There is so much to think about these days.  The Supremes rule on Barry’s plan to keep us all nicely covered and eligible for the best medical care that simply can’t be afforded.  There is so much conjecture out there from pundits far smarter than us so we’ll leave it to them to opine on things of such significance.

But at Craven we do love history…and especially the way it rhymes….often in the most ironic of ways.  Think about Germany for example.  After WWI (you know… “the war to end all wars”) Germany went through the most horrendous inflation, which ultimately became the infamous hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s.  The Germans still feel the psychic pain…pain which was made far worse by France’s insistence on full reparation payments.  France was the big dog in Europe at the time and ran a healthy surplus.  Can’t you see the interesting and ironic historical rhyme?

Now, Germany is the big dog of Europe.  And France is beholden to them.  And Angela’s mob are holding tough…demanding reparations in the form of political sovereignty in order to instill fiscal discipline on those easy going Latins to the south.  But just like France needing Germany’s  coal from the Ruhr…which they ultimately tried to take by force…Germany needs its Latin friends.  When exports represent 45% of your GDP and the Chinese and Indians are sputtering a a wee bit, it’s even more important that they maintain a level (from their perspective anyway) trading arena.

But what if the Latins cried…”no mas” and decided to toss Germany out for their perceived lack of generosity?  After all, they have all the votes on the Euro commission.  What would happen?  Well…we think it unlikely…for like Goldie and Ben….they all need each other.  But what if they did?

In that case, we suspect that Germany would align with some mates to the west and north (think Holland, Finland, Belgium et al) to form the Neuro (the northern Eurozone) of responsible nations while the rest of those ditherers (possibly excluding basket case Greece) would align to form the Seuro….with France once again the top wolf of a very weak pack.  This idea was floated a couple years back and is not new…but maybe it’s an idea whose time has now come.

And now onto the world’s best looking banker…Jamie Dimon.  Not only is he good looking but he is smart.  Don’t you just hate people like him…good looking, smart and…rich!  So his $2bill loss is now looking far larger…but how far?  We suspect that good old..but young looking…Jamie is pulling a swifty.  The word is now leaked that the loss could be as much as $9bill, which would make a big hole in this year’s earnings indeed.  Our word from the street…and we are only about 100 yards from Wall St. (way too close for comfort)…is that the loss is probably more around 5 bill. So in this world of sound bites, fleeting memories and jaundiced perceptions, don’t you think it would be a smart move to leak 9 bill to set expectations low and then announce on July 13 (Black Friday for those into such things) that golly gee…the loss is actually so much less than perceived.  Then, instead of focusing on 2 bill ballooning out to 5, the market can swoon and say…”well, thank God…it wasn’t 9 bill after all…such good news”.   Let’s see if Jamie is really as smart as he is good looking.