The Greek Bank Runs Have Begun: Two Greek Banks Request Emergency Liquidity Assistance

The first time the phrase Emergency Liquidity Assistance, or ELA, was used in the context of Greece was in August 2011, when Greece was imploding, when its banking sector was on (and past) the verge of collapse, and just before the ECB had to unleash a global coordinated bailout with other central banks including global central bank liquidity swap and unleash the LTRO to preserve the Eurozone.

As a reminder, this is what happened back then: "In a move described as the "last stand for Greek banks", the embattled country's central bank activated Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) for the first time on Wednesday night."

"Although it was done discreetly, news that Athens had opened the fund filtered out and was one of the factors that rattled markets across Europe. At one point Germany's Dax was down 4pc before it recovered. The ELA was designed under European rules to allow national central banks to provide liquidity for their own lenders when they run out of collateral of a quality that can be used to trade with the ECB. It is an obscure tool that is supposed to be temporary and one of the last resorts for indebted banks."

Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe told The Telegraph: "The activation of the so-called ELA looks to be the last stand for Greek banks and suggests they are running alarmingly short of quality collateral usually used to obtain funding."

He added: "This kicks off another huge round of nearly worthless assets being shifted from the books of private banks onto books backed by taxpayers. Combined with the purchases of Spanish and Italian bonds, the already questionable balance sheet of the euro system is looking increasingly risky."     

As a further reminder, this is how cryptically little the ECB has to say about its "last-ditch" liquidity bailout program:

Euro area credit institutions can receive central bank credit not only through monetary policy operations but exceptionally also through emergency liquidity assistance (ELA). ELA means the provision by a Eurosystem national central bank (NCB) of

1. central bank money and/or
2. any other assistance that may lead to an increase in central bank money

to a solvent financial institution, or group of solvent financial institutions, that is facing temporary liquidity problems, without such operation being part of the single monetary policy.

We bring this up because things in Greece just went bump in the night. Again.

Recall that as we reported three days ago, while Greece refused to admit that it was suffering a bank run ahead of a potentially game-changing election, it did report that "most taxpayers have chosen to delay their [tax] payments, given that the positions of the two main parties leading the election polls are diametrically opposite: Poll leader SYRIZA promises to cancel the ENFIA and even write off bad loans, while ruling New Democracy acknowledges the difficulties but is avoiding raising issues that would generate problems and fiscal consequences."

Well, yesterday we got some more details on the collapse in tax payments when Kathimerini reported that indeed as feared, Greek tax remittances have plunged by up to 80% compared to last year, in the process making a mockery of any Greek reforms.

Finance Ministry officials believe there will be no problem meeting the targets of the bailout program as far as the general government primary surplus, which amounts to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product for 2014, is concerned. There are, however, worries regarding the 2015 budget, as the year has got off to a terrible start in terms of revenue collections.

The target for January is 4.5 billion euros, but tax officials report that they saw no activity that would support that goal in the first 10 days of the month.Sources say that the decline compared to the first 10 days of 2014 ranges between 70 and 80 percent.

That's not the bad news. The bad news is that as we also speculated, and as Greek officials tried to cover up as usual, the Greeks have resumed doing what they do best any time their country is facing a grand crisis: walking to the bank and withdrawing what little deposits they have left. Or rather running to the bank.

Which brings us back to the topic of the Emergency Liquidity Assistnace, which as Kathimerini reported moments ago, at least two Greek systemic banks have reportedly resorted to, indicating that the liquidity situation in Greece is once again as dire as it was in the depth of the European collapse.

To wit:

Two Greek systemic banks reportedly submitted the first requests to the Bank of Greece for cash via the emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) system on Thursday, in response to the pressing liquidity conditions resulting from the growing outflow of deposits as well as the acquisition of treasury bills forced onto them by the state.

Banks usually resort to ELA when they face a cash crunch and do not have adequate collateral to draw liquidity from the European Central Bank, their main funding tool. ELA is particularly costly as it carries an interest rate of 1.55 percent, against just 0.05 percent for ECB funding.

The requests by the two lenders will be discussed by the ECB next Wednesday.

Bank officials commented that lenders are resorting to ELA earlier than expected, which reflects the deteriorating liquidity conditions in the credit sector.

Besides the decline in deposits, banks were dealt another blow on Thursday with the scrapping of the euro cap on the Swiss franc. Bank estimates put the impact of the euro’s drop on the local system’s cash flow at between 1.5 and 2 billion euros.

Deposits recorded a decline of 3 billion euros in December – a month when they traditionally expand – while in the first couple of weeks of January the outflow continued, although banks say it is under control.

A major blow to the system’s liquidity has come from the repeated issue of T-bills: In November the state drew 2.75 billion euros in this way, in December it secured 3.25 billion euros, and it has already tapped another 2.7 billion in January. Of the above amounts, a significant share – amounting to 3 billion euros according to bank estimates – was in the hands of foreign investors who will not renew them, so they have to be bought by the Greek banks.

Local lenders had also resorted to ELA in 2011 to cope with the outflow of deposits and consecutive credit rating downgrades of the state (and the banks) that made Greek paper insufficient for the supply of liquidity by the Eurosystem. In May 2012, due to the uncertainty of the twin elections at the time, local banks drew 124 billion euros in ELA to handle the unprecedented outflow of deposits.

And just like that, it's deja vu all over again, and the worst days of the summer of 2011 are ahead of us once more, only this time Draghi's "Whatever it takes" unconditional OMT bazooka has conditions, and anyway after today's SNB fiasco, what a central bank threatens, warns, begs or even does, may no longer even matter.

Credit to Zero Hedge

ISIS’s Crucifixions and Beheadings Continue

ISIS has continued its barbarism, executing five men in Deir Ezzor, an eastern province of Syria, on Wednesday, Jan, 14.

Two men were shot for “dealing with the Nusayri [Alawite] regime,” and a third was beheaded. Then all three were crucified, and they will remain so for three days for “establishing a cell to fight IS,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

ISIS forces then murdered a university student who was accused of being an “informant for the Nusayri regime.” This student had already been detained on the charge of “smoking.”

A fifth man was shot to death after being accused of being an agent for the regime and for allegedly being in communication with the regime’s intelligence apparatus.

Credit to Jewishpress

"It's Carnage" - Swiss Franc Soars 30% After SNB Abandons EURCHF Floor

"As if millions of macro hedge funds suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced"

Over two decades ago, George Soros took on the Bank of England, and won. Just before lunch local time, the Swiss National Bank took on virtually every single macro hedge fund, the vast majority of which were short the Swiss Franc and crushed them, when it announced, first, that it would go further into NIRP, pushing its interest rate on deposit balances even more negative from -0.25% to -0.75%, a move which in itself would have been unprecedented and, second, announcing that the 1.20 EURCHF floor it had instituted in September 2011, the day gold hit its all time nominal high, was no more.

What happened next was truly shock and awe as algo after algo saw their EURCHF 1.1999 stops hit, and moments thereafter the EURCHF pair crashed to less then 0.75, margining out virtually every single long EURCHF position, before finally rebounding to a level just above 1.00, which is where it was trading just before the SNB instituted the currency floor over three years ago.

Visually:

The SNB press release:

Swiss National Bank discontinues minimum exchange rate and lowers interest rate to –0.75%

Target range moved further into negative territory

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is discontinuing the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro. At the same time, it is lowering the interest rate on sight deposit account balances that exceed a given exemption threshold by 0.5 percentage points, to ?0.75%. It is moving the target range for the three-month Libor further into negative territory, to between –1.25% and -0.25%, from the current range of between -0.75% and 0.25%. 

The minimum exchange rate was introduced during a period of exceptional overvaluation of the Swiss franc and an extremely high level of uncertainty on the financial markets. This exceptional and temporary measure protected the Swiss economy from serious harm. While the Swiss franc is still high, the overvaluation has decreased as a whole since the introduction of the minimum exchange rate. The economy was able to take advantage of this phase to adjust to the new situation. 

Recently, divergences between the monetary policies of the major currency areas have increased significantly – a trend that is likely to become even more pronounced. The euro has depreciated considerably against the US dollar and this, in turn, has caused the Swiss franc to weaken against the US dollar. In these circumstances, the SNB concluded that enforcing and maintaining the minimum exchange rate for the Swiss franc against the euro is no longer justified. 

The SNB is lowering interest rates significantly to ensure that the discontinuation of the minimum exchange rate does not lead to an inappropriate tightening of monetary conditions. The SNB will continue to take account of the exchange rate situation in formulating its monetary policy in future. If necessary, it will therefore remain active in the foreign exchange market to influence monetary conditions.

The resultant move across all currency pairs has seen the EUR and USD sliding, the USDJPY crashing, and US futures tumbling even as European stocks plunged only to kneejerk higher as markets are in clear turmoil and nobody knows just what is going on right now.

In other asset classes, Treasury yields, understandably plunged across the entire world, and the entire Swiss bond curve lest of the 10 Year is now negative, with the On The Run itself threatening to go negative soon as can be seen on the table below:

Crude and other commodities, except gold, are also tumbling, as are most risk assets over concerns what today's epic margin call will mean when the closing bell arrives.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Charlie Hebdo Attack Pulls France Back Under Washington's Thumb

The Real Motive Behind the Charlie Hebdo False Flag Attack

The world is being taken to war one propaganda lie at a time. Most average people have no idea that they are being manipulated and soon the majority of people on this planet will be convinced that it is perfectly acceptable to kill strangers that they have never met as a result of this false flag based propaganda.

The Path to War Is Complicated

There are multiple paths to World War III, and I predict that the reasons for going to war will soon be readily apparent to even the sheep among us. Presently, there are two distinct paths to World War III, namely, plunging oil prices and Muslim extremism. Both of these paths are going to be exacerbated by a false flag event(s) and we have just witnessed the first example of this public opinion manipulation (e.g. Paris assassinations and bombings).

Plunging Oil Prices

As I have reported over the past week, the United States and Russia are playing a game of “chicken”. On one hand, Russia is leading the charge to “ditch” the Petrodollar as the world’s reserve currency. On the other hand, the U.S. has driven the price of oil so low, that Russia and the rest of its BRICS allies are being forced to use their reserve oil, gold and cash to stay afloat during a time when low oil prices are devastating Russia and the BRICS. Certainly, war have been fought for lesser reasons.

False Flag Terrorism With An Agenda

Extremist Arab Gunmen killed a total of 12 people in an attack on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, on January 7. A third gunman killed a policewoman and four people at a Paris kosher supermarket in the eastern Porte de Vincennes area of Paris on January 9.

The reason given for the attacks was the disparaging of the Islamic faith and its Prophet Muhummad as expressed by Charlie Hebdo. This excuse used as the provocation for the these attacks is remarkably similar to the excuse first used to explain the reason behind the murder of Ambassador Stevens because of a film made in which a spoof was directed at the Prophet of Muhammed. The ridiculousness of this excuse, related to Benghazi, was discredited. Yet, this did not deter the false flag planners of the Paris event as they attempted to use the same journalistic “disrespect to Muhammad” excuse for launching a false flag attack in Paris in a case of “the same song, second verse.

The Paris attacks combined with the atrocities being committed by ISIS has the West on edge with regard to Muslim extremism. Yes, there is clearly Muslim extremism, but the Paris events are clearly designed to promote and greatly increase the level of fear.

Public Surveys As Propaganda

The best way to shape public opinion is to create a public opinion poll is to create a poorly designed poll which will yield the results that the poll makers seek. The use of close ended questions, as was the case with a recent Rasmussen Poll produced results which told the American people that you have a lot to be fearful of when it comes to the Muslims.  In a case in point, a poorly designed Rasmussen survey indicated that 65% of American citizens believe that similar attacks to the Paris assaults could take place in the United States within the next year. Promoting generalized fear is one of the basic tenets of propaganda.

More Muslim Vilification Released In the Shadows of These Events

It is interesting that the main stream media which has enjoyed a love fest with the Islamic religion, while ignoring some of its extremist elements and subsequent acts, with regard to their previously one-sided reporting.

There has been a shift in reporting in which there has been a recent shift in the reporting of Muslim extremism. The shift is that the unmitigated threat of some of these groups is being exposed.

Steve Emerson, described as a terrorism analyst, reported to Fox News that parts of London have a Muslim police force who attack people if they don’t dress according to religious rules. He went on to tell the American network: that “In Britain, it’s not just no go zones, there are actually cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim, where non-Muslims simply don’t go in. And parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire.” The media message being spread to the West, fear Islam. This is a precursor step into getting citizens in Western countries to accept a war in the Middle East against Islamic extremism because if we don’t “they will kill many of us and most certainly will take over our neighborhoods”.

The Jack Ruby- Lee Harvey Oswald Moment In Paris

 

In an old familiar pattern, anyone who possess information which could threaten the goal of a false flag action, must be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

In the JFK assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald could be allowed to provide public testimony because of what he knew about the operation. Oswald is assassinated and Rub, who must also be silenced, mysteriously dies in jail.

In the same vein, Police Commissioner Helric Fredou, the number two police officer in charge of the Regional Service of France’s Judicial Police, Limoges, “committed suicide on the night of Wednesday to Thursday at the police station.”

Isn’t the timing of this event a little too convenient? Fredou was an intimate part of the Charlie Hebdo investigation. Shortly before his suicide, Fredou dispatched his own team of police officials to further investigate the murders in Paris. He is reported to have waited for the return of his team for a debriefing.  Immediately following the police debriefing, he killed himself. Or, is it more likely that the police chief was suicided in order to keep the information quiet about what he had learned?

One isolated report in Le Parisien presents the act of suicide as being totally unrelated to the Charlie Hebdo investigation. Otherwise, there has been a total news blackout in France of this event.

Senator Feinstein Exacerbates the Fear

This past Sunday, Dianne Feinstein said  that the surprise Parisian attacks are not only threatening Europe,  but  she warned that “terrorist cells” exist in the United States as well. How does Feinstein know this? Did ISIS leaders take Feinstein to lunch and present their grand plan to the Senator? 

This Feinstein charade is so easy to see through, it is difficult to believe that the false flag planners could even promote this nonsense with a straight face as Feinstein would have you believe that there is a terrorist hiding on every street corner that has a bomb with your name on it.

Certainly, there is a morsel of truth in every lie, but the facts here are being embellished in an effort to convince the American people to give up more of their civil liberties in the name of fighting terror. Ultimately, this tyranny will go by a different name, World War III, and it is clear that this war will be fought in the Middle east. Of course Biblical scholars would state the same.

Conclusion

This article brought together many different aspects of a propaganda machine designed to promote fear, increase hostilities and fan the flames of the coming war.

All the elements of false planning are here: (1) the creation of the patsy (2) a contrived event designed to promote fear resulting in an increased “need” for surveillance, security and militarization and (3) preparations for mobilization of the military.

No doubt, that these flames are merely the precursor to main event which cannot be that far away.

Credit to Common Sense

Baltic Build-up: US Strykers, Humvees roll through Lithuania

Russia Just Pulled Itself Out Of The Petrodollar

Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their "petrodollars" out of world markets in 2015. 

This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling.

We added that in 2014 "the oil producers will effectively import capital amounting to $7.6 billion. By comparison, they exported $60 billion in 2013 and $248 billion in 2012, according to the following graphic based on BNP Paribas calculations."

The problem was compounded by its own positive feedback loop: as the last few weeks vividly demonstrated, plunging oil would lead to a further liquidation in foreign  reserves for the oil exporters who rushed to preserve their currencies, leading to even greater drops in oil as the viable producers rushed to pump out as much crude out of the ground as possible in a scramble to put the weakest producers out of business, and to crush marginal production. Call it Game Theory gone mad and on steroids.

Ironically, when the price of crude started its self-reinforcing plunge, such a death would happen whether the petrodollar participants wanted it, or, as the case may be, were dragged into the abattoir kicking and screaming.

It is the latter that seems to have taken place with the one country that many though initially would do everything in its power to have an amicable departure from the Petrodollar and yet whose divorce from the USD has quickly become a very messy affair, with lots of screaming and the occasional artillery shell.

As Bloomberg reports Russia "may unseal its $88 billion Reserve Fund and convert some of its foreign-currency holdings into rubles, the latest government effort to prop up an economy veering into its worst slump since 2009."

These are dollars which Russia would have otherwise recycled into US denominated assets. Instead, Russia will purchase even more Rubles and use the proceeds for FX and economic stabilization purposes. 

"Together with the central bank, we are selling a part of our foreign-currency reserves,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in Moscow today. “We’ll get rubles and place them in deposits for banks, giving liquidity to the economy."

Call it less than amicable divorce, call it what you will: what it is, is Russia violently leaving the ranks of countries that exchange crude for US paper.

More:

Russia may convert as much as 500 billion rubles from one of the government’s two sovereign wealth funds to support the national currency, Siluanov said, calling the ruble “undervalued.” The Finance Ministry last month started selling foreign currency remaining on the Treasury’s accounts.

The entire 500 billion rubles or part of the amount will be converted in January-February through the central bank, according to Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev. The Bank of Russia will determine the timing and method of the operation.

The ruble, the world’s second-worst performing currency last year, weakened for a fourth day, losing 1.3 percent to 66.0775 against the dollar by 3:21 p.m. in Moscow. It trimmed a drop of as much as 2 percent after Siluanov’s comments. The ruble’s continued slump this year underscores the fragility of coordinated measures by Russia’s government and central bank that steered the ruble’s rebound from a record-low intraday level of 80.10 on Dec. 16. OAO Gazprom and four other state-controlled exporters were ordered last month to cut foreign-currency holdings by March 1 to levels no higher than they were on Oct. 1. The central bank sought to make it easier for banks to access dollars and euros while raising its key rate to 17 percent, the emergency level it introduced last month to arrest the ruble collapse.

Today’s announcement “looks ruble-supportive, as together with state-driven selling from exporters it would support FX supply on the market,” Dmitry Polevoy, chief economist for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States at ING Groep NV in Moscow, said by e-mail. “Also, it will be helpful for banks, while there might be some negative effects related to extra money supply and risks of using some of the money on the FX market for short-term speculations.

Bloomberg's dready summary of the US economy is generally spot on, and is to be expected when any nation finally leaves, voluntarily or otherwise, the stranglehold of a global reserve currency. What Bloomberg failed to account for is what happens to the remainder of the Petrodollar world. Here is what we said last time:

Outside from the domestic economic impact within EMs due to the downward oil price shock, we believe that the implications for financial market liquidity via the reduced recycling of petrodollars should not be underestimated. Because energy exporters do not fully invest their export receipts and effectively ‘save’ a considerable portion of their income, these surplus funds find their way back into bank deposits (fuelling the loan market) as well as into financial markets and other assets. This capital has helped fund debt among importers, helping to boost overall growth as well as other financial markets liquidity conditions.

...

[T]his year, we expect that incremental liquidity typically provided by such recycled flows will be markedly reduced, estimating that direct and other capital outflows from energy exporters will have declined by USD253bn YoY. Of course, these economies also receive inward capital, so on a net basis, the additional capital provided externally is much lower. This year, we expect that net capital flows will be negative for EM, representing the first net inflow of capital (USD8bn) for the first time in eighteen years. This compares with USD60bn last year, which itself was down from USD248bn in 2012. At its peak, recycled EM petro dollars amounted to USD511bn back in 2006. The declines seen since 2006 not only reflect the changed global environment, but also the propensity of underlying exporters to begin investing the money domestically rather than save. The implications for financial markets liquidity - not to mention related downward pressure on US Treasury yields – is negative.

Considering the wildly violent moves we have seen so far in the market confirming just how little liquidity is left in the market, and of course, the absolutely collapse in Treasury yields, with the 30 Year just hitting a record low, this prediction has been borne out precisely as expected.

And now, we await to see which other country will follow Russia out of the Petrodollar next, and what impact that will have not only on the world's reserve currency, on US Treasury rates, and on the most financialized commodity as this chart demonstrates...

... but on what is most important to developed world central planners everywhere: asset prices levels, and specifically what happens when the sellers emerge into what is rapidly shaping up as the most illiquid market in history.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Oil Price Collapse Could Trigger Next Big Crisis

Russia Cuts Off Ukraine Gas Supply To 6 European Countries

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations,according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas. Due to these"transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine," Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%, plunging the continent into an energy crisis "within hours."

 Perhaps explaining the explosion higher in NatGas prices (and oil) today, gas companies in Ukraine confirmed that Russia had cut off supply; and six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas. The EU raged that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was "completely unacceptable," but Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller later added that Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey; and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak stated unequivocally, "the decision has been made."

As Bloomberg reports,

Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey, a surprise move that the European Union’s energy chief said would hurt its reputation as a supplier.

The decision makes no economic sense, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice president for energy union, told reporters today after talks with Russian government officials and the head of gas exporter, OAO Gazprom, in Moscow.

Gazprom, the world’s biggest natural gas supplier, plans to send 63 billion cubic meters through a proposed link under the Black Sea to Turkey, fully replacing shipments via Ukraine,Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller said during the discussions. About 40 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe and Turkey travel through Ukraine’s Soviet-era network.

...

Sefcovic said he was “very surprised” by Miller’s comment, adding that relying on a Turkish route, without Ukraine, won’t fit with the EU’s gas system.

Gazprom plans to deliver the fuel to Turkey’s border with Greece and“it’s up to the EU to decide what to do” with it further,according to Sefcovic.

Which, as The Daily Mail reports, has led to a major (and imminent) problem for Europe...

Russia cut gas exports to Europe by 60 per cent today, plunging the continent into an energy crisis 'within hours' as a dispute with Ukraine escalated.

This morning, gas companies in Ukraine said that Russia had completely cut off their supply.

Six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas shipped via Ukraine today, in a sharp escalation of a struggle over energy that threatens Europe as winter sets in.

Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia through Ukraine.

*  *  *
As Bloomberg goes on to note,Gazprom has reduced deliveries via Ukraine after price and debt disputes with the neighboring country that twice in the past decade disrupted supplies to the EU during freezing weather.

“Transit risks for European consumers on the territory of Ukraine remain,” Miller said in an e-mailed statement. “There are no other options”except for the planned Turkish Stream link, he said.

“We have informed our European partners, and now it is up to them to put in place the necessary infrastructure starting from the Turkish-Greek border,” Miller said.

Russia won’t hurt its image with a shift to Turkey because it has always been a reliable gas supplier and never violated its obligations, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters today in Moscow after meeting Sefcovic.

“The decision has been made,” Novak said. “We are diversifying and eliminating the risks of unreliable countries that caused problems in past years, including for European consumers.”

*  *  *

That helps to explain today's epic meltup in NatGas futures...

*  *  *

"They [the Russians] have reduced deliveries to 92million cubic metres per 24 hours compared to the promised 221million cubic metres without explanation," said Valentin Zemlyansky of the Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz.

"We do not understand how we will deliver gas to Europe. This means that in a few hours problems with supplies to Europe will begin."

*  *  *

Check to you Europe (i.e. Washington)... Because it's getting might cold in Europe...

(and bear in mind the consequences of cold, pissed off Europeans in the past).

Credit to Zero Hedge