure for a lot of reasons, but the best proxy for its overall size is the net short Treasury futures positioning of hedge funds, which currently stands beyond $800bn, with asset managers the mirror image on the long side.



The problem is that both Treasury futures and repo markets demand much more collateral when there is an unusual amount of volatility in the Treasury market. And if the hedge fund can’t pony up then lenders can seize the collateral — Treasury bonds — and sell them into the market.

As a result, it is a major danger lurking inside the market that is supposed to be the financial system’s equivalent of a bomb shelter, as Apollo’s Torsten Sløk pointed out earlier today:

Why is this a problem? Because the cash-futures basis trade is a potential source of instability. In case of an exogenous shock, the highly leveraged long positions in cash Treasury securities by hedge funds are at risk of being rapidly unwound. Such an unwind would have to be absorbed, in the short run, by a broker-dealer that itself is capital-constrained. This could lead to a significant disruption in market functions of broker-dealer firms, such as providing liquidity to the secondary market for Treasuries and intermediating the market for repo borrowing and lending.

We saw exactly how this latent vulnerability can morph into a systemic risk in March 2020, when a “dash for cash” by foreign central banks and bond funds swamped by investor withdrawals were forced to ditch the most sellable asset they had: US Treasuries. That in turn pummelled hedge funds that had put on monstrously leveraged Treasury basis trades, and threatened to turn a messy bout of Treasury liquidation into a cataclysmic financial crisis. 

Only Herculean efforts by the Federal Reserve — its balance sheet expanded by $1.6tn in just one month — prevented it.

What happened late on Friday and on Monday is nothing near what we saw in March 2020, when for over a week the US Treasury market — the bedrock for the entire global financial system — came close to breaking. But as our colleagues pointed out, the volatility has been high, and that they sold off so violently yesterday is highly suggestive of at least some levered Treasury trades getting forcibly liquidated:



Many regulators and policymakers have been worried about the Treasury basis trade ever since, not least because the Fed’s actions constituted a de facto bailout of the strategy. That the basis trade has since swelled to become far larger than it ever was before March 2020 has understandably increased those concerns even further.

Unfortunately, doing something forceful about it is difficult precisely because the basis trade has become such a major pillar of support for the Treasury market, at a time when the US government’s borrowing costs have already ballooned.

As Citadel’s Ken Griffin noted back in 2023 — when the SEC’s then-head Gary Gensler had the strategy in his crosshairs — killing Treasury basis trade would “increase the cost of issuing new debt, which will be borne by US taxpayers to the tune of billions or tens of billions of dollars a year”.

So far it doesn’t seem like any basis trade liquidation is having a major disruptive effect on the Treasury market. What was scary in 2020 was both how yields moved up when they should be moving down, and how trading gummed up completely in an asset class that nowadays often sees about $1tn of trading a day.

That doesn’t seem to happened so far, even if Treasury yields moving higher on risk-off days like today is a little disconcerting. However, Bloomberg’s index of Treasury market liquidity (caveats!) has been a little loopy lately, so this is one to keep an eye on.

[Cadavre Exquis]

30000 napos al año por alquilar un piso? No tengo palabras, y las que tendría son muy feas.

Va, qué puñetas. Echémonos unas risas.

https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/107853309

https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/107853309/

Saludos.

[conejo]

Una mica car el piset   

[asustadísimos]

[«Entradas turísticas en frontera».— ¿Qué frontera hay para los residentes en los 29 países del espacio Schengen? ¡Ninguna!

'Pro memoria': Pertenecen al espacio Schengen todos los países de la UE menos Irlanda y Chipre, y además los países de la AELC.]

[R.G.C.I.M.]

En la segunda foto observáis el hermoso tendido eléctrico de las vías.
El anuncio dice vistas al mar.
De cables.
Y sonido de goloritos cada vez que los boggies pasan las traviesas. Tractrac...tractrac. 
 tractrac...tractrac
...



Sds

[asustadísimos]

[Los amiguitos del DOP (Dinero de Otras Personas) siempre meten miedo con hecatombes en renta fija pública del Estado.

Pero hay que ver estos productos financieros como al dinero estricto. Todos son activos financieros públicos con más o menos vencimiento y rendimiento.

Internamente, en EE. UU., ha aumentado ahora el apetito por el dinero en sentido amplio. ¿Y qué? ¿Problemas con algún tipo de derivado financiero? Nada que no se compense con otros.

El problema sería si el resto del mundo se pusiera a vender masivamente dinero estadounidense.

Pero estamos hablando del primer dinero del mundo. El más poseído, pues.

Es clara la indicación de venta para los tenedores externos de dinero estadounidense, pero la depreciación del dólar va a ser más lenta que las depreciaciones inmobiliaria y bursátil.

Los inmobiliarios-'residential' no lo quieren llevar a precios, pero el nivel de valor de los activos ficticios inmobiliarios comenzó a bajar mucho antes que el de la Bolsa, como hemos ido relatando al ir viendo precios con el –60% de corrección en el 'commercial'.

El orden de las correcciones valorativas popularcapitalistas (no confundamos valor con precios) es de lo real a lo financiero (primero siempre lo más real —no financiero—):
— primero, inmuebles;
— luego, Bolsa; y
— por último los activos financieros, lo que llamamos Deuda y, especialmente, el dólar, la superdeuda, el superactivo financiero sin vencimiento ni rendimiento, solo depreciable al cambiarlo por otras monedas más fuertes, como el euro.

Las desvalorizaciones inmobiliaria y bursátil comenzaron hace muchos años. Lo que ha ido aumentando desde entonces ha sido solo el delirio de los precios. El Gobierno de EE. UU. anda diciendo que el resto del mundo les ha estafado. ¡Que ironía más cerda, con una guerra en Europa de por medio con la única finalidad de lastrar al euro (recesión en Alemania) para ganar tiempo y algunos estadounidenses forrarse!

Cuanto más sigan los inmobiliarios erre que erre con que «no hay oferta» y demás chuminadas, peor será el aterrizaje de los precios en el nivel de equilibrio del valor del activo ficticio amalgamado con las viviendas. Lo mismo podemos decir con las expectativas reales cotizadas en Bolsa.

En el caso de Madrid, dado lo bien que va España con el Sr. Sánchez, je, je, pudiera ocurrir que, mientras el valor sigue cayendo, el crecimiento bidigital de precios se alargara en el tiempo 5, 10, 15, 20 años (la inmarcesible Sra. Ayuso solo tiene 46 años y hay mexicanos, venezolanos y argentinos a cascoporro).

Pudiera verse que los pisitos ordinarios de la paupérrima clase media madrileña pasaran de 'valer' el medio millón de dólares estadounidenses al millón entero y más allá.

En el segmento de pisos finos, como el famoso dúplex fecal —que tiene una prueba de amor pasado mañana con la declaración judicial del novio—, la cosa ya ha pasado los 2 millones de cutre, mugriento y cochambroso dinero 'fiat' a 2,25 millones de rutilantes 'americanos':



Ya le han 'sacao' el Ferrari Portofino. Se conoce que la oferta debe ser escasísima.

En suma, una cosa es valor y otra los precios. La corrección valorativa está ya funcionando. En Occidente y la UE, nada es ya lo que fue. Todo bien o servicio ha empeorado. La corrección en precios la están demorando los hijos de la Gran Bretaña. Este es el sentido de la inflación rara y la 'reduflación' (menos cantidad del producto dentro del mismo paquete comercial ofrecedido por el mismo precio).

No es ni un fenómeno monetario ni nada que se le parezca ni la fantasmagórica ley de la oferta y la demanda ni leches. Es mera avaricia de quienes tiene poder de fijación de precios. Es lucha desigual por la Renta perpetrada por unos cuantos en contra de ti.

En inmuebles y Bolsa, estamos en máximos históricos de diferencia entre valor y precios.

Es por esta razón por la que la ofensiva estafadora actual del Gobierno de EE. UU. está llamada al fracaso. Nadie se cree ya nada.


¿Se puede saber cuándo bajarán los precios con la misma exactitud que lo sabemos respecto de los valores? La respuesta es no. Pero la respuesta también es que «depende de un tuit». En este sentido es buenísimo, en España, que se escuche la frase «hablar la vivienda está de moda».]

[muyuu]

[...]

¿Veis? Lo mismo que Biden.


Esto es de abril de 2024. bastante anterior a Trump.

Europa triplica en dos años la importación de gas de EE UU a pesar de las prohibiciones sobre el fracking

https://www.elsaltodiario.com/gas-natural/europa-triplica-importacion-gas-eeuu-prohibiciones-fracking

Bueno, tanto como lo mismo... lo de Biden es a la vieja usanza con diplomacia entre bambalinas y con el "no financies a Rusia" - Trump es con la pistola encima de la mesa y en plan gangster "es duro pedir pero más duro es robar" - gunboat diplomacy a la antigua usanza.

Del hilo del invierno:

La deuda de EEUU está a aprox. 3,5 E+13 US$ y tienen el trabuco más gordo que sus acreedores

sobre todo ahora que China ha reducido su tenencia

de modo que lo vamos a pagar todos a pachas

Básicamente la postura de Trump es que EEUU, usando su vocabulario, "tiene muchas cartas" y tiene una deuda inasumible.

La situación actual es en resumidas cuentas que está mandando a la mierda todo el orden internacional que ellos mismos inventaron y cuyas reglas hicieron a su medida, porque la deuda se les ha ido de madre, porque principalmente han abusado de la hegemonía de su dólar, y ahora el medio mundo que depende fuertemente de EEUU va a tener que poner panoja en el cepillo.

El asunto de China es delicado, porque dependen mucho de EEUU pero se han estado preparando. Los chinos tal vez pensaban que EEUU haría lo menos deshonroso y simplemente quebraría y haría un default en su deuda como los pobres. Como Argentina, Grecia, Chipre, etc los morenitos esos que son poco serios. Pero no, EEUU lo que va a hacer es sacar el trabuco como Curro Jiménez. De modo que toda esa deuda de la que se han deshecho no les va a salvar, porque las normas "son para todos, pero para unos más que para otros" y "la China" sin acceso a su principal mercado tiene muy difícil salir bien parada de esto.

Con la UE está más claro. La UE se bajará los pantalones hasta los tobillos. Quien espere lo contrario está flipando. Lo máximo de fliparlo es creer que la UE se va a lanzar en brazos del eje Bollullos del Condado - Arkhangelsk - Pyongyang y además en cuestión de semanas o meses. Porque el tejido empresarial va a empezar a implosionar muy pronto si la situación no se estabiliza.

Pero China será mucho más difícil saber hasta dónde va a llegar. Puede pasar prácticamente cualquier cosa.

EEUU es el único gran bloque económico que tiene auto-suficiencias militar, energética y alimentaria muy holgadas. A las malas será jodido porque a nadie le gusta empeorar y dejar de poder comprar tantos juguetitos, pero China lo tiene peor y la UE muchísimo peor.

A corto y medio plazo EEUU "gana" la partida si no a todos los jugadores, a casi todos y con el resto hace tablas. Más que nada porque nadie tiene ningún plan viable que sostenga el chiringuito global y fuera hace mucho frío. A más largo plazo, la credibilidad de EEUU como socio comercial queda donde ha quedado su credibilidad como socio militar hace unos meses: en la mierda.

Esto va a ser peor que la plandemia para las economías desarrolladas. El proteccionismo es altamente contagioso.


*typo

[asustadísimos]

[Una nota característica de los comemierdas es que creen que los demás son tan tragones como ellos, especialmente cuando ese ellos es la UE. Ahora bien, ¡cómo les gusta cobrar sus ingresitos en euros y no en dólares estadounidenses o libras esterlinas! Otra característica es que mitifican a quienes les pone la mierda en el plato, aunque lo odien.]

[Benzino Napaloni]

En la segunda foto observáis el hermoso tendido eléctrico de las vías.
El anuncio dice vistas al mar.
De cables.
Y sonido de goloritos cada vez que los boggies pasan las traviesas. Tractrac...tractrac. 
 tractrac...tractrac
...



Sds

Ay que me da . Estos bloques tienen tres, hasta cuatro pisos en cada lado. No me había fijado en que el "pis" en cuestión es uno de los que están en el lado de las vías del tren. Lo hacía más del lado mar, pero no. Está prácticamente pegado. Y el rentista quiere sacarse más de 3.000 napos al mes por eso.


Es decir, el listillo se ha pulido no menos de 400.000 en la hipoteca, más lo que se haya gastado en los muebles. Y con el decreto del alquiler de temporada recién aprobado en Cataluña. Pues iba a ser cierto que dentro de lo malo dejar que la cosa se descontrolase ayudaría a que caiga sola...

[Saturio]

[...]

¿Veis? Lo mismo que Biden.


Esto es de abril de 2024. bastante anterior a Trump.

Europa triplica en dos años la importación de gas de EE UU a pesar de las prohibiciones sobre el fracking

https://www.elsaltodiario.com/gas-natural/europa-triplica-importacion-gas-eeuu-prohibiciones-fracking

Bueno, tanto como lo mismo... lo de Biden es a la vieja usanza con diplomacia entre bambalinas y con el "no financies a Rusia" - Trump es con la pistola encima de la mesa y en plan gangster "es duro pedir pero más duro es robar" - gunboat diplomacy a la antigua usanza.

Del hilo del invierno:

La deuda de EEUU está a aprox. 3,5 E+13 US$ y tienen el trabuco más gordo que sus acreedores

sobre todo ahora que China ha reducido su tenencia

de modo que lo vamos a pagar todos a pachas

Básicamente la postura de Trump es que EEUU, usando su vocabulario, "tiene muchas cartas" y tiene una deuda inasumible.

La situación actual es en resumidas cuentas que está mandando a la mierda todo el orden internacional que ellos mismos inventaron y cuyas reglas hicieron a su medida, porque la deuda se les ha ido de madre, porque principalmente han abusado de la hegemonía de su dólar, y ahora el medio mundo que depende fuertemente de EEUU va a tener que poner panoja en el cepillo.

El asunto de China es delicado, porque dependen mucho de EEUU pero se han estado preparando. Los chinos tal vez pensaban que EEUU haría lo menos deshonroso y simplemente quebraría y haría un default en su deuda como los pobres. Como Argentina, Grecia, Chipre, etc los morenitos esos que son poco serios. Pero no, EEUU lo que va a hacer es sacar el trabuco como Curro Jiménez. De modo que toda esa deuda de la que se han desecho no les va a salvar, porque las normas "son para todos, pero para unos más que para otros" y "la China" sin acceso a su principal mercado tiene muy difícil salir bien parada de esto.

Con la UE está más claro. La UE se bajará los pantalones hasta los tobillos. Quien espere lo contrario está flipando. Lo máximo de fliparlo es creer que la UE se va a lanzar en brazos del eje Bollullos del Condado - Arkhangelsk - Pyongyang y además en cuestión de semanas o meses. Porque el tejido empresarial va a empezar a implosionar muy pronto si la situación no se estabiliza.

Pero China será mucho más difícil saber hasta dónde va a llegar. Puede pasar prácticamente cualquier cosa.

EEUU es el único gran bloque económico que tiene auto-suficiencias militar, energética y alimentaria muy holgadas. A las malas será jodido porque a nadie le gusta empeorar y dejar de poder comprar tantos juguetitos, pero China lo tiene peor y la UE muchísimo peor.

A corto y medio plazo EEUU "gana" la partida si no a todos los jugadores, a casi todos y con el resto hace tablas. Más que nada porque nadie tiene ningún plan viable que sostenga el chiringuito global y fuera hace mucho frío. A más largo plazo, la credibilidad de EEUU como socio comercial queda donde ha quedado su credibilidad como socio militar hace unos meses: en la mierda.

Esto va a ser peor que la plandemia para las economías desarrolladas. El proteccionismo es altamente contagioso.

En Europa producimos tan pocos alimentos que los tiramos para que no bajen de precio.
Y aún así la balanza agroalimentaria de la UE es positiva.

Y así con todo.

El que se lanza un farol es porque tiene una pareja de ases en la mano.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/f3e0ee58-47a0-41c4-b021-ed19d27da6e7

Treasuries hit as market turmoil intensifies

Global market turmoil intensified on Wednesday after Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs took effect, with government bonds and stocks selling off.



US Treasuries were hit hard, with the 10-year yield, a global benchmark for borrowing costs, jumping to 4.51 per cent before easing to 4.42 per cent. The 10-year Japanese government bond yield reached 1.37 per cent before retreating to 1.26 per cent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

Stock markets came under renewed pressure, with contracts tracking the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 each falling almost 3 per cent before recovering slightly.

Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Associates said the sell-off in Treasuries, typically a haven for investors during periods of market stress, was signalling that the “Trump administration may be playing with liquid nitro”.

Investors and economists have warned that Trump’s tariffs have increased the risk of a recession in the US, the world’s biggest economy, as well as a new bout of inflation.

As investors raced to price in slower global growth, oil prices extended their slump. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, dropped as far as $60.13 a barrel, a four-year low.

The US dollar was down 0.75 per cent against a basket of peers. The Japanese yen rose as much as 1.2 per cent against the dollar.

Yields on longer-dated Treasuries also rose, with the 30-year yield climbing briefly above 5 per cent from 4.71 per cent at Tuesday’s close.

“The sell-off may be signalling a regime shift whereby US Treasuries are no longer the global fixed income safe haven,” said Ben Wiltshire, a G10 rates strategist at Citi.

Asian equities sold off. China’s CSI 300 benchmark was the only index trading higher amid signs that Beijing was stepping in to support the market.

[muyuu]

[...]

En Europa producimos tan pocos alimentos que los tiramos para que no bajen de precio.
Y aún así la balanza agroalimentaria de la UE es positiva.

Y así con todo.

El que se lanza un farol es porque tiene una pareja de ases en la mano.

Tal vez hubiera podido ser así, pero ahora mismo no lo es, entre otras cosas porque producir alimentos hoy en Europa es muy intensivo energéticamente.

Esto no lo ajustamos ahora de un día para otro ni en economía de guerra.

[muyuu]

Dos entrevistas de Varoufakis de hoy:

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqnBPwdTbsc
title: Yanis Varoufakis analyses Donald Trump's tariff war
by: PoliticsJOE

English-UK🇬🇧
[...]

You shouldn't be surprised at all. Nothing is new under the sun.

He talks about “draining the swamp,” Wall Street corruption, and so on. But the first thing he did in 2017 was appoint the CEO of Goldman Sachs as Treasury Secretary. This is the classic modus operandi of the fascist: they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to devalue the dollar without jeopardising its “exorbitant privilege” - that is, its role as the world's reserve currency.

Is this far-fetched? No, it's not far-fetched. He starts with the tariffs, and then, in the one-on-one discussions with each of our leaders - hapless leaders, I should say - he demands different things from different people depending on what they have to give him. Nobody is immune to the global fallout.

Yanis Varoufakis, welcome back to PoliticsJoe.

Thank you for joining me, Ollie Dugmore. Today, how would you like to introduce yourself before we get started?

A failed finance minister of a failed state in a failing Europe. How about that?

Not bad. I think that's a good way to start - and, therefore, it makes you eminently qualified to discuss what's happening right now.

There are so many different places we could start. So much is happening. It feels like the news gets “newsier” every single day.

Right now, we're starting to see the immediate fallout from what some are calling “Liberation Day” - the day Trump's tariffs were implemented. Naturally, there will be first-order and second-order effects that take time to fully materialise. But already, the markets are crashing.

Should we be thankful, at least here in Britain - and I know we're speaking over Zoom - that we seem to have gotten off lightly? So far, we've only been hit with tariffs worth about 10%.

Well, it is a small mercy. But then again, nobody is immune to the global fallout.

Britain has its own unique set of inanities and weaknesses. Ever since Thatcher dismantled the country's manufacturing base, the British economy has been founded on a kind of Ponzi scheme - driven primarily by the financialisation of people's homes and, more broadly, the economy as a whole via the City of London.

That model simply isn't sustainable. It hasn't been for some time. But Donald Trump is now making it brutally clear: business as usual is no longer an option - not for the United Kingdom, and not for the European Union.

Isn't it the case - even if just a small overlap in the Venn diagram - that there's some crossover between the nationalist populists in the U.S., like Steve Bannon, and their economic messaging?

They argue that the status quo can't continue. That corporations have taken advantage of, and run roughshod over, working-class people in America. In some ways, that critique mirrors what you'd hear from the socialist left in the UK or Europe.

Of course, the diagnosis may be the same - but the remedy, the prescription, is often very different. Still, I find it striking to hear figures on the American right frame the economic model in those terms.

Well, you shouldn't be surprised. Nothing is new under the sun.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the fascists - the Nazis - began every speech with a stark, and often accurate, description of capitalism's collapse.

Some years ago - another lifetime, really - when I was still an academic and had the luxury of time and research, I was writing a book that required me to read every speech Joseph Goebbels delivered during the 1920s.

I have to admit, they were fascinating pieces of writing. Each was precisely four pages long. The first two pages typically offered a sharp analysis of how the collapse of financialised capitalism was destroying Germany's working class. And, truth be told, I could have written those pages myself - they were brilliant critiques.

There's a lot to unpack in that question.

First of all, remember: Trump's economic shotgun has two barrels. The first one - the tariffs - has already been fired. But the second hasn't.

That second barrel is loaded with massive tax cuts for the wealthy - for the so-called “fat cats.” I wouldn't be surprised, and nor should your audience be, if once he pulls that second trigger, the markets rebound. Another burst of irrational exuberance. And then, just like that, they'll all be friends again.

As for this idea of a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” - that phrase was coined by Steven Mnuchin. But it's a reference to something quite specific: what happened in 1985 under President Ronald Reagan.

By that point, the United States had developed a serious trade deficit. This had gradually become accepted by both Republicans and Democrats, following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s. That collapse marked the end of the post-war consensus in which the U.S. ran persistent trade surpluses.

For two decades after the war, America had been a surplus nation. They sold far more to the world than they bought. That surplus was the foundation of what we call the “golden age” of capitalism - the Bretton Woods era.

Back then, exchange rates were fixed: the pound and the dollar were pegged, day in, day out. Interest rates held steady at around 5%. It was a predictable and stable world - but only so long as the Americans remained in surplus.

But once the U.S. stopped running trade surpluses, Richard Nixon blew up the entire system.

Why? Because when a nation runs a deficit, it faces two options. It can go the German route - austerity, belt-tightening, cutting spending. Or, if you're the dominant global power, you can do what Nixon did: expand your deficit and shift the burden onto others.

That's exactly what happened. The American deficit became a kind of magnet, pulling in not just the goods but also the capital of surplus countries like Germany, Japan, and China. Their exports flowed into the United States, and their money flowed into Wall Street - recycled into U.S. government debt, shares, and real estate.

By the mid-1980s, the Japanese had accumulated so many dollars - the result of exporting vast quantities of goods to the U.S. - that Reagan decided it was time to intervene.

He convened a summit at the Plaza Hotel in New York - not far from where Donald Trump happened to be loitering at the time. He invited the Germans, the French, the British, and, crucially, the Japanese.

It was presented as a multilateral event, but the real focus was Japan. Reagan essentially read them the riot act: revalue the yen. Make American exports to Japan cheaper, and Japanese imports into America more expensive - or face sweeping tariffs.

The Japanese caved.

Of course, Japan was - and still is - a vassal state of the United States. Let's not forget: there are 85,000 American troops stationed in Okinawa. And it was the Americans who wrote the Japanese constitution.

This is not the case with China. So when people invoke the idea of a “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” they're imagining Trump doing what Reagan did - bringing world leaders together and saying, “Revalue your currency, and I'll spare you the tariffs.”

But Trump isn't Reagan. He has no interest in multilateralism. In fact, he's allergic to it. He doesn't want to sit in a room full of Germans, Greeks, Brits - all voicing their views. He wants one-on-one meetings. That's how you divide and rule.

Reagan's approach was simple: “Do this - or I'll impose tariffs.” Trump flips that logic. He starts with the tariffs, then enters the room for the one-on-one.

In those private meetings, he asks different things of different leaders, based entirely on what each of them can offer. That's the tactic. Divide and extract.

As for the markets - look, we on the left can't have it both ways. We can't rightly say, when the stock market goes through the roof, “That has nothing to do with shared prosperity,” and then suddenly panic when it collapses.

Yes, a market crash might harm ordinary people - as it did in 2008. But not necessarily. And as I said earlier, once Trump unleashes those dreadful tax cuts for the rich, I've no doubt the markets will rebound.

Let's focus now on Trump's motivations - his intentionality. I don't disagree with you. He's a beast driven by ego in ways few others are.

He wants leaders from Burkina Faso or Lesotho - small nations in GDP terms - to knock at the door of the White House or the U.S. embassy, begging for tariff relief. He wants CEOs of major American companies to come and pay tribute, to show deference, to kneel before the king.

This is not about strategy. This is about spectacle - and dominance.

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video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjlFQLK1SQw
title: Yanis Varoufakis Dissects Trump's Tariffs
by: Novara Media

English-UK🇬🇧
Donald Trump's tariffs have pushed global stock markets into meltdown. Unlike the global financial crisis or the fallout from the pandemic, however, this isn't a crisis that came about by accident - it's one that was deliberately designed.

This has led many to describe the so-called “tariff shock” as unprecedented. But not everyone agrees.

Yanis Varoufakis, writing in UnHerd magazine, argues that commentators should know better than to pretend that Trump's shock is both unprecedented and destined to fail.

As with all reckless assaults on the prevailing order, there are precedents - and the Nixon shock was far more devastating, particularly for Europeans.

And it was precisely because of the economic devastation caused by the Nixon shock that its architects achieved their long-term objective: to ensure that American hegemony would expand alongside the country's twin deficits - its trade deficit and its government budget deficit.

The Nixon shock refers to the moment in 1971 when President Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold.

That move unilaterally dismantled the post-war Bretton Woods system, which had regulated global financial markets and trade since 1944. It was a pivotal step in the development of what we now call neoliberalism.

I caught up with Yanis Varoufakis to discuss the relevance of this historical comparison and to hear his thoughts on how China, Europe, and the UK should respond to Trump's tariffs.

I began by asking him how Trump's “shock” compares to a more recent historical event: the 2008 global financial crisis.

“2008,” he said, “was our generation's 1929.” Nothing compares with it in terms of the catastrophic magnitude of the shock. And, crucially, 2008 was utterly unexpected. It wasn't planned. It wasn't designed.

Trump's shock, by contrast, is a designer shock. He chose it. In that sense, we need to compare it to the events of 15 August 1971 - the so-called Nixon shock - which was, similarly, an attempt to upend the global economic system.

Richard Nixon did exactly the same thing, and with enormous success. I say that not from the perspective of the peoples of the world - not even from that of the American working or middle class - but from the point of view of those in Washington, D.C., and Camp David that summer in 1971, whose remit was to extend American hegemony in an era when the United States had become a deficit country.

There are many parallels with 1971. Back then, Nixon took America off the gold standard and moved to a fiat currency system.

You're much more of an expert on that era than I am, and this issue in general, but were people saying similar things at the time? Because people today are proposing that there's a theory behind Trump's actions - that he's trying to reshape the global economy in a way similar to what Nixon attempted.

That may be the case - but what Trump is doing now also appears chaotic. I imagine Nixon was a little more rational than Trump is. Or do you see it differently?

Not in the slightest.

Back then, it didn't look rational either. It looked like economic nationalism. Call it geoeconomics if you like. But remember: two days before the Nixon shock, his Treasury Secretary - John Connally, the Texan politician who was in the car with JFK when he was shot - had already switched to the Republicans and was serving in Nixon's Cabinet.

In a bid to encourage Nixon to go ahead with the move, Connally famously told him - and I think this is verbatim - “Mr President, my understanding is that the foreigners are trying to screw us, and our job is to screw them before they screw us.”

That's a very bad mindset. But two days later, Nixon did exactly that - with the goal of devaluing the dollar by 30%, thereby unleashing devastating forces in Europe, Japan, and even within the United States itself. He knew these forces would significantly impact the American economy - think of the stagflation that followed. But the theory was that the U.S. would suffer less than Germany or Japan, and that this would help restore American hegemony, which they feared was being lost due to the country's deficit position.

There was nothing mild - and certainly nothing more rational - about what Nixon did in 1971.

Now, that doesn't mean Trump's actions today will succeed. The Nixon shock could easily have turned out very differently. It all depends on how the rest of the world responds to Trump - not so much on how rational or irrational his actions appear.

Let's talk about what's dominated the headlines this weekend - the stock market crash. Markets have fallen anywhere between 5% and 15%. Should Novara Media viewers care if the stock market takes a hit?

Well, in the same way that Novara Media audiences have no reason to rejoice when the markets soar, we also have no reason to panic when they fall. Their collapse - or temporary decline - is not necessarily a sign that all hell is breaking loose.

Look: the way stock exchanges and money markets behave is largely disconnected from the way humanity progresses. There may be coincidental moments of exuberance or disaster, but they're often just that - coincidences. Very often, when the markets are celebrating, the vast majority of the population are suffering. And vice versa.

So, what's the real question here?

The big issue is this: since 1971, the world has seen a very significant class war - one waged against the working class of the United States, of Britain, of Germany, and of China.

This war has been led by a strange coalition: American rentiers who no longer want to be capitalists - who are content simply collecting rents through the financial sector, private equity, and big tech - and the capitalists of Germany, Japan, and China.

This is the status quo that the so-called “radical centre” is now lamenting. And yes, it's true - Trump's shock is a serious blow to the liberal order. But let's not forget that the status quo they are mourning was already grossly imbalanced.

It was a world in which inequality rose triumphantly, at the expense of people's ability to imagine a better life for their children than they had for themselves.

So this is what the state was upholding. And yes - it could get worse. There's no doubt about that.

As Margaret Thatcher once said to me, back when I was a young man: “Just when you think things can't get worse, they do.”

But the real question is: what will China do?

Will China respond to Trump by raising the living standards of its own population, so that its citizens can consume more of what currently gets sent abroad as net exports to the United States?

Will it find a way to engage meaningfully with the inane Europeans, who seem to have absolutely no idea what is going on?

Or will China and Europe end up in a tariff war of their own, as the European Union attempts to block the diversion of Chinese exports from the U.S. market to Europe?

Everything depends on that.

And unfortunately, the majority of people in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain - most countries, in fact - have no real say in the decisions that will determine whether Donald Trump's shock becomes a force for good or just another blow that deepens inequality and diminishes people's prospects.

The liberal establishment's response to Trump's trade war has often been to act as though everything was perfect before. But isn't there a danger in swinging too far the other way?

Because, yes - inequality has increased since 1971, particularly in the West. But in China, for example, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh have also been on that trajectory to some degree - with incomes rising, a middle class forming - thanks to export-led growth.

Trump's shock may now be putting an end to that system - the very one that enabled those countries to grow rich through exports. And that, too, could be something we end up missing.

Now, capitalism is a terrible system - but sometimes it can get even worse, especially when the ruling classes behave idiotically, as they so often do.

You know me - I became politically active as a result of the Eurozone crisis. But let's not pretend things were going swimmingly before 2010. Life was already difficult for large sections of the working class across Europe.

Then came the Euro crisis. It could have been an opportunity to fix things. Instead, it made them worse.

So yes, it's entirely plausible that Trump's shock could reduce prosperity even further - below the already grim levels we saw just a fortnight ago.

On the other hand, we mustn't forget that the rise in living standards you mention has often gone hand-in-hand with a reduction in quality of life for many of the same people whose incomes have increased.

Here's an example - and perhaps it seems pointed, but I think it's relevant. Think of the Aboriginal people in Australia. In 1788, when the British arrived, they had zero income. Today, Aboriginal Australians may earn a few thousand dollars a year. But ask yourself: were they better off then, or now?

This is what I'm getting at. Globalisation steamrolled over the working classes of Vietnam and China to keep the net export machine humming.

Now, don't get me wrong - I have great admiration for both China and Vietnam. There has been real and remarkable progress in both places, and that shouldn't be jeopardised.

But there's a class war happening in China as well. In order for Chinese aluminium to remain competitive in California, wages in China have had to be suppressed.

So - to return to my analogy - if the Trump shock forces the Chinese authorities to boost domestic demand, raise social security, and rebalance the economy away from net exports to the United States, then the globalisation of the previous era may turn out to have been a precursor to something better for China's working class.

But that depends on politics. This will not be an outcome produced by market forces. It will be the result of class struggle.

Let's talk about tariffs more broadly. A lot of people see Trump's move as irrational. But you seem to think there's a logic to it - more than it's being given credit for. Still, I presume you'd have done something very different. So, tell me: as someone who's critical of globalisation and of Trump, what would Yanis Varoufakis have done if he were in the White House?

Well, I wouldn't have introduced tariffs.

That said, I would certainly take aim at the gross global imbalances. You can't continue to have a world where America lives off its friends - where the American ruling class collects rent off the labour of the proletariat in China, Vietnam, Germany, and beyond, while the American working class lives in economic wastelands between the East and West coasts.

That's not a model anyone who cares about humanity should find acceptable. But tariffs would not be my weapon of choice.

What I'd propose instead is a new multilateral conference - a new Bretton Woods.

You'd gather the world's major players and, bluntly, take a leaf from John Maynard Keynes's original 1944 proposals at Bretton Woods - the ones that were never adopted.

You'd establish a global monetary system that penalises both surpluses and deficits - symmetrically. Not just deficits. Not just surpluses. Both.

Then, from the levies imposed on those imbalances, you'd build a fund - a green fund - which could be invested in green technology, especially in deficit countries, particularly in the global South.

That's what I'd do. Which is why I could never become President of the United States. If the U.S. political system ever produced someone like me as president, it wouldn't be the political system we have today.

Let's move on to your background as a game theorist. It's something you specialised in before becoming Greece's finance minister - and I imagine you still do, as an academic. From that perspective, how should countries respond to Trump's tariffs?

According to game theory, governments face a choice. They can say: “We won't retaliate - we'll take the hit and hope it doesn't escalate.” Or they can go tit for tat: “You raise tariffs? We'll raise them higher.”

But when you're running a trade surplus with a country like the United States, and someone like Trump is prepared to take the tariff war to its logical conclusion - you can't win.

If I'm selling to you and you're not selling to me, I'll run out of things to tariff before you do. It's really a no-brainer - I'm going to lose.

So what should countries do?

Well, that depends. The United Kingdom is quite different from the European Union.

And here's an interesting point: Trump, who loves Brexit and loathes the EU, has created a wedge. The EU gets 20% tariffs; the UK gets 10%.

For those in Britain who still hope to one day rejoin the customs union or single market - this wedge makes that path much harder. Who would dare re-enter when the price is a doubling of U.S. tariffs?

But setting that aside: both the EU and China are in a similar position. They run large trade surpluses with the United States.

And if I'm right - that you can't win a trade war from that position - then the best response is not to retaliate.

But you do have to do something. What?

You have to blow up your own economic model.

Germany - and when we talk about the EU here, we're really talking about Germany - is the engine of the eurozone and of the EU as a whole.

Both Germany and China have built development models based on net exports. But it's not just goods like Mercedes-Benz cars and BYDs. They're also exporting deflationary pressure to deficit countries like the U.S.

That model is now finished. Because now you have Trump saying, “No - I'm going to tariff you to extinction. It can't work.”

So what's the alternative?

The alternative is to invest in your own country.

Here in the European Union, we haven't had any net investment for the past fifteen years. And no, the answer is not to invest in armaments. That's a fool's game.

Only the United States can maintain a military-industrial complex that functions as a growth engine - because they have one war after another. Is that what Europe wants? It used to be a peace project.

What Europe needs is investment in the technologies it has missed out on - batteries, solar power, green energy in general, algorithmic capital, what I call cloud capital. Europe needs a large-scale investment programme - €700–800 billion per year.

Do that, and your reliance on the United States shrinks. Your ability to keep up with China improves. And you stop being a sorry, idiotic continent.

This is what Europe should be doing.

China, for its part, should introduce a basic income for its citizens. I've been advocating that with my Chinese friends, and I'll continue to do so.

So forget tariffs. When you're in a surplus position, you can't win that war.

Instead, look inside your own political economy and rebalance it - away from the ruling class and towards investment. Investment not only in the living conditions of the working class, but also in your technological capacity.

You're essentially suggesting that surplus countries should respond to Trump's tariffs by radically transforming their economies. Now, many people might want that transformation anyway - but they're unlikely to do it unless they're pushed.

Some might be thinking: these tariffs look bad, but they can't last long, right?

Novara Media audiences might not care if the stock markets crash - but Donald Trump, at least if we believe what he said four years ago, did.

He seemed obsessed with the markets going up. So how likely is it that, seeing the markets plunge and a recession looming, he'll declare victory?

He wouldn't admit to a mistake. But he might say, “I've won huge concessions from all these countries, and the tariffs are coming down.” A U-turn, dressed up as a win.

How likely do you think that is?

I've no idea what's going on in Donald's brain - if such a thing exists.

But allow me to say two things in response to your question.

First, there's no doubt that people across the world - in Britain, in Germany, in Italy and France, and yes, in the United States - are thinking: “Oh God, what's happening? Let's wait for the midterms. Let's wait another four years for someone to reverse all this.”

That's pure wishful thinking.

Think about Trump 1.0 - the first administration. They introduced all sorts of tariffs. Did Biden reverse a single one? Any of them?

No. None.

Even the new Cold War that Trump initiated against China - it started with massive tariffs on aluminium and other goods, and a ban on Huawei. And what did Biden do? He turbocharged it. Made it worse. Made it more toxic, more belligerent.

That's why I say it's foolish to think someone will just reverse Trump's course. We're in a new regime now - regardless of who comes after him.

That's the first point.

The second is this: Trump has always had two arrows in his quiver. The first was tariffs. The second is tax cuts.

And I say this as someone who truly, deeply opposes tax cuts - because they're a gift to the unworthy and a tool of class war against the working class.

But still - I bet you, Michael - that when he announces massive tax cuts, especially for the rich and for capital, the stock markets will soar.

And then, I fear, we'll be right back in that Reagan-era scenario.

Because you see, the Republicans don't care about austerity. They don't care about budget deficits. They don't have the Rachel Reeves fixation on fiscal rules. They're happy to let the whole thing blow up - especially if it benefits their wealthy backers.

Trump will push the federal budget deficit to 7%, even 8%, if he needs to. He doesn't care. Reagan didn't care. Bush didn't care. And the rest of the world will pay the price.

So no, let's not count our chickens. Let's not sit around watching the clock, hoping for the midterms to arrive and bring back the world we had before 2 April - just as the Nixon shock of 15 August 1971 was never reversed.

President Carter - a thoroughly decent man, far better than most of the presidents I've lived under - what did he do about the Nixon shock?

Nothing.

In fact, he made it even more powerful by appointing Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve.

And where was Volcker during the Nixon shock? He was in Camp David, advising Kissinger, Connally, and Nixon to go ahead with it.

So there's continuity here.

The United States is like a massive ship. It takes time to change direction. But once it does - it doesn't turn back.

Interesantes perspectivas históricas.

En lo que no estoy de acuerdo en absoluto es en que Europa se pueda permitir el lujo del pacifismo y de no tener ninguna clase de independencia militar real y armamentística "porque la guerra es muy fea" - esa clase de pensamiento utópico lleva a ser el pelele de la potencia de turno. Pero lo típico de los izquierdosos de salón, nada nuevo. Y claro, Trump es Hitler y tal. También dentro del posicionamiento esperado.

Muy interesante también la intervención del Primer Ministro de Singapur en su parlamento (en inglés). No sé si la habéis visto, no tiene desperdicio.

Voy a hacer unas traducciones automáticas y revisarlas un poco y las subo.