Monkey See, Monkey Do

Irish Finance Minister saying that whatever the ECB does with Greece would be of interest to Ireland.  So if ECB forgives Greek debt (directly or through EFSF), Ireland is going to want the same deal.  Portugal won’t be far behind.  And why stop at ECB and not go for PSI as well?

They continue to negotiate in Athens, but the reality is they should step back from the table.  They are locked into positions and slowly coming to the middle for some agreement,  yet they should be stopping and asking themselves if what they are doing is right.

On top of that, they are negotiating long-term plans when Greece just missed January numbers by an astronomical 1 billion euro!  That is a massive miss on data that should have been relatively easy to predict.  What is the probability of future calculations being accurate when things that were estimated only a couple of months ago fail so miserably?

In the meantime, stocks continue to rally back from every setback.  Maybe Mr. Fink will shut down all the Blackrock fixed income funds in an effort to help push all investors into 100% equity?  (you have to give him credit for not talking his own book)