Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Hedgeye: The Principled One

There is so much good material waiting in the cue on the subjects of Greece, sovereign debt, and currency speculation, but here's the piece I want to share with you today.

It comes from Keith McCullough at Hedgeye and his post takes on the idea that, once again, "evil speculators" are somehow to blame for the fundamental economic problems of a country's own making.

An excerpt from, "The Principled One":

"The other George (Papandreou) is the Prime Minister of Greece. Since the Chinese told him to go fly his levered-up bureaucratic kite, Papandreou has been on a PR tour since Friday when he visited Germany.

Along the way, somehow he convinced France’s Nicholas Sarkozy that “speculators are creating malicious rumors” about his country. With some political wind from the left at his back, he took it up a notch ahead of meeting with Geithner today in Washington and called whoever he can’t see “unprincipled speculators.” George, you have to be kidding me. You have no idea what you don’t know.

First of all, hearing politicians talk about markets is like watching a southern belle try to ice fish. So I won’t waste time on ripping this poor guy a new one for using the word “speculator.” That would be too easy.

It is this concept of “principles” that really has my arthritic hockey knuckles hammering on the keyboard this morning. What, almighty Principled One, in God’s good name is “principled” about levering-up your country’s balance sheet to 100% debt to GDP and a 12.4% deficit to GDP ratio?..."

Go read the whole thing.

And let's not hold our breath waiting for lying politicians to make these false accusations and verbal attacks in the presence of such "unprincipled speculators". In an honest society, you might get a sock to the face or a challenge from your opponent for soiling their honor in such an underhanded way.

Related articles and posts:

1. Jim Rogers: Greece bankruptcy good for Euro - Finance Trends.

2. Greece presses US to crack down on "speculators" - Bloomberg.

3. Sorry, Greece, your crisis not caused by speculators - Clusterstock.