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THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO
Hmmm
…
A walk around the fringes of nance
23 OctOber 2011
1
 
“Everyone needs the ECB to step up to the plate. TeECB has no excuse not to act. In trying to keep itsmonetary virginity intact, the bank threatens to de-stroy the Euro Zone. I that happens, nobody willbe able to prot rom its virginity.”
  PAUL DE GRAUWE
“Simple Math: Te total overall cap [of the ESM] is 500 billion Euros160 billion Euros has been spent340 billion Euros remains340 billion Euros + zero Euros = 940 billion Euros”
– Mike Shedlock,
on the latest European ‘Masterplan’ to merge the EFSF + ESM 
“The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it’s dicult
o dmin whh o no hy a gnuin”
– Abraham Lincoln
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2.
 
THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO
Hmmm...
23 OctOber 2011
2
L
ee
Richmond, meet everybody. Everybody? Meet Lee Richmond.It’s dicult to put an exact number on the number of games of professional baseballthat have been played since 1900 – most esmates seem to be clustered around the high300,000s though. For the purposes of this exercise, I am going to take the number providedin no-nonsense fashion by Wiki answers: 390,536.In amongst those 390,536 games were home runs, walks, steals, strikeouts and singles,doubles and triples too numerous to keep track of; or rather, just too numerous for anyonebut the most die-hard of stat geeks to even contemplate tallying.(at this point, I should apologise to any non-baseball fans amongst you for whom the termsused above have induced a franc bout of head-scratching and a desire to skip ahead – sckwith me for a while longer and the fog will clear – I promise).Part of the innate beauty of baseball to me is the fact that (certainly in the modern era),game by game, season by season every aspect of it is measured, quaned and evaluatedand the myriad ways the numbers can be dissected enables you to drill down into any partof it and gain a real understanding, through those numbers, of exactly what is going on. Youcan’t fudge the numbers. The Oakland Athlecs’ Billy Beane showed the power of this ap
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proach, which was documented so brilliantly in Michael Lewis’ ‘Moneyball’But let’s get back to Lee Richmond.In 1880 Richmond became the rst of only 20 men in baseball history to pitch a perfect game whenhe pitched the Worcester Ruby Legs to a 1-0 victory over the Cleveland Blues at the Worcester Agri
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cultural Fairgrounds on June 12.Think about that for a second.Over 130 years. 390,536 games. 2 teams in each contest. That’s 781,072 opportunies for a perfectgame to be pitched or, to put it another way, the odds on a perfect game being pitched are 39,053:1 – and rising. In fact, more people have orbited the moon than have pitched a MLB perfect game andNOBODY has done it more than once.(At this point I will again aempt to keep the non-baseball acionados with us by the use of this shortexplanaon of a ‘perfect game’:
 A perfect game is dened by Major League Baseball as a game in which a pitcher (or combinaonof pitchers) pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. Thus, the pitcher (or pitchers) cannot allow any hits, walks, hit batsmen, or any op
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 posing player to reach base safely for any other reason—in short, “27 up, 27 down”)
Interesngly enough, although it is technically possible for mulple pitchers to combine for a perfectgame, to date, every major league perfect game has been thrown by a single pitcher.That record needs to change. And fast.
R
ight
now, the team comprising the ECB, EU and the various parliaments that make up thatfractured and faltering alliance are sending pitcher aer pitcher to the mound (somemes ingroups of two or three) trying to combine for the perfect game that they NEED in order to escape thedebt trap they have backed themselves into.
 
3.
 
THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO
Hmmm...
23 OctOber 2011
3
Being in a situaon where you lose unless you can pull something o against odds of mulple-thou
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sands to one and pitch a ‘perfect game’ is a ridiculous spot in which to nd yourself, but as this monthhas rolled by, it has become ever-more apparent that that is precisely where the Brussels Eurocratsnow nd themselves. It appears as though, as the pressure has ratcheted up this week, we are nowin the ninth inning.Personally, my own belief (as regular readers are by now well aware) is that the very best the Euro
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crats can hope for is to extend the game by an inning or two, but their arms are red, their bullpen isempty and, at some point, we are going to see an absolute avalanche of runs scored against them asthe whole thing nally topples under its own weight.This past week has been nothing short of farcical as the tension has built towards a crescendo thatseemed at rst to be willfully engendered in order to generate just enough sense of impending crisisto enable a resoluon to be forced through in a similar fashion to that which preceded Henry Paulsonand Ben Bernanke’s now-infamous closed-doors fright-fest (hyphenaon alert!) that led to the pass
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ing of the TARP in late 2008.
O
bviously
any and all capitulaon towards outright bailouts (or ‘QEU’) must at least beseen to be against the will of the Germans and that proviso goes a long way towards explain
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ing the ra of headlines that have ooded the reuters and Bloomberg screens of investors all aroundthe world this week. We have seen misdirecon, scaremongering, u-turns and abject incompetenceas well as the kinds of ‘leaks’ that are, frankly, laughable – the prime example being the ‘leaked’ dracopy of the Euro Summit statement which was printed, in its enrety, in the Daily Telegraph on Thurs
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day – coincidentally at the precise moment when things were starng to come unglued as it becameclear that this Sunday’s Summit would NOT produce the magic bullet required.The statement itself is priceless. It begins with a bit of back-slapping for the passing of the EFSF (aerno less than six months of wrangling and an eleventh-hour drama in Slovakia):
The strategy we have put into place encompasses determined eorts to ensure scal consolidaonas well as growth, support to countries in diculty, and a strengthening of euro area governance. At our 21 July meeng we took a set of major decisions. The racaon by all 17 Member Statesof the euro area of the measures related to the EFSF signicantly strengthen our capacity to react to the crisis.The agreement on a strong legislave package within the EU structures on beer economic gov 
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ernance represents another major achievement. The euro connues to rest on solid fundamentals
It then moves on to more familiar ground; an agreement to display their strong determinaon to xthings. Nothing concrete, of course, but they sure as hell are determined:
The crisis is, however, far from over, as shown by the volality of sovereign and corporate debt markets. Further acon is needed to restore condence. That is why today we agree on addional measures reecng our strong determinaon to do whatever is required to overcome the present dicules.
The rest of the text, should you want to read it, is
h
, but allow me to summarise it through a fewselect phrases that will save you the trouble of doing so:
“blah, blah, blah… All Member States are determined, blah, blah, blah… We want to reiterate our determinaon, blah, blah, blah… We rearm clearly our unequivocal commitment that, blah,
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