Friday, October 7, 2016

Magic People

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2016/05/09/vitas_0.jpg
Mark Twain noted that there are lies ,damn lies and then there is statistics. Today, that's been modified a bit: There are lies, damn lies and then there is Jean-Claude Juncker.

A couple of more notables belong to that list, but we have already singled them out. Still another version is making the rounds today: lies, damn lies and then there are magic people.This is a story about magic people. Not just any magic people. No, indeed. These are special magic people with special names--central bankers.

Here's a quote.

Observant readers may recall the name Vitas Vasiliauskas from our May story in which we quoted the ECB governing council member as defining not only himself, but his central banking peers, as "magic people." As the portly Lithuanian banker said in a Bloomberg interview then, “markets say the ECB is done, their box is empty, but we are magic people. Each time we take something and give to the markets -- a rabbit out of the hat." What was more disturbing is that he was dead serious when he said it, which is important, because it is finally obvious that central bankers are neither gods, nor magicians, nor even doing "god's work on earth", but plain and simple psychopaths.

They could also be pathological liars, as the WSJ revealed today when it published an interview with Vasiliauskas, in which among other things, covered the topic of Deutsche Bank. To wit:
Struggling German lender Deutsche Bank won’t drive the eurozone economy into the ground, a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council said Thursday, adding a fresh dose of calm into a case that has raised concerns about the continent’s ability to confront the struggles of Germany’s largest lender.

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“I don’t think that problems related with one of the banks somehow can influence overall financial stability,” said Vitas Vasiliauskas, the head of Lithuania’s central bank, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The small Baltic state has used the euro since last year and therefore has a voice on the 25-member governing council that sets monetary policy in the currency bloc. The ECB also serves as supervisor of the eurozone’s largest banks. “I don’t think that we face something systemic,” he said on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund.
And just in case the punchline is somehow missed, here it is time stamped for posterity.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-07/someone-lying

Below is link to entire transcript. You can read it for yourself. Is Deutsche Bank a global threat? That's a pretty pure question. Our guess it is, And that's why there's so much talkng it down, especially before November 8.

wsj.com/articles/transcript-wsj-interview-with-ecbs-vitas-vasiliauskas

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