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The Battle For Europe Integration Has Failed And Russia Provides Proof

The Battle For Europe Integration Has Failed And Russia Provides Proof

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

It’s time to concede European integration failed. What are the consequences?

When Did We Lose the Fight?

Eurointelligence.

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The Battle For Europe Integration Has Failed And Russia Provides Proof

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

It's time to concede European integration failed. What are the consequences?

When Did We Lose the Fight?

Eurointelligence founder Wolfgang Münchau is a strong pro-Europe advocate. He has been that way for the entire decade I followed him.

Earlier this month he commented: "The battle for European integration has failed. It is time to recognise defeat, and to think through the consequences."

Please consider Münchau's thought-provoking article When Did We Lose the Fight? Emphasis below is mine.    

When you fight for a cause that does not materialise, at what point do you recognise, and admit, defeat? There are some causes you may want to keep fighting for no matter what, like human rights or climate change. Is European integration in that category? For me, it is not. My biggest area of disagreement with my fellow European federalists is not in what we think is desirable. What we disagree on is where the dividing line between realpolitik and wishful thinking lies.

A good example occurred this weekend. The fool whose committed the crime of saying what everybody in the SPD is thinking was Kay-Achim Schönbach. He was forced to resign as head of the German Navy for revealing to the world that Germany’s natural ally is Russia.

Germany also plays a non-cooperative game in the EU’s monetary union, through an economic model that is reliant on large savings surpluses. Whether the issue is economic or foreign policy, other member states have been reluctant to challenge Germany.

The euro area’s sovereign debt crisis deprived me of my last great European illusion, the notion that crises make us stronger. That particular crisis made us weaker. So has the pandemic. I see no trajectory whatsoever for Italy to generate the degree of productivity growth needed to render its foreign debt sustainable. The only way to avoid disaster is for the ECB to support Italian debt forever. It might do so. But that would set the ECB on a toxic path, leading to a wide selection of other horrible destinations. Then again, the euro area would probably not survive an Italian debt default intact either. Pick your poison.

My scepticism is not impatience, but concern that opportunities have been lost forever. Take ECB asset purchases. There was a short window for a genuine eurobond between 2008 and 2015, when the ECB’s programme of quantitative easing started. Afterwards, the ECB bought national sovereign debt in the trillions, and turned them into euros. This is what QE does: it swaps debt for money. Money is a liability similar to bonds, except that the maturity is shorter.

The idea behind a real eurobond could not be more different. It would not have been about the monetisation of national debt. A real eurobond would have been a debt instrument of a federal fiscal union with limited tax raising powers.

If only. I have come to the conclusion that this ship has sailed. Once you realise this, the consequences are far-reaching. If a proper economic union constitutes the first-best option, it is does not follow logically that a dysfunctional economic union is the second best. 

But if you don’t, you have to ask yourself some rather troubling questions. This is where I am at. One of the questions is this: even if the European solution is optimal, is it possible that the national alternative is superior to a malfunctioning hybrid?

Fatal Flaws

I disagree with Münchau that there ever was a chance for a united Europe.

  1. The euro itself is fatally flawed. There is no way for a single interest rate to work for Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Greece with monstrously different work ethics, hours pension plans, productivity, etc.  

  2. There is no way to change the rules. 

When the Eurozone was formed, Germany insisted on rules that could not be changed without unanimous consent of all countries and without consent of the German constitution. 

Over the years Germany bent in minor ways, but did not break on some constitutional debt rules. 

But point two still remains. It take unanimous consent to do nearly anything in the EU or Eurozone that was not explicitly spelled out in the Maastricht Treaty that created the EU.  

This is why it took a nearly a decade for the EU to work out a simple trade agreement with Canada.

Germany will never give up on debt brakes and France will never give up on Agricultural policy. The latter has stymied every global global trade agreement for at least two decades. 

Russia is Germany's Natural Ally 

Russia is and has been Germany's natural ally. Note that Germany even blocked sending military aid to Lithuania and Ukraine. 

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel, bowed to the Greens and dismantled German nuclear reactors. 

Now Germany is in desperate need of Russian natural gas. 

What About China?

Germany will not stand up to China, once again over trade issues. 

Is Germany a US ally?

The US has still not figured out Germany is a weak ally at best. The EU has not figured out that Germany has no intention of ever changing its trade stance.

But everyone does understand that France will never change its agricultural policy.

What About the UK? 

The UK did good to exit the EU mess via Brexit even if they have so far mishandled many steps along the way.  

The National Alternative

Münchau asks the right question: "Even if the European solution is optimal, is it possible that the national alternative is superior to a malfunctioning hybrid?"

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden Mon, 01/31/2022 - 03:30

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Government

“We Are Headed For Another Train Wreck”: Bill Ackman Blames Janet Yellen For Restarting The Bank Run

"We Are Headed For Another Train Wreck": Bill Ackman Blames Janet Yellen For Restarting The Bank Run

Yesterday morning we joked that every…

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"We Are Headed For Another Train Wreck": Bill Ackman Blames Janet Yellen For Restarting The Bank Run

Yesterday morning we joked that every time Janet Yellen opens her mouth, stocks dump.

Well, it wasn't a joke, and as we repeatedly noted today, while Jerome Powell was busting his ass to prevent a violent market reaction - in either direction - to his "most important Fed decision and presser of 2023", the Treasury Secretary, with all the grace of a senile 76-year-old elephant in a China market, uttered the phrase...

  • YELLEN: NOT CONSIDERING BROAD INCREASE IN DEPOSIT INSURANCE

... and the rest was silence... or rather selling.

Commenting on our chart, Bloomberg's Mark Cudmore noted it was Yellen who was "to blame for the stock slump", pointing out that "the pessimistic turn in US stocks began within a minute of Janet Yellen starting to speak."

The S&P 500 rose almost 1% in the first 47 minutes after the Fed decision. Powell wasn’t the problem either: the index was 0.6% higher in the first 17 minutes after his press conference started.

Why am I picking that exact timing of 2:47pm NY time? Because that is the minute Yellen started speaking at the Senate panel hearing. The high for the S&P 500 was 2:48pm NY time and it fell more than 2.5% over the subsequent 72 minutes. Good effort.

Picking up on this, Bloomberg's Mark Cranfield writes that banking stocks globally are set to underperform for longer after Janet Yellen pushed back against giving deposit insurance without working with lawmakers. He adds that "to an aggressive trader this sounds like an invitation to keep shorting bank stocks -- at least until the tone changes into broader support and is less focused on specific bank situations." Earlier, we addressed that too:

Looking ahead, Cranfield warns that US financials are likely to be the most vulnerable as they are the epicenter of the debate. Although European or Asian banking names may outperform US peers, that won’t be much consolation for investors as most financial sector indexes may be on a downward path.

The KBW bank index has tumbled from its highs seen in early February, but still has a way to go before it reaches the pandemic-nadir in 2020. Traders smell an opening for a big trade and that will fuel more downside. Probably until Yellen blinks.

And if Bill Ackman is right, she will be doing a whole lot of blinking in days if not hours.

Ackman crying in public

While we generally make fun of Ackman's self-serving hot takes on twitter, today he was right when he accused Yellen of effectively restarting the small bank depositor run which according to JPMorgan has already seen $1.1 trillion in assets withdrawn from "vulnerable" banks. This is what Ackman tweeted:

Yesterday, @SecYellen  made reassuring comments that led the market and depositors to believe that all deposits were now implicitly guaranteed. That coupled with a leak suggesting that @USTreasury, @FDICgov and @SecYellen  were looking for a way to guarantee all deposits reassured the banking sector and depositors.

This afternoon, @SecYellen walked back yesterday’s implicit support for small banks and depositors, while making it explicit that systemwide deposit guarantees were not being considered.

We have gone from implicit support for depositors to @SecYellen explicit statement today that no guarantee is being considered with rates now being raised to 5%. 5% is a threshold that makes bank deposits that much less attractive. I would be surprised if deposit outflows don’t accelerate effective immediately.

Ackman concluded by repeating his ask: a comprehensive deposit guarantee on America's $18 trillion in assets...

A temporary systemwide deposit guarantee is needed to stop the bleeding. The longer the uncertainty continues, the more permanent the damage is to the smaller banks, and the more difficult it will be to bring their customers back.

... but as we noted previously pointing out, you know, the math...

... absent bipartisan Congressional intervention - which is very much unlikely until the bank crisis gets much, much worse - this won't happen and instead the Fed will continue putting out bank fire after bank fire - even as it keeps hiking to overcompensate for its "transitory inflation" idiocy from 2021, until the entire system burns down, something which Ackman's follow-up tweet was also right about:

Consider recent events impact on the long-term cost of equity capital for non-systemically important banks where you can wake up one day as a shareholder or bondholder and your investment instantly goes to zero. When combined with the higher cost of debt and deposits due to rising rates, consider what the impact will be on lending rates and our economy.

The longer this banking crisis is allowed to continue, the greater the damage to smaller banks and their ability to access low-cost capital.

Trust and confidence are earned over many years, but can be wiped out in a few days. I fear we are heading for another a train wreck. Hopefully, our regulators will get this right.

Narrator: no, they won't.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/22/2023 - 21:20

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International

China’s Auto Industry Association Urges “Cooling” Of Price War, As Major Manufacturers Slash Prices

China’s Auto Industry Association Urges "Cooling" Of Price War, As Major Manufacturers Slash Prices

Just hours after we wrote about maniacal…

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China's Auto Industry Association Urges "Cooling" Of Price War, As Major Manufacturers Slash Prices

Just hours after we wrote about maniacal price cutting in the automotive industry in China, China's auto industry association is urging automakers to "cool" the hype behind price cuts.

The statement was made in order to "ensure the stable development of the industry", Automotive News Europe reported on Tuesday. 

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers even went so far as to put out a message on its official WeChat account, stating that "A price war is not a long-term solution". Instead "automakers should work harder on technology and branding," it said. 

The consumer disagrees...

Recall we wrote earlier this week that most major automakers were slashing prices in China. The move is coming after lifting pandemic controls failed to spur significant demand in China, the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Ford and GM will be joined by BMW and Volkswagen in offering the discounts and promotions on EVs, the report says. 

Retail auto sales plunged the first two months of the year and automakers are facing additional challenges in trying to transition their business models to prioritize EVs over conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. 

Ford is offering $6,000 off its Mustang Mach-E, putting the standard version of its EV at just $31,000. Last month, only 84 of the vehicles were sold, compared to 1,500 sales in December. There was some pulling forward of demand due to the phasing out of subsidies heading into the new year, and Ford had also cut prices by about 9% in December. 

A spokesperson for Ford called it a "stock clearance". 

Discounts at Volkswagen are ranging from around $2,200 to $7,300 a car. The cuts will affect 20 gas powered and electric models. Its electric ID series is seeing price cuts of almost $6,000. The company called the cuts "temporary promotions due to general reluctance among car buyers, the new emissions rule and discounts offered by competitors."

Even more shocking is Citroën-maker Dongfeng Motor Group, who is offering a 40% discount on its C6 gas-powered sedan, now priced at $18,000. 

Kelvin Lau, an analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets, told the Journal that automakers are also trying to get rid of 500,000 vehicles collectively stored in their inventory, most of which are older vehicles that won't meet new emissions standards.

David Zhang, a Shanghai-based independent automobile analyst, added: “Some car makers have been seeing very few sales. At this rate, the manufacturers’ production and dealership networks will collapse.”

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/22/2023 - 18:00

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International

COVID origins debate: what to make of new findings linking the virus to raccoon dogs

New reports suggest the pandemic’s origins may be linked to raccoon dogs sold at Wuhan’s Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market. A virologist explains.

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March 23, 2023

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Voodison328/Shutterstock

The origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, has long been a topic of heated debate. While many believe SARS-CoV-2 spread to humans from an animal at Wuhan’s Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, others have argued the virus was accidentally leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Over the past week there has been intense activity surrounding the emergence of new data relevant to this question. In particular, reports emerged that the pandemic’s origins may be linked to raccoon dogs which were being sold illegally at the market.

The excitement stemmed from a re-analysis of raw data generated as part of official investigations into the role of the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in the outbreak.

The team of international scientists working on this re-analysis (from North America, Europe and Australia) alerted the World Health Organization and discussed the topic in an article published in The Atlantic. And the scientists themselves have now released a report on the issue, providing greater detail.

So what can we make of their findings? Will this development shift the course of the ongoing debate? Let’s take a look.

The Huanan market

In January 2020, writing about the emergence of what we now call SARS-CoV-2, I stated the importance of understanding how this pandemic began. It remains important to determine the virus’s origins because this knowledge may help us stop the next pandemic occurring.

Even very early in 2020, it was clear that the central Chinese city of Wuhan (a major metropolis and travel hub) was the epicentre of the outbreak. Within Wuhan, the Huanan seafood market stood out as it was associated with many – but not all – of the earliest cases. Indeed, the market was closed on January 1 2020, animals were culled, and the site was disinfected.

Suspicions arose given the role that animal trade and markets had played in the emergence of the closely related SARS-CoV-1 virus (which caused SARS, a widespread outbreak of viral respiratory disease) nearly two decades earlier. Evidence emerged that the Huanan seafood market also sold live mammals, including a fox-like mammal known as a raccoon dog, that we now know are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.

Later epidemiological and genetic analyses further focused in on the market, and even specific stalls within it, as being the origin of the pandemic.

Read more: The original Sars virus disappeared – here's why coronavirus won’t do the same

The new data

As part of the official investigations into the market, swabs were collected from various parts of the market in the two months after it shut down at the start of 2020. The scientists who undertook this research, from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, posted their analysis as a pre-print (a study yet to be peer-reviewed) in February 2022.

In this, the team concluded that the market likely played a significant role in SARS-CoV-2’s early spread, but that they couldn’t detect the virus in samples taken directly from animals. They reported that all the virus evidence found was associated with humans, and it was therefore likely the virus had been brought into the market by humans, not animals, and so perhaps the pandemic began elsewhere.

An illustration of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 has been a topic of heated debate. Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock

However, prior to any official peer-reviewed publication, the raw data from this work was released on an open scientific database called Gisaid. And the group of scientists who re-analysed this data did actually find an association between SARS-CoV-2 and animals, in particular raccoon dogs in the market.

They found DNA from animals mixed in with SARS-CoV-2 in a number of samples from the market. Some positive samples contained no human DNA and mostly raccoon dog DNA. This mix of virus and animal material is consistent with an infected animal – not a human – shedding virus, which is what you might expect if SARS-CoV-2 originated from animals brought into the market. Unfortunately, samples from a living raccoon dog were either not taken or not reported, and the official investigation makes no mention of raccoon dogs.

Where to from here?

While this latest data is one additional piece of the puzzle that supports an origin of the pandemic linked to Wuhan’s animal trade, it is unlikely to provide irrefutable evidence. It’s important to note it’s also a pre-print.

Ideally, we would like animal samples from early December 2019, and to compare animal virus genomes with human ones. It will also be crucial to follow events backwards through the animal trade and farming systems to work out where the animals got the virus from in the first instance.

Further, we must bear in mind that the virus could have easily been given to a raccoon dog by an infected human, or that the association between raccoon dog DNA and SARS-CoV-2 may be coincidental.

Read more: We want to know where COVID came from. But it’s too soon to expect miracles

However, evidence is accumulating that official investigations have left a gap in their research – particularly around the role that animals like raccoon dogs and the wildlife trade played in the origins of the pandemic.

While it may be unlikely that we will ever get concrete evidence as to how SARS-CoV-2 entered the human population, we can still think pragmatically and seek to alter behaviour and practices to reduce the chance of a new pandemic. One immediate target would be food systems (encompassing farm to fork), and how to make farming and the wildlife trade safer for all, potentially by enhancing virus surveillance in animals.

Connor Bamford receives funding from Wellcome Trust, UKRI, SFI and BMA Foundation.

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