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Sunday, April 28, 2024

EL LENGUAJE DE LAS FLORES (V; 27-04-2024; LENGUAJE, FLORES, PENSAMIENTO: "ESTÁN ALLÍ")

EL LENGUAJE DE LAS FLORES (I) 


La condición del significado es la intemperie, y el significado mismo, el movimiento de amparar la vida de las personas. La intemperie y la disgregación de las afueras llevan a la resistencia y al amparo, pero he aquí que ambas no buscan preservar un tesoro incólume, sino cuidar la vulnerabilidad del ser humano, que es, además, presencia generadora. Se ampara la vulnerabilidad por ella misma, pero también se resiste con vistas a la generación y a la generosidad.

(Josep María Esquirol, La penúltima bondad, página 90)
 
 



Escrita está la cifra del indulto:
Mengua su libertad aquel que olvida
Que es su propio recuerdo quien lo salva

J.M. Caballero Bonald (“En la hora propicia”, Las Horas Muertas (1959))
 
 

(De tus pasos del 27-04-2024)

-¿Y cuánta verdad podemos soportar?
-“Toda. A la larga es lo único soportable. La lucidez no es gran cosa, pero no tenerla es todavía peor. Es como una casa de misericordia.”

(Joan Margarit, El País, sábado 2 de diciembre de 2006)
 
 
(Soy un tipo extraño.Por las noches camino por las calles de Berlín provisto de un lazo hecho con una cuerda y robo todas las magnolias, las bellas magnolias. Después, me llevo las flores robadas a mi habitación, que se convierte así en un jardín de magnolias.
 
Para mí pensar es agradecer
 
Celan añade: " Los poemas también son regalos"
 
El lenguaje es, originariamente, voz)

Revolución

Contra todo florecen los almendros.
Protesta radical e inquebrantable.
Este siglo veloz sin concesiones
ya no tiene un talón
visible; más que un ojo tiene mil
y no hay David que pueda ya vencerlo.
Escasean los héroes
en esta era de plasma
y, con todo, florecen los almendros.
Creer en el amor tampoco sirve
–contra el amor las flores han marchado–,
de amor están repletas las cunetas;
entre los vivos sólo
persiste el verde amor por el dinero.

(…)

Porque hoy en día existen los esclavos
–las flores lo repiten: ¡hay esclavos!–
y lugares oscuros
y cárceles sin nombre
donde la vida es sólo un agujero.
Con la voz de los mudos se resisten
a callar los almendros.
Hay un dolor oculto en primavera,
nada sabe del hombre, de su historia
de guerras y desastres,
también este dolor es algo hermoso,
hermoso, ambiguo y brevemente eterno;
es la pena inefable
que hace estallar de amor a los almendros.
En este florecer tan subversivo
se han ido las pasiones de otros años,
se ha ido la esperanza
con la escarcha de enero y con el agua
que tímido se adentra en un febrero
que es testigo del cambio y del combate:
contra todo florecen los almendros.




Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou"Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of PoemsCopyright © 1978 by Maya 
Angelou

"Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave..."

"You rise"

(A CZV Y A TODA SU FAMILIA)
 
 
 "El arte es el esfuerzo incesante por competir con la belleza de las flores... sin triunfar jamás."

Marc Chagall
 

 



(La belleza es una rezagada
La lluvia en el pinar, La pioggia en el pineto (D'Annunzio):

Calla...
palabras más nuevas 
que hablan  gotas y hojas 
lejanas.
Escucha.Llueve
desde las nubes desperdigadas...
llueve sobre nuestros rostros silvestres,
llueve sobre nuestras manos
desnudas, 
sobre nuestras vestimentas,
ligeras,
sobre los frescos pensamientos
que el alma proclama
como buena nueva)

559. Has de tener presente que el juego del lenguaje es, por decirlo, de algún modo, algo imprevisible. Quiero decir: no está fundamentado. No es razonable (ni irracional).
 
Está allí-como nuestra vida.

Es steht da-wie unser Leben.
 
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sobre la certeza)

"Formar pensamientos como acordes"

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

UBS: THE SINKING TITANIC? - JustDario (UNDOING UNCERTAINTY)

 

 


EVERYONE IN UBS IS LOOKING FOR A LIFEBOAT TO ESCAPE THE SINKING TITANIC - JustDario: As I warned about many times before (#UBS ENCORE SERIES), the rescue of Credit Suisse was surely going to put #UBS in great danger and, as expected, the bank is now going through an existential crisis. The extent of the existential crisis was already clear in their Q4-23 results, where...

 

 This crisis is now starting to become public dominion since this news hit the tape: “Switzerland says UBS may need more cash. The bank is fuming – CNN”

(...)

 So what’s going on? Not only did the Swiss government change the laws overnight last year, unconstitutionally (like bypassing shareholders’ approval or repaying Arab shareholders while nuking AT1 bondholders), to orchestrate #UBS and Credit Suisse merger (also with a timely liquidity injection from the #FED into the imploding Credit Suisse US operation), but now that they figured out the huge nuclear-ticking bomb they placed right in the middle of their country’s financial system, they are trying to make up for it in a way that will effectively choke a bank already short of breath.

 (...)

 Of course, investors swallowed not only the bite and the hook but also the whole line, stampeding into #UBS stock in a great display of unbelievable #FOMO stupidity since #UBS took over Credit Suisse on the 19th of March 2023.

(...)

 UBS is a G-SIB bank that, after acquiring Credit Suisse assets, is now double in size, so yes you can say they are too big to fail but at the same time they are too big to be rescued in the era of Central Banks dealing with losses. As a matter of fact, The SNB reported a definitive loss of CHF3. 2 billion ($3.6 billion) for the 2023 reporting year, following a huge loss of CHF132. 5 billion in 2022 (when Credit Suisse was still afloat!) and in 2023 its losses were not “that bad” thanks to the gains in its huge US #stocks and foreign government bonds portfolio (rates came down sharply in Q4-23 helping them big time)

 So what’s going to be the end game here? Personally, I expect #UBS will be allowed to trigger the break-up clause in their M&A agreement with Credit Suisse, and then Credit Suisse’s old operations across the globe will be split into several smaller “banks” and recapitalized by local central banks with the #FED in the lead. The capital injection won’t be able to buffer the gigantic amount of losses from Credit Suisse’s toxic assets and derivative books, especially Archegos ones, so counterparty banks will be hit with a share of the losses proportionally to the amount of exposure they carried against Credit Suisse positions. Will #UBS be “safe” at this point? Unfortunately, no, and the reason is they were the biggest risk counterpart of Credit Suisse still. On top of that, the bank is dealing with toxic assets of its own, in particular from Asian private banking operations where for years the bank was very loose in providing equity financing and asset financing to HNWI against collateral that is not only far from enough to cover the losses but cannot even be liquidated since the market is very illiquid and most of these assets were totally private unlisted ones.

(Los pánicos no destruyen el capital. Meramente revelan la medida en que el capital ha sido ya previamente destruido por su traición al dedicarse a inversiones improductivas sin ninguna esperanza)

John Stuart Mill

(Creo que las instituciones financieras son más peligrosas para nuestras libertades que los ejércitos de ocupación. Si el pueblo americano permitiera a los bancos privados controlar la emisión de moneda, primero por la inflación, y después por la deflación, los bancos y corporaciones que crezcan alrededor de los bancos privarán a la gente de toda su propiedad hasta que sus hijos despierten sin morada en el continente que sus padres conquistaron. El poder de emisión debería ser rescatado de los bancos y restituido al pueblo, a quien propiamente pertenece.)


Thomas Jefferson: Carta al Secretario del Tesoro Albert Gallatin (1802)


THE JPY DOOM LOOP- EL BUCLE LETAL DEL YEN - THE MORE JPY LOSES VALUE, THE MORE LEVERAGE IS FORCED TO COME OFFLINE, - JustDario

( If you look at the #Japan GDP in $USD rather than $JPY you can see what’s going on.)

THE JPY (COUNTERINTUITIVE) DOOM LOOP - THE MORE JPY LOSES VALUE, THE MORE LEVERAGE IS FORCED TO COME OFFLINE, THE MORE THE JPY LOSES VALUE - JustDario

 

Almost 9 months ago now in the post “$JPY CARRY TRADE – THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL TICKING TIME BOMB OF ALL?“, I tried to explain how, in the current market conditions where the shortage of quality collateral assets is becoming incredibly scarce, a depreciating #JPY would have put the ginormous and popular #JPY carry trade, a “sure win” no more, under pressure. In a nutshell, when someone borrows #JPY to invest in non-JPY assets (let’s assume US treasuries), the risk is hedged via FX swaps that are efficient both in terms of risk protection and cost (under the assumption that the differential in rates between US and Japan remains stable). However, there is a detail I do not understand why people keep ignoring: if the non-JPY investment leg goes underwater, then the investor faces capital losses in unwinding the JPY carry trade. This is what happens: 

1 – #JPY depreciates and at, let’s say, 154, triggers a request for additional margin to the counterpart that holds the carry trade on the FX Swaps in place. Yes, if #JPY appreciates, the broker will post collateral, but if the opposite happens, that burden switches on top of the investor. 

2 – The investor has two alternatives: either post additional collateral or unwind its carry trade. Of course, they will always prefer the first option since the second will force them to book a big capital loss in the current market scenario. 

3 – Here is when the “doom loop” starts. No investor keeps their assets idle; these are always “put to work” to maximize portfolio returns. Translated, assets not pledged as collateral, hence in the availability of the investor, are constantly repoed out to source additional liquidity. How would they invest the additional liquidity? Easy answer: yield harvesting (from Reverse Repos against lower-rated bonds to the infamous short Volatility trades of any sort). Now it should be clear why an investor forced to post collateral will have less liquidity at his disposal due to the necessity to unwind their repos and deliver that collateral to their broker. Hold on a second, then why don’t brokers use that collateral to gain extra returns? 

 4 – The answer to the question above is no, why? That would be very capital inefficient for brokers who are not supposed to carry “directional” exposure but maximize their profits by making their balance sheet more efficient. How can that be achieved? If a broker receives collateral from an investor in 99.9% of the cases, it will re-pledge that collateral to the counterpart he used to hedge its own exposure. Furthermore, there is another problem here, the shift from a low to a high-interest rate environment will haircut collateral value significantly. This means that a counterpart being margin-called will have to post more than 100% of the collateral nominal value to its broker (and the broker will flip that over to its own counterpart). 

5 – Now that we have seen how liquidity comes offline, it’s time to see why this puts additional pressure on the JPY once a JPY carry trade is being unwound. First of all, from an FX perspective, the unwinding of a JPY carry trade is a neutral transaction because the change in NPV is being constantly hedged by brokers. So when an FX Swap ceases to be in place, the counterparts simply exchange the original nominal amounts and in our case, if the investor defaults on its non-JPY leg, the broker will dump the collateral for foreign currency but still deliver the JPY nominal. The investor will incur capital losses on the non-JPY leg but as you can see, they will still have the JPY needed to repay their initial JPY borrows and close the carry trade. 

 6 – The original lender in the JPY carry trade will now see the currency coming back on its balance sheet. If the lender is a Japanese bank and they prefer to reinvest the JPY in JGB, that will put pressure on the JPY since the BOJ will be forced to print more JPY to pay for the increasing yields on Japanese government bonds (WHY A HISTORICAL $JPY CURRENCY CRISIS IS AT THE DOORSTEP OF #JAPAN). If the original lender is a Japanese shadow bank, in the current environment this is expected to pay back its own funding to the Japanese bank that lent to it in the first place or to reinvest those proceeds into JGBs (in both cases we are back in the situation I described just above). What if the original lender is a non-Japanese bank or shadow bank? You can hardly expect them to keep that balance in JPY while this keeps depreciating and offers a meager yield compared to those they can get in their local market. As a consequence, even in this scenario, the JPY balance will be dumped for a stronger currency. 

7 – This last dump brings us back to point one when the “doom loop” began, but this time the FX rate will be at 155 instead of 154.

Putting it all together we now see:

... now we are seeing how the battle over JPY is within a war already lost 

 

 

 

 

Monday, April 22, 2024

WAR-AND PEACE- IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE+GUERRA Y PAZ EN LA ALDEA GLOBAL (TOLSTOY AND McLUHAN)

 

 


 

"WWI was a railway war of centralism and encirclement. WWII was a radio war of de-centralism. WWIII is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation." - 

Marshall McLuhan (1970) 

 

Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced these events? Then listen:

“Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time there was in France a man of genius—Napoleon. He conquered everybody everywhere—that is, he killed many people because he was a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807 he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII, who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him, immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress their subjects.”

It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic—a caricature of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions, which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and the new histories of the culture of that period.

The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.

If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question—in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible—is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.

All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.

If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole interest of history lies precisely in that force.

History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really quite well known to everybody.

War and Peace
Epilogue 2, Chapter 1


Written: 1869
Source: Original Text from Gutenberg.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021 

 


 

Sunday, April 21, 2024

THOREAU COMO ERIZO (THOREAU AS HEDGEHOG (15-04-2024 (II))

 

 


 

There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal,organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance – and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected,if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle.These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in them-selves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing,sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius,Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus,Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.

(Isaiah Berlin, TheHedgehog and the Fox)

 

"Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not even yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the members would smile at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse — would be any worse — than to make him into a slave — than it was to enact the Fugitive Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible a proposition as the other.

(…)

The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal. 

Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not complain that they live, but that they do not get buried. Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure."


Slavery in Massachusetts
 
by Henry David Thoreau

 

La esclavitud y la servidumbre no han producido ninguna flor de aroma dulce anualmente, para animar los sentidos del hombre, porque no tienen vida real: son meramente un decaimiento y una muerte, ofensivas a todos los orificios nasales sanos. No nos oponemos a que ellas vivan, sino a que no sean enterrradas. Permitamos que los vivos las entierren. Incluso ellas son buenas como abono.


HDT (Esclavitud en Massachusetts)

 

 

A cada uno su propia esperanza 

Spes sibi quisque 

WAIT NOT TILL SLAVES PRONOUNCE THE WORD 

No esperes hasta que los esclavos pronuncien la palabra 

para liberar a los cautivos, 

se libre por tí mismo, que no te confinen, 

y dí adios a la esclavitud. 

Vosotros sóis todos esclavos, tenéis vuestro precio, 

y os reunís sólo para reunir lamentos, 

entonces se alza, 

el más valioso se alza, 

oigo sonar sus grilletes. 

No pienses que el tirano se sienta lejos 

en tu propio pecho tienes 

el Distrito de Columbia 

y el poder para liberar al Esclavo.

 El corazón más cálido alimenta el norte, 

está todavía demasiado frío y lejano, 

la liberación del hombre de color debe venir

 del Africa rechazada. 

Apresúrate y libera al cautivo

 ¿Eres tan libre que sólo te lamentas? La esclavitud más profunda y rastrera 

abandona la libertad por un suspiro. 

Wait not till slaves pronounce the word by Henry David Thoreau 

Wait not till slaves pronounce the word 

To set the captive free, 

Be free yourselves, be not deferred, 

And farewell slavery. 

Ye are all slaves, ye have your price, 

And gang but cries to gang. 

Then rise, the highest of ye rise, 

I hear your fetters clang.  

Think not the tyrant sits afar 

In your own breasts ye have 

The District of Columbia 

And power to free the Slave

The warmest heart the north doth breed, 

Is still too cold and far, 

The colored man's release must come 

From outcast Africa. 

 Make haste & set the captive free!— 

Are ye so free that cry? The lowest depths of slavery

Leave freedom for a sigh.