MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Bruno Waterfield – “A trillion euro bail-out to save the EU’s single currency is in danger of unravelling after Germany’s central bank warned that the rescue measure was too dependent on the high-risk deals that caused the economic crisis.

Hours after an all-night summit of euro governments ended, flaws began to emerge in a package that was billed as a ‘grand and comprehensive’ solution to the European debt crisis.

The concerns were led by Germany’s powerful central bank, which expressed fears that a plan to leverage a €440 billion eurozone rescue fund to amass a ‘fire power’ of €1 trillion, or £880 billion, resembled the risky finance methods that triggered the crisis in 2008.

EU leaders are expected to sanction the establishment of a so-called special purpose investment vehicle, or SPIV, to be set up in the coming weeks. It is aimed at attracting investment from countries such as China and Brazil.

Jens Weidmann, the president of the Bundesbank and a member of the European Central Bank, sounded the alarm over the plan to ‘leverage’ the fund by a factor of four to five times without putting any new money into the pot.

He warned that the scheme could be hit by market turbulence with taxpayers left holding the bill for risky investments in Italian and Spanish bonds.” Read more.

Europe’s rescue euphoria threatened as Portugal enters ‘Grecian vortex’ – “Monetary contraction in Portugal has intensified at an alarming pace and is mimicking the pattern seen in Greece before its economy spiralled out of control, raising concerns that the EU summit deal may soon washed over by fast-moving events. Data released by the European Central Bank show that real M1 deposits in Portugal have fallen at an annualised rate of 21pc over the past six months, buckling violently in September. ‘Portugal appears to have entered a Grecian vortex and monetary trends have deteriorated sharply in Spain, with a decline of 8.4pc,’ said Simon Ward, from Henderson Global Investors.” Read more.