The Germans do not appear to be pleased

They’ve been winding people up left right and centre with their ban on short-selling without holding the underlying assets. Whether that’s a good idea or not I haven’t got the smarts to understand, though it does appear to have something to do with the exposure of their banks to some dodgy Greek debts.The legendary German rep for financial rectitude may get to take a hit when the skeletons have come out of the closet.

But former BundesBank supremo Karl Otto Pöhl, interviewed in Der Spiegel summed it up as all about rescuing banks and rich Greeks, and wasn’t chuffed at all about the fundamental changes made to the Euro from a currency union to a Federation of Europe, with the implied steady transfer of cash from richer regions to poorer regions, effectively North to Southern Europe. And he made a pretty good case, in characteristically blunt German way that takes no prisoners.

One fo the takeaways is that inflation is coming to the Euro too…