In this week's Off the Cuff with Mish & Chris podcast, Mish and Chris lean into:
- Signs of fragmentation in Europe
- Increasingly political leaders jettisoning Eurozone collectivism for what's best for their own country
- The ticking pension bomb
- US states, municipalities, and cities face unmeetable obligations
- Fraud at the core
- The Barclays LIBOR-fixing scandal shows how manipulated markets really are
They say that when the going gets tough, you learn what a person's true nature is. If that's so, we're learning that the bloviating European leaders are clueless opportunists with no real love or loyalty for the centralized European vision they've been selling to their populace for over a decade. Similarly, US public pension administrators and public officials are craven liars, still unwilling to admit to pensioners that poor stewardship, bad math, and generationally low interest rates have made it impossible to meet their actuarial commitments. Increasingly — and as epitomized by the recently- fraudulent fixing of the LIBOR market — all players are simply out to secure what they can for themselves before the system breaks.
Today's summary will have to end here, as it's time for me to board my flight back east to join Chris and Becca for our last weekend seminar of 2012.
by kugscheese