Quick summary of the important upcoming votes in Europe from John Rubino...
"No rest for the wicked. With the shockwaves from Brexit and President
Trump still reverberating around the world, the established order is
bracing for more bad news. Next up is a December 4 Italian
constitutional referendum that might end the reign of centrist prime
minister Matteo Renzi and replace him with a bunch of anti-euro
iconoclasts from the Brexit/Trump part of the spectrum.
And not long after Italy takes its shot at the status quo, France will
go to the polls for a run-off presidential vote pitting far-right
François Fillon against extreme-right Marine Le Pen.
It’s hard to overstate the threat posed by these two votes to the EU —
the world’s largest economic entity — and by implication to the rest of
the global financial system. Italy is the third biggest country in the
EU, and France is the second. Let either pull out and the result might
be dissolution and the end of the euro. Trillions of dollars of
euro-denominated bonds would suddenly be converted to lira or francs,
forcing the holders of those bonds to take big losses and impairing bank
capital across the continent, leading in turn to derivatives blowing up
pretty much everywhere, and so on until the whole house of cards is
threatened.
So what does a fiat currency/fractional reserve banking Establishment
do when confronted with such a looming catastrophe? What it always does
of course: Cut interest rates and ramp up money creation in order to
devalue the currency."
