Bai.

En Euskal Herria es todavía peor;)

El Sr. Juan Jose Ibarretxe importó esa mandanga, porque según él como ETA usaba el derecho de autodeterminación (DD), hablando de la mandanga, es decir del inexistente ‘derecho a decidir’ (sic) se acababa la cuestión (re-sic).

Gran pensamiento intelectual el suyo.

En el Parlamento de Gasteiz hubo una moción en 2014 a favor del DD, con un preámbulo donde se habla de Euskal Herria en su conjunto y su DD.

Ahora todos, es decir todos, desde los últimos escritos de ETA, hasta EH Bildu, Sortu, LAB, ELA, PNV, toda la progresía pseudointelectual, los periódicos BERRIA y GARA (con sus directores a la cabeza), hablan, promueven y alaban la mandanga dichosa!

Yo lo he criticado y denunciado (intelectualmente) hasta la saciedad. También ICEC-Euskal Herria.

Algunos escritos míos:

Astakeriak (GED-renak)

Autodeterminazio-eskubideaz, hitz batzuk

Y en especial los siguientes:

Derecho a decidir (sic)

Derecho a decidir (sic) (2)

Mandanga, hots, derecho a decidir, hau da, ‘chorrada’, alegia, asmatutako neologismoa

Lee las siguientes perlas: El “derecho a decidir”: una invención del nacionalismo catalán

Para Agusti Comines la mandanga dichosa es un chorrada (sic) que se inventó y el Sr. Jaume Lopez habla de neologismo.

Pero aquí todo vale. LAB trajo al Jaume ese a Euskal Herria para que explicase la buena nueva, el nuevo evangelio mandanguero;)

Txillardegí  ya denunció esa mandanga en 2006!

Para mí es puro newspeak: Deliberately ambiguous and contradictory language used to mislead and manipulate the public.

Pero ya sabes de donde viene todo esto:

(1) empezó con EPI, siguió con los políticos vascos que de sobra conoceis, siguió con el cambio de nombre (de EPI a ICEC), con la no recogida de firmas para promoverel DD en toda Europa,

(2) después con la irrupción en escena de Gure Esku Dago, que no sabemos qué es lo que está en nuestra mano,

(3) y el intento de manipular a la gente vasca, por los de siempre, para conseguir un nuevo estatus, es decir un nuevo estatuto vascondago (para la tres provincias), siguiendo fielmente los pasos del nuevo flautista Sr. Ibarretxe, con el pretexto de conseguir un estado libre asociado con España, ahora tipo confederal (sic), tipo Puerto Rico, es decir la peor opción que a uno se le pudiera ocurrir.

Y así nos va! Así nos luce el pelo. Pero todos contentosy felices, manifestaciones, cadenas humanas y enseguida el Parlamento de Gasteiz aprobará, todos juntos en unión defendiendo el nuevo santo evangelio: la Mandanga Absoluta para Vascongadas.

Horreur!

Ná de Ná.

Un fuerte abrazo.

joseba

Nork: . <josebafelix@outlook.es>
Bidaltze-data: 2018(e)ko ekainak 20, asteazkena 08:09
Gaia: BB: este no lo habia visto

Stephanie Kelton@StephanieKelton

Here’s one of the talks I gave in London last week. https://youtu.be/6IBEoWSiTHc

1 Ikus https://www.google.es/search?q=West+Belfast+Murals,&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj0OnBg-DbAhVpB8AKHcCMCXYQsAQIYw&biw=1144&bih=631.

2 Ikus https://www.google.es/search?biw=1144&bih=631&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=wyIpW_zmGIqdgAb_tbLwBg&q=Irish+Republican+History+Museum&oq=Irish+Republican+History+Museum&gs_l=img.3…0.0.0.4057.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0….0…1c..64.img..0.0.0….0.p0d7gnGnliI.

3 Irati-ri esan nion liburu bat idatzi behar zuela, euskaraz eta ingelesez. Gaia: Emakumezkoak eta the Irish Republican Army. Ea egia den!

4 Ikus Sinn Féin – Wikipedia.

5 Ikus Guinness – Wikipedia.

6 Ikus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSBHHOfPb1Q.

7 Ikus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8xJLRbmKAw.

@full_brexit @tfbrexit

We argue for a clean break with the EU in the letters pages of the Guardian today:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/11/lets-have-the-full-brexit-for-political-and-economic-renewal

1 Ingelesez: “Those who follow European politics will be familiar now with the recent events in Italy. I wrote about them in this blog post – The assault on democracy in Italy [Ikus Italia eta demokrazia, zer gertatzen ari da?]. The facts are obvious. The democratic process for all its warts rejected the mainstream political parties in the recent national election and minority parties Lega Nord and M5S formed a governing coalition. The trouble started when they nominated Paolo Savona as Finance Minister. He had occasionally made statements that paranoid European elitists would interpret as being anti-Europe and anti-German. The political solution was easy and Italian President Sergio Mattarella vetoed Savona’s nomination. The Coalition withdrew and a right-wing technocrat Carlo “Mr Scissors” Cottarelli was to be installed as Prime Minister. That arrangement didn’t last long and the Lega Nord/M5S coalition emerged in government with the unelected Guiseppe Conti the new Prime Minister. But the interesting story to emerge out of all that relates to overt political behaviour by the supposedly independent European Central Bank. It has been clear for some time that the ECB has used its currency-issuing capacity to ensure that ‘spreads’ on Member State government bonds (against the benchmark German bund) do not widen too much. But it is also clear that when the ‘market forces’ do increase the spreads, which foments a sense of financial crisis, the ECB doesn’t necessarily act immediately. A good dose of crisis talk is what the political process needs to keep the anti-European forces at bay. The ECBs behaviour in this context became very political in the recent weeks and the only explanation is that they wanted the sniff of crisis to pervade while all the negotiations were going on over who would emerge as the new government in Italy. Democracy suffers another blow in that neoliberal madhouse that is the European Union.”

2 Ingelesez: “As background to this topic the following blog posts (among others) are relevant:

1. A central bank can always prevent government default (June 23, 2015).

2 ECB’s expanded asset purchase programme – more smoke and mirrors (May 30, 2016).

3. ECB is running out of debt to buy – more smoke and mirrors needed [IkusBill Mitchell-en azken lan interesgarri batzuk] (September 7, 2017).”

3 Ingelesez: “At the outset, there are two issues:

1. While offensive to many conservatives, it is obvious that any central bank can control yields on government debt instruments at any maturity and at any level (including zero) if it chooses.

The ECB has demonstrated that through its Securities Markets Program (SMP), launched on May 14, 2010 and then, its successor, the Expanded Asset Purchase Programme, and more specifically, the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP).

So there is no reason for damaging bond market spreads to occur within Europe. Rising bond spreads in the Eurozone situation signal financial distress for specific Member States and a falling level of confidence in the solvency of the specific government facing rising yields.

In turn, they generate political stress and we have seen how conservative pro-Brussels elements have manipulated the spreads to advance pro-European narratives at the expense of any contrary sentiments, which may including exit-type pressures.

2. Under what terms does the central bank actually remit this capacity?

Given that the ECB can control all the spreads if it chooses, questions have to be asked when they rise, especially if those divergences are occurring at important turning points in domestic political events – such as we saw in Italy over the last month.

The question always has to be asked – why would the ECB not immediately choke off the rising spreads? We know they allow the spreads to widen for a time and then eventually eliminate them (mostly).

The obvious answer, which I have come to in previous episodes (for example, 2011-2012) was that the ECB plays its part in bringing Eurozone Member States to heel.

They sometimes do this crudely – for example in June 2016 – when they effectively threatened to bankrupt the Greek financial system unless the Syriza agreed to the pernicious bailout terms imposed on them by the Troika (of which the ECB was an active partner).

That was as blatant an act of democratic sabotage from the supposedly independent central bank as you would ever witness.

But they can also interfere politically in more subtle ways and some forensic analysis is required to sort out the bland central-bank speak ‘motherhood’ type statements the ECB issues from time to time and the underlying reality.

While the ECB claims it operates transparently, it should be forced to release internal communications, particularly memos from management to the system operators, which issue instructions on the monthly PSPP purchases and when the proportions with respect to the ‘capital key’ are to be violated.”

4 Ingelesez: “Central banks can control bond yields whenever they choose

Let’s dispense with the first issue.

I have read several times in the last few weeks, particularly in relation to Italy, that central banks cannot really control spreads.

That is simply not true.

In the second-listed blog post above – ECB’s expanded asset purchase programme – more smoke and mirrors (May 30, 2016) – I provided a detailed explanation of how the ECBs current Expanded Asset Purchase Programme operates.

The ECB write that:

By increasing demand for assets more broadly, this mechanism of portfolio rebalancing pushes prices up and yields down, even for assets that are not directly targeted by the APP.

One of the components of the overall APP is the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) – whereby the ECB buys up “public sector securities” in return for the creation of bank reserves.

The PSPP followed earlier ECB funding of fiscal deficits during the crisis, although the ECB always maintained in its classic central-bank-speak that it was just maintaining liquidity in the banking system.

For example, the Securities Markets Program (SMP) was launched on May 14, 2010 at the height of the crisis and opened the possibility that the ECB and the national central banks could “conduct outright interventions in the euro area public and private debt securities markets”.

This was central-bank-speak for the practice of buying government bonds in the so-called secondary bond market in exchange for euros, that the ECB could out of ‘thin air’.

Government bonds are issued to selective institutions (mostly banks) by tender in the primary bond market and then traded freely among speculators and others in the secondary bond market.

This meant that the ECB was able to control the yields on the debt because by pushing up the demand for the debt, its price rose and so the fixed interest rates attached to the debt fell as the face value increased.

Competitive tenders then would ensure any further primary issues would be at the rate the ECB deemed appropriate (that is, low).

Please read my blog A central bank can always prevent government default – (June 23, 2015) – for more discussion on this point.

I have written before that the SMP saved the euro because it allowed the ECB to fund fiscal deficits of governments that were approaching insolvency (see below).”

5 Ingelesez: “One of the hallmarks of Monetarism and its later derivatives, including New Keynesian macroeconomics, is that the central bank has to become ‘independent’ (free from political influence) for it to be credible. Otherwise private agents will not believe that it is committed to an anti-inflationary strategy and so will bet against policy strategies.

I consider that myth in this blog posts – The sham of central bank independence (December 23, 2014) and The sham of ECB independence [Ikus EBZ eta haren independentziaz] (October 24, 2017).

However, the capacity of the central bank to control yields and eliminate the risk of government insolvency has nothing to do with so-called ‘credibility’ among private bond investors.

Whether the private bond markets believe that the central bank has that capacity is irrelevant. They soon see it in the trading realities of the secondary bond markets when they keep getting outbid for bonds by the central bank that always has a superior purchasing capacity.

They see it when yields that they would like to rise (to reflect risk or greed) stay low because the central bank demonstrates its unflinching commitment to control rates – as it only can in a modern monetary system.

So belief soon adjusts to reality. Remember that in a fiat currency system with no convertibility (into gold etc) and no fixed exchange rate arrangements in place, it is the currency issuer that is in ‘charge’ not the bond market dealers.

The latter are supplicants at best, beggars who want their dose of corporate welfare. They have no power against the currency issuer if the latter chooses to exert that power.

Please read my blog – Who is in charge? – for more discussion on this point.

The outgoing Vice President of the ECB, Vítor Constâncio told the Italian press (May 30, 2018) – Si allentano le tensioni sullo Spread. Constancio esclude ipotesi scudo BCE:

L’ipotesi di attivare il meccanismo di scudo anti-spread della BCE sull’Italia richiederebbe l’accettazione, da parte dell’Italia, di un programma di aggiustamento dei conti pubblici”.

Per tutti quelli che “la BCE non può controllare lo spread”.

Which translates to Constâncio admitting that the ECB has the capacity to provide so-called ‘anti-spread protection’ to the Member States.

He also added the bullying element (the political element which transcends any Treaty obligations or roles that the ECB has) – that the only way that a nation could benefit from the ECB’s ‘anti-spread’ protection, is if it accepted the fiscal rules and submitted to the austerity bias.

So the ECB can control any bond spread they choose. However, in the Eurozone, such is the dysfunction, that the central bank becomes the blackmailer.

It hangs a Sword of Damocles over the heads of Member State governments along the lines of we will send you broke unless you comply with the Brussels austerity ideology.

This is one of the many ways that democracy has been severely compromised by the operations of the European Union and, specficially, the Economic and Monetary Union.”

6 Ingelesez: “The Securities Market Programme (SMP)

I wrote about the SMP in detail in my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale (published May 2015).

Working notes appeared in this blog post – Options for Europe – Part 90 (May 23, 2014).

The Securities Market Program (SMP) ran from May 2010 to September 2010 and allowed the ECB to purchase government bonds in the secondary markets for five Eurozone Member States (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy).

It was replaced in September 2012 with the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program.”

7 Ingelesez: “So the program was specifically active when bond spreads were rising rapidly in what the ECB considered to be ‘stressed’ Member States, signified by very weak private demand for government debt.

These nations were in danger of fairly immediate insolvency and the ECB had no choice but to intervene or else the Eurozone would have likely fallen apart.”

8 Ingelesez: “Note that these paid-up capital proportions are not the total proportions (defined by the so-called Capital key, which includes all central bank contributions).

The ECB purchases for Italian government debt were almost exactly proportional (47.16 per cent of total SMP purchases and Italy contributed 47.19 per cent of the total paid-up capital of the five Member States.

The ECB purchased proportionally more assets from Ireland, Greece and Portugal than their contribution to the paid-up capital might suggest and much less from Spain. Greek purchases were capped as it became ‘colonised’ by a sequence of pernicious bailout programs.

The point though is that the ECB never pretended that these purchases were in any way to be proportional with the capital contributions made by the five nations.

The fact was that these nations were on the brink of insolvency and the SMP was the difference between staying afloat and sinking.

For Italy, the spread was 0.955 points on May 13, 2010. It spiked up to 1.802 points on June 7, 2010 but quickly came down again with initial ECB purchases under the SMP.

The real stress for Italy came in 2011, which coincided with the second period of very large ECB purchases of Italian (and Spanish) government debt beginning August 2011.

On April 12, 2011, the Italian-German spread was 1.207 points. It started to accelerate upwards around July 2011 and by August 4, 2011 had read 3.911 points.

It would rise again and peaked at 5.562 points on November 9, 2011. The ECB was very active in that period under its SMP.

But the ECB didn’t have to eliminate the spreads entirely. In Italy’s case, for example, I estimated that the SMP reduced the spread by around 1 to 1.5 percentage points in 2011. All it had to do was create the certainty that if the private bond investors kept participating in the primary issues they would be able to offload onto the ECB if the situation proved dire.”

9 Ingelesez: “Recent spread activity in Eurozone bond markets

The first graph shows daily bond yield spreads (against the German bund) from the first trading day in January 2008 to June 8, 2018 for Italy, Spain and France.”

10 Ingelesez: “The bond markets were benign in the period that followed as the negotiations as to who would form the next Italian government ensued.

On the last trading day in April (30th), the Italian spread was at a low 1.218 points and had been falling over the course of 2018 to date.

By May 29, 2018, the spread peaked at 2.847 points, a substantial increase. This was two days after President Mattarella refused to appoint Savona as Finance minister in the Lega/M5S coalition government.”

11 Ingelesez: “The political role of the ECB in the Italian electoral process

So what was the ECB doing during May as the Italian spreads more than doubled?

While the political machinations in Italy were unfolding over the last month and the bond spreads were rising, the ECB was working behind the scenes, manipulating the political process via significant changes in its PSPP purchases.

It could have easily prevented the spreads from rising as much as they did (or at all) but it chose a different course of action, which is now evident in the most recent data available for its May purchases.

The Financial Times article (June 4, 2018) – ECB bond buying under scrutiny from Rome – reported that:

The ECB has come under fire from Italy’s new populist government after revealing that it scaled back the proportion of Italian sovereign bonds it bought as part of its economic stimulus programme during Rome’s political turmoil last month.

Twitter went alive with all sorts of conspiracy (against the ECB) and apologist (for the ECB) claims rife.

First, when the ECB issued the data for May 2018 – History of cumulative purchase breakdowns under the PSPP – and the following graph started to do the rounds (in various guises).”

12 Ingelesez: “So for most Member States, the ECB purchased less debt while Germany rose sharply in absolute and relative terms. Only Germany, Latvia, and Malta were positively purchased during May 2018 by the ECB.” [Ikus irudia]

“From January 2018, the ECB determined it would drop its monthly net purchases under the APP to €30 billion of which it intended “to allocate 90% of the total purchases to government bonds and recognised agencies”.

But since January, the monthly purchases under the PSPP have been well under the €27 billion level (January €20,905 million, February €21,801 million, March €20,774 million, April €23,631 million, and May €24,230 million).

So, immediately, the ECB had scope under its own guidelines to purchase €2,770 million more government bonds under the PSPP.

We will return to that issue.”

13 Ingelesez: “So the facts are obvious. At a time when the Italian bond auction and yields were under stress, the ECB decreased its May 2018 purchases of Italian government debt – quite sharply.

We will consider that in more detail presently.

But first we need to put another issue to bed.

Second, on what basis does the ECB allocate its PSPP purchases across the planned €30 billion per month?

The ECB provides a – Public sector purchase programme (PSPP) – Questions & answers – page (last updated on May 25, 2018 – which is telling).

We learn that:

Q2.1.1 When the programme was announced, the ECB said that the purchases would be divided between countries on the basis of the ECB’s capital key. Will the weightings need to be applied on a monthly basis, with each NCB buying the proportionate amount each month, or do these shares refer to the programme as a whole?

The ECB’s capital key guides purchases on a monthly basis. However, this does not imply that a precise achievement of capital key shares is strictly targeted every month, as some flexibility on a monthly basis supports the smooth implementation of the programme.

The – capital key – (or capital subscription) denotes the proportions in which the Member States contribute to the capital of the ECB, which is a wholly own entity of the National Central Banks (NCPs).

The rules dictate that:

The NCBs’ shares in this capital are calculated using a key which reflects the respective country’s share in the total population and gross domestic product of the EU. These two determinants have equal weighting.”

14 Ingelesez: “The official word from the ECB about the May dynamics was reported by Reuters (Source):

Several countries saw their share in net purchases go down in May 2018, not just Italy.

This is the result of agreed and communicated rules on the timing of re-investments during the net purchases phase.

German bond redemptions were high in April, had to be spread to May.

In absolute terms, net buying for Italy in May was higher than March and January.

On October 26, 2017, the ECB’s press release – Additional information on asset purchase programme – informed us that the Bank:

… provides additional data on redemptions as well as information about reinvestments and role of private sector purchase programmes

The ECB also tells us that:

During the period of net asset purchases, PSPP principal redemptions will be reinvested in the jurisdiction in which the maturing bond was issued.

Which means that if a heap of German bonds are about to mature, the PSPP purchases will repurchase that nation’s debt to maintain the proportions.

An examination of the – Redemption Dataset – is interesting.”

15 Ingelesez: “With the future estimated redemptions looming large (green bars) one would expect to see more bizarre dynamics in the monthly purchases should the ECB retain form.

When the Expanded Asset Purchase Programme was announced on January 22, 2015, the ECB said they would be making purchases of €60 billion per month on average.

An ECB Economic Bulletin (Issue 7/2017) article – The recalibration of the ECB’s asset purchase programme – noted:

From March 2015 to March 2016 the Eurosystem purchased public and private sector securities at a pace of €60 billion per month. To accelerate the return of inflation rates to levels consistent with the ECB’s definition of price stability, monthly purchases were increased to €80 billion from April 2016 to March 2017. In December 2016 the Governing Council announced a recalibration of the APP, extending the net purchases until December 2017 at a reduced monthly pace of €60 billion. Following the decision made on 26 October 2017 the monthly pace will be further reduced to €30 billion from January 2018 and net purchases will be carried out until September 2018.

But note again that even with the ‘technical’ issues relating to German bund redemptions, it seems that the total monthly purchases in May 2018 were well below the €27 odd billion government bond purchase target.

In other words, the ECB had considerable room to move without stepping outside its own purchase guidelines.”

16 Ingelesez: “The question is then why would the ECB not have done more to quell the financial unease surrounding Italy?

That is where the political aspect becomes relevant if not clear.

The ECB could easily have purchased more Italian government bonds without violating its own guidelines.

By allocating that deficiency to the purchase of Italian government bonds, not only would the total monthly purchases of Italian government debt have risen but the pressure on the spreads across the maturity range would have been significantly less.

In other words, the sense of crisis that the spreads invoked was in no small part driven by the ECB’s choice rather than any ‘technical’ issue.

There was a technical matter for sure.

But there was still flexibility even within the ECB’s own stated logic.

ECB defenders claim that to really address the bond market uncertainty in Italy over the last several weeks, the ECB would have to buy more of the Italian government debt than its PSPP guidelines would permit.

These purchases would allegedly have taken the ECB outside the €30 billion per month realm (especially as there is around €200 billion in outstanding Italian government debts that have to be refinanced per year).

This argument then claims that under EU rules this would invoke the sleeping Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) programme, which could see the ECB purchase unlimited volumes of Italian government debt.

They argue that the Technical features of Outright Monetary Transactions indicate that:

A necessary condition for Outright Monetary Transactions is strict and effective conditionality attached to an appropriate European Financial Stability Facility/European Stability Mechanism (EFSF/ESM) programme … The involvement of the IMF shall also be sought for the design of the country-specific conditionality and the monitoring of such a programme.

The argument then concludes that is a step that Italy would want to avoid.

And if that programme was invoked, they argue that this would trigger major political resistance from not only within Italy but from Germany and its northern neighbours who would see it as a direct bailout.

The point that this type of argument ignores is that the ECB can temper spreads without closing out the private bond investors, as was demonstrated during the earlier years of the crisis (see discussion above about SMP).

My assessment is that if they had have scaled up purchases of Italian government debt in May 2018, the uncertainty in the Italian bond markets would have been attenuated and spreads would have fallen relatively quickly.”

Segida:

Nork: J.A. <>
Bidaltze-data: 2018(e)ko ekainak 11, astelehena 09:39
Nori: josebafelix@outlook.es
Gaia: ER: Astoek oraingoz segitzen dute aharrantzaka

Kaixo, Joseba!

Goiko argazkian ikusiko duzu zein zen NAZIOEN MUNDUA (GED-ren mugimendu aitzindaria) duela 8 urte erabiltzen zuen aldarrikapen nagusia: Autodeterminazioa.

Nazioen Mundua Goierrin sortutako mugimendua zen, Anjel Oiarbide bertako partaide esanguratsua zen, Eskoziarekin harreman sendoak garatu zituzten.

Anjel Oiarbidek berak GAZTA ZATI BAT dokumentalean esaldi ospetsu hura errepikatzen zuen: “Autodeterminazioa gai garrantzitsuegia da politikarien esku soilik uzteko“

Zer iruditzen? Nola aldatzen diren gauzak zortzi urteko epe labur batean!

J.A.