02/10/2012
Writes Jeremy Warner in the
Failygraph: "One of the most mind-boggling debates going on in euroland right now â only one of many, but particularly guaranteed to make the head spin, this one â is over the build-up of so-called 'Target 2' claims and liabilities".
"Target 2 is the mechanism by which money is transferred around the euro area to ensure that each national central bank has sufficient euros to fund its banking system", Warner thus informs us. "Accumulated cross border claims are now so extreme", he then breathlessly goes on to say, "that they threaten to leave German taxpayers with huge losses should the euro break up, or any one of its members leaves".
If we didn't know better, we might actually take the self-important Warner at face value. But, thanks to the miracle of the internet and
Google translate, we know better than to do so. Far from the debates going on in euroland "right now" as the egregious hack would have us believe, these have been going on for many weeks.
We, after all, a mere lowly blog, picked it up
on 16 August - six weeks ago â from
Berliner Zeitung, which had published the detail two days earlier.
That's the interesting thing about legacy hacks. They still haven't quite cottoned on to this interweb thingy, which breaks their monopoly hold over information. We now have equal access and are no longer reliant on their droppings. One of these days, they might realise it, and start catching up with the blogs.
