Observant readers may recall the name Vitas Vasiliauskas from our May story in which we quoted the ECB governing council member as defining not only himself, but his central banking peers, as “magic people.” As the portly Lithuanian banker said in a Bloomberg interview then, “markets say the ECB is done, their box is empty, but we are magic people. Each time we take something and give to the markets — a rabbit out of the hat.” What was more disturbing is that he was dead serious when he said it, which is important, because it is finally obvious that central bankers are neither gods, nor magicians, nor even doing “god’s work on earth”, but plain and simple psychopaths.
They could also be pathological liars, as the WSJ revealed today when it published an interview with Vasiliauskas, in which among other things, covered the topic of Deutsche Bank. To wit:
Struggling German lender Deutsche Bank won’t drive the eurozone economy into the ground, a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council said Thursday, adding a fresh dose of calm into a case that has raised concerns about the continent’s ability to confront the struggles of Germany’s largest lender.
“I don’t think that problems related with one of the banks somehow can influence overall financial stability,” said Vitas Vasiliauskas, the head of Lithuania’s central bank, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The small Baltic state has used the euro since last year and therefore has a voice on the 25-member governing council that sets monetary policy in the currency bloc. The ECB also serves as supervisor of the eurozone’s largest banks. “I don’t think that we face something systemic,” he said on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund.
And just in case the punchline is somehow missed, here it is timestamped for posterity.
We bring it up because just this past June, the same WSJ reported something quite different. This:
Deutsche Bank AG is the riskiest financial institution in the world as a potential source of external shocks to the financial system, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“Among the G-SIBs (globally systemically important banks), Deutsche Bank appears to be the most important net contributor to systemic risks, followed by HSBC and Credit Suisse,” the IMF said in its Financial Sector Assessment Program.
So who is lying: the ECB or the IMF? Our money is on the “magic” guy, but having to pick between these two organizations who are unmatched when it comes to distorting reality, one can not be certain.
Still, one can’t help but be amused how, in the grand tradition of Jean-Claude Juncker the lies immediately emerge as soon as “things get serious.”
via http://ift.tt/2dSMNtt Tyler Durden