NO HAY CONJURA: se llama mercado. El País da una clase de parvulitos a Zapatero, Pepe Blanco y compañía. Parece mentira que haya que explicar cosas tan elementales a personas -se supone- que adultas.

Tampoco le iría mal la clase a quienes ven las llamadas ventas a corto (short selling, en inglés) como el gran mal, cuando son operaciones que se suelen hacer cuando se tiene clarísima la debilidad y los problemas del producto financiero en cuestión (Nacho Escolar parece intuirlo cuando dice que "su negocio es sacar tajada del pánico", pero luego se lo lleva a su terreno altermundialista habitual sin percatarse de que el que alguien saque tajada de algo no quiere decir que lo provoque).

Y es que, a diferencia de las operaciones habituales en las que como mucho uno se juega lo invertido, en una operación de short selling que sale mal uno puede llegar a perder hasta la camisa: después de vender a descubierto con un valor "prestado" y provocar su desplome, éste puede subir precisamente por estar por los suelos, o porque la apuesta era equivocada... y subir... y subir... y el shortseller no encuentre a quién comprar para devolver el título, porque todos los que tienen el valor en ese momento no se quieren desprender de él ni locos, precisamente porque está subiendo... y puede subir hasta más allá del precio al que el shortseller lo tomó prestado... y seguir subiendo... y cuando éste finalmente puede comprar, tenga que pagar mucho más de a lo que vendió en descubierto. Como se suele decir, en cuanto a potencialidad para sufrir pérdidas en operaciones de short selling, "the sky is the limit". Literalmente. Ese fue precisamente uno de los principales problemas, junto a la compra a crédito, por el que pinchó la burbuja bursátil del cambio de milenio.

Además, el mercado español no ha sido el tradicionalmente el típico preferido por los fondos que hacen short selling, por lo menos hasta ahora, porque es una bolsa con relativamente poca liquidez: son empresas menores y con menores floats que en los países donde estas operaciones abundan. Si precisamente ahora los fondos que hacen operaciones a corto se fijan en España para meterse en la que es la modalidad de inversión más delicada , con diferencia, es porque tienen clarísimo que esos títulos van mal y, lo que es más importante, que no hay esperanza de que se recuperen. De otro modo no correrían tamaño riesgo.

ESTO ES para todos aquellos que decían e insistían que los short sellers, esos malvados especuladores que estaban atacando a los mercados vendiendo a la baja, se estaban forrando:

Especular con los mercados pasa factura. Los hedge funds que se pusieron bajistas en 2010, o lo que es lo mismo, los que intentaron beneficiarse de la caída de los mercados, lo pagaron con pérdidas, o al menos eso es lo que muestran los datos de Hedge Fund Research.

El HFRI EH Short Bias Index registró un retroceso del 21,30% el año pasado y sólo en diciembre acumuló una caída del 8,51%. Además, fue el único índice de HFR que terminó en negativo, a pesar de que la elevada volatilidad vivida en los últimos doce meses ha repercutido su comportamiento.

Pues claro. Vender a la baja es lo más arriesgado que existe, y hay muchas más posibilidades de que salga mal. Y encima sin límite de pérdidas: en las posiciones largas lo máximo que se puede vender es el valor de la acción. En el short selling no hay límite: puedes perder hasta la camiseta si te pilla una espiral alcista mientras intentas comprar para cubrir la posición. Y encima, si tienes un cierto volumen, la ironía es que esa espiral alcista la desencadenes tú al emitir esas órdenes de compra.

EMPEZANDO la semana con ánimos: ¿Está a punto de hundirse el sistema bancario europeo?

The Telegraph sounded alarm bells late Friday that the Eurozone banking system [is] on the edge of collapse. Specifically, the problem is related to a lack of acceptable collateral, or "collateral crunch", for overnight and other short-term bank funding [emphasis added]:

    Senior analysts and traders warned of impending bank failures as a summit intended to solve the European crisis failed to deliver a solution that eased concerns over bank funding.
    The European Central Bank admitted it had held meetings about providing emergency funding to the region's struggling banks, however City figures said a "collateral crunch" was looming.
    "If anyone thinks things are getting better then they simply don't understand how severe the problems are. I think a major bank could fail within weeks," said one London-based executive at a major global bank.
    Many banks, including some French, Italian and Spanish lenders, have already run out of many of the acceptable forms of collateral such as US Treasuries and other liquid securities used to finance short-term loans and have been forced to resort to lending out their gold reserves to maintain access to dollar funding.

A ESTOS MUERTOS, ¿también los cuentan quienes creen que las guerras hay que observarlas como un partido de fútbol, contando muertos en vez de goles?

At Shifa Hospital on Monday, armed Hamas militants in civilian clothes roved the halls. Asked their function, they said they were providing security. But there was internal bloodletting under way.

In the fourth floor orthopedic section, a woman in her late twenties asked a militant to let her see Saleh Hajoj, her 32-year-old husband. She was turned away and left the hospital. Fifteen minutes later, Hajoj was carried out of his room by young men pretending to transfer him to another hospital section. As he lay on the stretcher, he was shot in the left side of the head. A bit of brain emerged on the other side of his skull.

Hajoj, like five others who were killed at the hospital in this way in the previous 24 hours, was accused of collaboration with Israel. He had been in the central prison awaiting trial by Hamas judges, and when Israel destroyed the prison on Sunday he and the others were transferred to the hospital. But their trials were short-circuited.

A crowd at the hospital showed no pity after the shooting, which was widely observed. A man in his thirties mocked a woman who expressed horror at the scene.

"This horrified you?" he shouted. "A collaborator that caused the death of many innocent and resistance fighters?"

Another man told her, "It was his brother who killed him to wipe away the shame from his family."

Por cierto que --imperdonable por mi parte-- todavía no había comentado que José Cohen, en Desde Sefarad, está haciendo un seguimiento al minuto de la crisis. Esta es su última entrada.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Imprescible lectura, la del análisis de Lee Smith:

The Israeli raid on Gaza that started late Saturday morning may last several weeks, and ground operations are certainly a possibility. Israel's goal is not to drive Hamas from power, only for the simple reason that there is no one else obviously capable of ruling Gaza at this point. What Israel wants is to compel Hamas to sue for a restoration of the truce, and thus deal the resistance a withering blow that it cannot easily sell as a victory in the aftermath. There is a larger regional strategy involved as well, which has several ramifications for Lebanon, one short-term, one medium-term and another long-range.

Seguid leyendo vosotros, pero no dejéis de leerlo.

VAYA, quién lo hubiera dicho...: "Bans on short-selling imposed during the financial crisis in the belief that short sales were driving United States stock prices below fundamental values did little to stabilize those prices, according to a new study by New York Fed economists. In addition, the bans had the unwanted effects of lowering market liquidity and boosting trading costs."

[Actualizado 4 veces] ¿FUNCIONARÁ el rescate del euro acordado ayer? De momento los malvados especuladores están que se salen, pero habría que saber en qué medida se trata de los bajistas cubriendo posiciones; es ahora cuando se forran, no cuando vendían apostando a la baja hace unos días. Veréis como de esto nadie pide investigaciones.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Estoy flipando. Habría que ver, además de lo que comentaba antes de los short sellers, de dónde viene el dinero que está entrando a raudales en las bolsas. Y además, estoy oyendo que los bancos centrales están comprando deuda pública a espuertas; el Banco de España se ha negado a comentar. Así no es extraño que el spread entre el bono español y el alemán se esté cerrando como lo está haciendo.

ACTUALIZACIÓN II. El Bundesbank acaba de confirmar en rueda de prensa que están comprando como locos.

ACTUALIZACIÓN III. Jorge Galindo:

Pero pensemos en positivo, va. Seamos rematadamente optimistas.

Es posible que nos acerquemos al final de la crisis, entendida coyunturalmente. Es posible que todo el jaleo con la deuda pública se quede en un susto grave pero no en un Grecia II o un Argentina II (BCE y UE han dado un puñetazo monetario sobre la mesa, y el plan del Gobierno suena cada vez menos increíble y parco). Es posible, incluso, que dentro de tres trimestres la cosa vaya tan aparentemente bien que ni tan solo un mercado de trabajo con una estructura tan absurda como la que el nuestro tiene pueda resistirse a comenzar a generar empleo.

Si todo eso sucediese, lo que es seguro es que habremos realizado una salida de la crisis en falso.

Hay mucho más; leedlo entero.

ACTUALIZACIÓN IV. Y, en una sola frase, Nacho Escolar demuestra que no entiende ni papa qué hacen los bajistas:

Actualizacion 13:11. Un dato interesante que me explica un broker con el que acabo de hablar. Al parecer, inversores españoles y europeos (fondos de pensiones, de inversión, banca privada, compañías de seguros…) están comprando esta mañana deuda pública española por varios cientos de millones. Los vendedores son varios importantes fondos de inversión extranjeros -estadounidenses, fundamentalmente– que el pasado viernes, tras la semana negra del euro, decidieron ordenar la venta de todas sus posiciones en nuestra deuda. Los inversores que ahora compran están ganando bastante con la operación porque, en medio, la decisión de la UE de comprar deuda pública europea -esa bomba nuclear de la que os hablé hace unos días– les está permitiendo obtener pingues beneficios con el diferencial.

Pues claro, Nacho, es que en eso consisten las ventas bajistas. No es ningún secreto que te desvela tu broker, sino que es de primero de short selling. De nada les habría servido a los lobos vender títulos prestados si no los acabaran comprando: no materializarían ningún beneficio de su estrategia. Cuando los bajistas opinan que los valores no van a bajar más a corto plazo entonces compran para devolverlos (y por cierto, aunque suene a perogrullada, compran a los que les venden quienes, por arte de birlibirloque, no son especuladores ni tiburones...) Si hay un repunte -por ejemplo, cuando entra dinero público más o menos directo, o cuando se da alguna noticia que indique que no van a bajar más como, por ejemplo, un supermegafondo de rescate como el que se aprobó ayer- los bajistas tienen que comprar porque, si no, pueden encontrarse con que los títulos que han tomado prestados, y que vendieron, vayan subiendo tanto que superen el valor inicial al que los tomaron. Por eso tienen que cubrir las posiciones: un inversor tradicional como máximo puede perder el valor de la acción, pero para un bajista, si la acción sube y sube, las pérdidas pueden no tener límite. Y por eso cuando lo hacen, la bolsa sube momentáneamente, por efecto de las compras que ordenan. Y por eso la bajista es una estrategia tan, tan arriesgada que sólo la llevan a cabo si tienen absolutamente claro que el valor contra el que apuestan es una porquería, porque si no los valores no bajarían en ningun momento.

Además fíjate, Nacho, a dónde te lleva tu perplejidad: resulta que es el paquete de rescate el que está permitiendo a los lobos rematar su faena especulativa.

Y ahora me fijo en mi perplejidad: la de observar que todo lo que has estado hablando estos días sobre el tema lo hacías sin conocer cómo funcionaba éste...

QUIZÁS habéis estado siguiendo la polémica sobre la denominación de OSM en la blogosfera anglosajona, que jurídicamente no tenía demasiado sentido (era una cuestión de denominación social vs. marca registrada vs. dominio), pero que se había convertido en una minipesadilla desde el punto de vista de las relaciones públicas.

Así que se ha tomado una decisión que supone volver a lo que no debería haberse abandonado nunca, dado que el branding ya estaba hecho; de ese modo, OSM volverá a llamarse Pajamas Media. Así lo explican Roger Simon y Charles Johnson, los cofundadores:

Once upon a time, some friends who met in the casual atmosphere of the blogosphere (us) got together and decided it would be groovy to start a blog company. "We could call it Pajamas Media," we said, referring to the now-famous quote by whatshisface, who disparaged bloggers as a bunch of guys sitting around in their sleepwear. Well, we were as surprised as anyone when we managed to raise a significant amount of capital to form said company.

At our swanky launch party in the Rainbow Room at New York’s Rockefeller Center on November 16, we changed out of our "pajamas" both literally and figuratively. We went from being www.pajamasmedia.com to OSM™ Media, LLC, the OSM being short for Open Source Media. And oh, what a drubbing we took. Many, many readers pointed out to us that OSM™ was an oxymoron; the open source tech community expressed concern; and a very fine gentleman named Christopher Lydon at Open Source (www.radioopensource.org) politely pointed out that we might be trampling on his space. (We’re sending him a pair of warm, fuzzy slippers, a heartfelt apology, and his name back, as we speak.)

All of which, as it turns out, has led us to make a change for the better. We are re-assuming our identity as Pajamas Media. (Just give us a few days to sort the technical issues out.) In short, the whole experience of being caught with our pajamas down has been a bit embarrassing, but in the end, when we realized we could get our beloved name back, we were overjoyed. So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity.

So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople--we did as we were told.

Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a "branding" company. What followed is still a bit of a nightmarish blur, but it involved a PowerPoint presentation on the history of names, and such probing questions as, "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" (Which is how we almost ended up as Jellyfish Media.)

Enough said. So, in the spirit of "open source," we thought we’d tell you the real story behind the reason for our name change. And hope that our corporate parents will be satisfied with good grades and healthy revenue.

El cambio -o mejor dicho, la vuelta- se hará efectivo en las próximas horas.

[Actualizado 2 veces] MUCHOS MÁS DETALLES sobre las acusaciones de violación contra Assange: el Guardian ha tenido acceso a los documentos policiales completos y, sinceramente, presentan una historia bastante friki, y a la vez mucho más seria de lo que se ha estado diciendo hasta ahora; leedlo entero. El País informa sobre ello aquí, pero naturalmente lo hace mal, y en temas que parecen detalles pero son cruciales para la historia.

Por ejemplo, sobre lo que ocurrió con la segunda mujer con la que Assange mantuvo relaciones sexuales, dice El País:

A la mañana siguiente, la señorita W fue a comprar el desayuno con la intención de volver a la cama y quedarse dormida al lado de Assange. Pero cuando regresó, cuenta, Assange estaba despierto e intentó mantener relaciones con ella. De nuevo sin protección. "Espero que no tengas sida", dice que le dijo, a lo que él respondió: "Por supuesto que no".

Lo que explica el Guardian:

Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. "According to her statement, she said: 'You better not have HIV' and he answered: 'Of course not,' " but "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before."

No es sólo que el principio de la frase está mal traducido ("she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange" no es ir "a comprar el desayuno con la intención de volver a la cama y quedarse dormida al lado de Assange" sino simplemente una secuencia de hechos: fue a comprar el desayuno, volvió a la cama y se quedó dormida al lado de Assange. No son intenciones, son hechos.

Pero lo peor es lo que sigue: no es que cuando ella regresó se lo encontrara despierto y con ganas de marcha y éste intentara mantener relaciones sexuales sin protección, no. Leed la frase original en inglés: "She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no." Es decir, que se despertó y se lo encontró encima, penetrándola aprovechando que está dormida, y sin preservativo a pesar de que ella habia dejado claro que sin él, nanay. Cambia la cosa, ¿eh? No sé vosotros, pero la descripción no es la de un juego que se fue de las manos. Es una violación con todas las de la ley. Aquí podéis leer más sobre este aspecto.

Pues bien, desde el punto de vista de ética periodística eso no es lo peor. Es que El País escribe:

Según recogen los registros policiales, la señorita W explicó en la comisaría que ella tomó la iniciativa para conocer a Assange, que voluntariamente mantuvo relaciones sexuales con él en el cine, que le llevó hasta su casa y que allí, de nuevo voluntariamente, tuvieron sexo consentido. Nunca le dijo a Assange que no quería tener relaciones con él y, lejos de afirmar haber sido violada, lo único que afirmó es que todo ocurrió cuando ella estaba "medio dormida".

Lo dice ella, y por tanto siendo la víctima goza de toda credibilidad. Caso cerrado; circulen, aquí no hay nada que ver. El pequeño problema es que según los documentos policiales esas afirmaciones no son de la señorita W, sino de los abogados de Assange:

Assange and his lawyers have repeatedly stressed that he denies any kind of wrongdoing in relation to Miss W.

In submissions to the Swedish courts, they have argued that Miss W took the initiative in contacting Assange, that on her own account she willingly engaged in sexual activity in a cinema and voluntarily took him to her flat where, she agrees, they had consensual sex. They say that she never indicated to Assange that she did not want to have sex with him. They also say that in a text message to a friend, she never suggested she had been raped and claimed only to have been "half asleep".

Es por tanto la versión de la defensa. No digo que sea necesariamente falsa, ni que la de la señorita W sea necesariamente cierta. Pero no hace falta haber visto muchos episodios de Perry Mason para saber que lo que afirman los diferentes implicados en un proceso no puede interpretarse sin tener en cuenta si se trata de la acusación o la defensa. Y cambiar uno por otro presenta la realidad completamente del revés.

Tampoco es baladí, teniendo en cuenta que Assange y quienes le defienden siempre dicen que las acusaciones de las dos mujeres suecas son una trampa, que El País calle lo que dicen los responsables de Wikipedia en Suecia:

The co-ordinator of the WikiLeaks group in Stockholm, who is a close colleague of Assange and who also knows both women, told the Guardian: "This is a normal police investigation. Let the police find out what actually happened. Of course, the enemies of WikiLeaks may try to use this, but it begins with the two women and Julian. It is not the CIA sending a woman in a short skirt."

Lo que decía, la cosa cambia, ¿a que sí?

Finalmente, no quiero acabar el post sin recomendaros encarecidamente que leáis lo que escriben mujeres sobre el tema. En serio, más de un apolgista de Assange debería reflexionar, porque lo que están haciendo es adoptar posiciones machistas que abjurarían si fuese otro el acusado.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Me comenta Gumersindo Lafuente, que como sabéis es responsable de ElPaís.com, que efectivamente el artículo contiene afirmaciones erróneas. Lo han retirado "para hacerlo bien".

ACTUALIZACIÓN II. La historia vuelve a estar online, con los problemas de la versión inicial corregidos. Hay que reconocer que El País ha escuchado, ha estudiado rápidamente los problemas y ha actuado en consecuencia. Justo es reconocerlo.

ANTISEMITISMO, desde Gaza a Florida:

You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the U.N. refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don't deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the "Palestinian Authority" has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian "nationalist movement" has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.

So, as I said, forget Gaza. And, instead, ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch.

Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let's take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.

El paralelismo con la creación de Pakistán es muy acertado.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Como puede comprobarse, todo es culpa de los sionistas...

OTRO BUEN ARTÍCULO que demuestra la demagogia de las críticas al short-selling.

ESTA DEBE DE SER la famosa recuperación de la economía de EEUU gracias a las medidas expansivas no como la austeridéquenosestáhogando™:

The U.S. economy added 148,000 jobs in September while the unemployment rate dropped slightly to 7.2 percent, federal economists reported Tuesday. The report fell short of expectations — economist surveyed by Bloomberg had estimated the number of jobs added would come in at 185,000.

POR QUÉ OBAMA y tantos otros (y Zapatero no digamos, aunque diga que lo está releyendo) no han entendido nada del Keynes al que idolatran:

Keynes wanted deficits to be cyclical and temporary. He wouldn't have been in favor of efforts to raise tax rates in a recession to eliminate deficits. He viewed that as suicidal. He was opposed to the idea that governments should balance the budget during a downturn, and advocated running short-term deficits to spur the economy.
 
The type of stimulus he advocated was very specific. He said it should be geared towards increasing private investment. He viewed private investment, as opposed to big government spending, as the source of durable job creation. He also said that the deficits should be self-liquidating, so that the increased economic activity caused by the stimulus inevitably generated a combination of extra tax revenues and lower unemployment payments. With higher revenues and lower outlays, the deficit would disappear.

Son palabras de Allan Meltzer, de la universidad Carnegie-Mellon, que trabajó en las administraciones Kennedy y Reagan.

EN EL WALL STREET JOURNAL ya se lo toman a pitorreo:

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero told El País last week that "in the short term, my two priorities are investment and competitiveness." To that end, he received the heads of Spain's largest companies for a chat, and will now "set up a National Competitiveness Commission." The panel will fall under the purview of the Economy Ministry and will "involve key figures in the economy to define, evaluate, and push competitiveness within the economy, along with proposing specific solutions."

If only Spain could get a GDP percentage-point for every conference it hosts.

Leed el resto.

[Actualizado] AHMADINEJAD, el antisemita que clama por la destrucción de Israel y niega el Holocausto, en el momento de su nacimiento era... ¿judío? Saboreemos la ironía:

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him.

"Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

A London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that "jian" ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews.

"He has changed his name for religious reasons, or at least his parents had," said the Iranian-born Jew living in London. "Sabourjian is well known Jewish name in Iran."

ACTUALIZACIÓN. Mark Steyn: "A ver si ahora resultará que también es uno de esos gay que dice que no hay en Irán". Je.

SIMON NIXON en el Wall Street Journal:

Another missed opportunity. Four years into the crisis, Spain's failure to deal with the weaknesses in its banking system has become a threat to global financial stability. There is no great secret over what is required: Madrid only had to look to the experience of the U.S., U.K. and Ireland, among others, to see this crisis wouldn't end until Spanish banks were forced to write down toxic real-estate exposures to realistic levels and plug any capital shortfalls with equity. Yet for the second time in a little over two months, Madrid has produced a plan that looks short of the mark.


[...] Madrid's continued failure to do what is needed to regain market confidence is baffling. No doubt it fears having to ask its European partners for aid; perhaps it has also been swayed by pressure from Spain's largest banks, for which any state recapitalization might lead to the breakup of their empires under European Union state aid rules. But this piecemeal approach is deeply corrosive to Madrid's credibility. Madrid may struggle to hold this latest line for long: The new package is unlikely to be the last.

NO SÓLO ESO, Cromwell; Joe Biden, el vicepresidente-electo, también votó a favor de la guerra de Iraq. Mira lo que ha estado diciendo estos años:

• Biden on Meet the Press in 2002, discussing Saddam Hussein: “He’s a long term threat and a short term threat to our national security… “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”
• Biden on Meet the Press in 2002: “Saddam must be dislodged from his weapons or dislodged from power.”
• Biden on Meet the Press in 2007, on Hussein’s WMDs: “Well, the point is, it turned out they didn’t, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued — they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued.”
• Biden, on Obama’s Iraq plan in August 2007: “I don’t want [my son] going [to Iraq],” Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said from the campaign trail Wednesday, according to a report on Radio Iowa. “But I tell you what, I don’t want my grandson or my granddaughters going back in 15 years and so how we leave makes a big difference.” Biden criticized Democratic rivals such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama who have voted against Iraq funding bills to try to pressure President Bush to end the war. “There’s no political point worth my son’s life,” Biden said, according to Radio Iowa. “There’s no political point worth anybody’s life out there. None.”
• Biden on Meet the Press, April 29, 2007: “The threat [Saddam Hussein] presented was that, if Saddam was left unfettered, which I said during that period, for the next five years with sanctions lifted and billions of dollars into his coffers, then I believed he had the ability to acquire a tactical nuclear weapon — not by building it, by purchasing it. I also believed he was a threat in that he was — every single solitary U.N. resolution which he agreed to abide by, which was the equivalent of a peace agreement at the United Nations, after he got out of — after we kicked him out of Kuwait, he was violating. Now, the rules of the road either mean something or they don’t. The international community says “We’re going to enforce the sanctions we placed” or not. And what was the international community doing? The international community was weakening. They were pulling away.”
• Biden to the Brookings Institution in 2005: “We can call it quits and withdraw from Iraq. I think that would be a gigantic mistake. Or we can set a deadline for pulling out, which I fear will only encourage our enemies to wait us out — equally a mistake.”
• Analyzing the surge on Meet the Press, September 9, 2007: “I mean, the truth of the matter is that, that the — America’s — this administration’s policy and the surge are a failure, and that the surge, which was supposed to stop sectarian violence and — long enough to give political reconciliation, there’s been no political reconciliation... The reality is that, although there has been some mild progress on the security front, there is, in fact, no, no real security in Baghdad and/or in Anbar province, where I was, dealing with the most serious problem, sectarian violence. Sectarian violence is as strong and as solid and as serious a problem as it was before the surge started.”
• Biden in October of 2002: “We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after.”
• On Meet the Press, January 7, 2007, assessing the proposal of a surge of troops to Iraq: “If he surges another 20, 30, or whatever number he’s going to, into Baghdad, it’ll be a tragic mistake, in my view, but, as a practical matter, there’s no way to say, ‘Mr. President, stop.’”
• On Meet the Press, November 27, 2005: “Unless we fundamentally change the rotation dates and fundamentally change how many members of the National Guard we’re calling up, it’ll be virtually impossible to maintain 150,000 folks this year.” (The number of troops in Iraq peaked at 162,000 in August 2007, during the surge.)

Es cierto que después, en primavera de este año, dijo que el envío adicional de tropas -la Surge, en inglés- era un fracaso. También es cierto que, como no ha sido un fracaso sino todo lo contrario, en septiembre dijo que había sido un éxito, porque había sido idea suya...

EL SHORT SELLING -las posiciones cortas- no es el problema.

EL FINANCIAL TIMES le vuelve a dar a la manivela antipatriota:

Spain, at four times the size of Greece in terms of its economy, is by far the largest of the budgetary laggards that will be facing renewed scrutiny, and probably higher financing costs, in the sovereign debt markets.

The crucial issue for Spain and its European neighbours is the credibility of its “stability plan”, which outlines sharp cuts in government spending, including a near-freeze on hiring civil servants, and aims to reduce the deficit from 11.4 per cent of gross domestic product last year to 3 per cent of GDP in 2013.

Although it will have no short-term impact, Madrid has also proposed increasing the retirement age to 67 from 65 to secure the financial health of the pensions system.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, prime minister, faces an uncomfortable spring, for very few economists, analysts or foreign investors are convinced either that the plans are plausible or that the government has the will or ability to implement them.

“It is all air,” said Luis Garicano, professor of economics and strategy at the London School of Economics, “just ideas that for the most part the government cannot put in place by itself, particularly on pensions or public employees.”

Nomura said it was “not convinced” that the austerity plan could be implemented. Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, predicted that the budget deficit would stay above 5 per cent of GDP until 2013, well above the eurozone’s widely abused 3 per cent limit.

Critics of the austerity plan, which has been sent to Brussels for approval, point to three main obstacles. First, its economic forecasts are over-optimistic. Second, central government has direct control over only about a quarter of expenditure, with the rest disbursed by autonomous regional governments and the social security system. Third, the Socialists lack the necessary will.
When they talk to foreigners, Spanish ministers say they are determined to do whatever it takes to restore order to their public finances. But when they address their supporters at home, they emphasise plans to maintain social spending.

The result is confusion and disarray.

Y que lo digas.

POR CIERTO QUE, hablando de posiciones en corto, aquí está el argumento bala-de-plata con el que Xavier Sala-i-Martin demuestra de una vez por todos por qué culpar a este tipo de problemas de lo que ocurre en los mercaos es absurdo:

[U]tilizan un razonamiento incompleto. Su argumento dice que si un gran “hedge fund” (uno de esos fondos malignos repletos de especuladores) hace operaciones a corto de forma masiva, venderá hoy millones de acciones españolas. Al aumentar de forma masiva la oferta, dice el argumento, la cotización de las acciones españolas bajará. Es decir, los inversores institucionales, al tener un tamaño gigantesco, pueden hacer bajar la bolsa española al vender masivamente acciones de ese país. Este argumento es correcto, pero incompleto. Y es que para ganar dinero, la venta a corto no puede solo vender acciones sino que, un mes después, las tiene que volver a comprar. Y si la venta masiva de acciones provoca la caída de la bolsa hoy, la compra masiva de acciones dentro de un mes tiene que provocar el efecto contrario y más o menos de la misma magnitud! Es decir, para que las operaciones a corto fueran responsables de las caídas de la bolsa española a medio plazo, los inversores deberían pedir prestadas acciones españolas, venderlas masivamente y no volverlas a comprar nunca jamás. Eso, lógicamente, no sería negocio. Al volver a comprarlas en el futuro, los mismos inversores que han provocado la caída tienen que acabar provocando la recuperación.

Leedlo entero si, como el 99% de periodistas y enteraos, no tenéis claro en qué consiste ese short-selling del que todo el mundo habla. También me permito recordar lo que escribí hace un tiempo aquí mismo, cuando ya se empezaban a oír las mismas bobadas que ahora.

OTRO MITO: el del deshielo de los glaciares del Himalaya.

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Toma consenso científico.