Bundesbank to Athens: Drop dead!

What's the Greek word for 'chutzpah?' We don't know either.

But the leader of the communists/socialists, Alexis Tsipras, has it. He must have heard that old saying: "When you owe your bank $100,000, you can't sleep at night. When you owe your bank $1 million, your banker can't sleep at night."

Since the Greeks owe money all over town, he figured he could thumb his nose at his lenders. He told the Germans that they were trapped: they had no choice; They had to keep the money flowing to Greece, otherwise, the Greeks would default and cause hell to all of Europe.

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What's the word for "oh yeah?" in German? We don't know that either. But surely the Germans have a word for this occasion. A word that means "we'll show you what a moron you are".

In the event, the Bundesbank did the talking. As to the possibility of the Greeks' departure: "The challenges this would create for the euro area and for Germany would be considerable but manageable given prudent crisis management."

Or, in the words Gerald Ford used in responding to New York City's request for a loan: "Drop dead".

Yesterday, the Dow was down as much as 170 points as investors wondered what would happen next. The dollar rose to $1.25 to the euro. By the close of trading, the Dow had managed to pull itself up to only a six point loss. Everything else was down, down, down, and it keeps going down. Watch out - investors could panic!

In Europe itself, things seem to be coming to a head. It looks like the Greeks might finally leave, or be pushed out of the euro. Bloomberg:

Greece may have only a 46-hour window of opportunity should it need to plot a route out of the euro.

That's how much time the country's leaders would probably have to enact any departure from the single currency while global markets are largely closed, from the end of trading in New York on a Friday to Monday's market opening in Wellington, New Zealand, based on a synthesis of euro-exit scenarios from 21 economists, analysts and academics.

But switching currencies is not an easy thing to do.

The commentariat still insists that it would be against Germany's interest to push the Greeks out of the euro. One says Germany would be "shooting itself in the foot" or perhaps the head; another says it would cost a fortune - $1trn, according to a report in the Guardian:

The British government is making urgent preparations to cope with the fallout of a possible Greek exit from the single currency, after the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, warned that Europe was "tearing itself apart".

Reports from Athens that massive sums of money were being spirited out of the country intensified concern in London about the impact of a splintering of the eurozone on a UK economy that is stuck in double-dip recession. One estimate put the cost to the eurozone of Greece making a disorderly exit from the currency at $1tn, 5% of output.

Yes, breaking up is hard to do. It would be costly. But money isn't everything. People do bad things for money, it's true. But they do worse thingsin spite ofmoney.

Where was the money in WWII? In starving the Ukrainians? In Hitler's 'final solution?'

You might find a money motive... but few mass murderers are bottom-line oriented. They're usually world-improvers

There are some things more important than money. National pride is one of them. Here's our point. At some point, people stop counting the costs... they go 'off their heads'... and begin doing things that don't really benefit anyone in a financial way. So, it may not matter whether it "makes sense" to kick the Greeks out of the European monetary system or not.

Greece was still in it as of yesterday. Today, anything could happen. But at this stage, the Germans may prefer to blow off a toe or two in order to get rid of them.

And more thoughts

We went to Toronto yesterday to visit an old friend who made a lot of money in the mining business, but now works in biotech. Why did you get out of mining, we wanted to know?

"It just got too crowded. You know what they say about the 'crowded trade'." Get out. Well, I guess it was the big run-up in commodities a couple of years ago that caused it. Suddenly, everyone was starting up a mining company. And they were getting a lot of investment money. Everybody thought he'd get rich in resources.

"But it doesn't work that way. The mining business is extremely cyclical. Prices go up. It draws in the marginal players. And the good deals disappear. Everything is too expensive. There's too much production. Too many projects. Too many promoters. And then prices collapse.

"We've already had a good pullback. I'm starting to see some good deals again. But I'm waiting a little longer. I think we'll get some better deals before this is over."

Our guess, here at the Daily Reckoning, is that Facebook's IPO represented some kind of high water mark for the virtual economy. It was like Blackstone's IPO in June 2007, which marked the top in the financial economy.

Now, the economy will shift back to the real things: oil, and copper, and precious metals. It could take years.

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