The bail-ins are a bad joke. A very bad joke indeed.

If a bank goes belly-up it's for its own wrong-doings, that is true and its shareholders are punished by loosing their investment. But there are also and most specifically the supervision authorities who did not do their job and allowed it to happen. The job of a regulatory authority is above and most of all to keep the stability of the system. The public entrusts its money to the banks for reasons of reputation of this or that bank but also because above them exists (or at least it is supposed to exist) a supervision body which guarantees that the bank operates according to regulations and is solvent at all times. If the regulatory body does not do its job correctly then the banks go belly-up and we have a lot of trouble.

Now, the regulatory institutions are government bodies. So, my question is, why should depositors pay for a government body's leniency if not direct incompetence? It's a mistake done by the regulator so the state must pay and be held responsible for the incompetence of one of its bodies. Therefore, if trouble occurs, then, States (this being tax-payers) should pay. Then in the next election maybe the tax payers remember and vote for merit instead of politics.

Some 40 or 50 years ago, even 20 years ago, this thing of the bail-ins would be both an absurd and an outrage. However, in nowadays' Europe, where a tendency to punish wealth is surfacing with a lot of strength along with utter disrespect for money it is considered the new normal to have wealthy people paying for States' wrongdoings.

This is not inocuous, at all. Slowly but steadily money is pouring out of Europe in general (some countries are exceptions) but as more of these crazy ideas against wealth and money are implemented the more the money goes away for greener pastures.

Before the possibility of bail-ins arising there is an increased chance of negative interest rates by the ECB; I think it is the 10th March when Mr Draghi is next scheduled to produce a rabbit from his hat.
i.e. make his next announcement about both interest rates and further QE.

Even at the last G20 conference, I think it was our very own governor of the BoE who commented that the banks are working to a remit wherein they, the central banks, do their bit but the respective governments won't grasp the nettles of their own responsibilities; why would they when, in the case of the UK, you are in govn for 5 years (4 years for the USA).
Nevertheless, Gov Carney did not agree that the banks are "running out of ammunition" even though everyone can see that it is so.
But, every public pronouncement/forecast that Gov Carney has made since he took up office over 2 years ago has turned out to be wrong.

Life is short; live for today is the mantra.

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Dave

There's always nylons, cigarettes and Hershey bars (so long as the EU doesn't ban Imperial sizes).

Andy

Don't know if you're aware of this but this morning, Japan did it again!

Yep, Japan sold a ten-year government bond (JGB) on a negative average yield of -0.024%.

Anyone who bought a wedge of these bonds, and who holds onto them for the entire 10-year term, is absolutely guaranteed to lose money (in nominal terms, at least).

The world really is going crazy!

It's kind of explained here:-



Drawn from:-
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2016/03...tory-and-shit/

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Dave