The United States acted quickly, almost as lightning fast.

On May 20, lawmakers submitted two bills, one on strengthening the supervision of rating agencies and the other on the IMF's bailout of Greece.

There is no doubt that both bills were passed swiftly. On this point, lawmakers from both parties have shown a high degree of unanimity.

The main content of the first bill on rating agencies is to establish a credit rating committee with real power under the supervision of the SEC, which will act as an intermediary between the issuing company and the rating agency. The Committee will have the power to choose which rating agency to assign an "initial rating" to a structured securities product.

While the options are still among S&P, Moody's and Fitch, it undoubtedly gives the rating agencies a great deal of power to pay for them to rate their products at will. In this way, the two sides will be able to achieve a lot less in private.

With the smooth passage of the new bill, it also means that the US Congress's move against rating agencies has officially come to an end. Basically, the whole thing belongs to the posture of "lifting high" at the beginning and "gently lowering" at the end.

Although this result is difficult to be satisfactory compared to the vigorous process, it is also expected by many insiders. The market reaction was muted, with stocks from the three major rating agencies falling slightly and quickly returning to normal expectations.

What caused a stir in the market was another bill that was passed.

The amendment, proposed by Republican lawmakers, passed unanimously in the Senate by an astonishing 94-0 margin.

The bill asks the Treasury Department to assess whether emergency loans from the IMF to countries with public debt that exceed the size of their economies can be recovered. If the Treasury Department believes that the country cannot repay the loan, then the United States may need to vote against the loan to that country. These countries obviously include Greece. The IMF estimates that Greece's public debt last year was equivalent to 115% of its GDP.

If the bill is ostensibly a concern for US senators that their government is running out of money, then when combined with the IMF's decision-making mechanism, the whole bill becomes very interesting.

According to the current IMF regulations, any "major matter" must be supported by more than 85% of the voting rights of the organization's members. These include exchange rate arrangements, financing of Member States, organizational setup and management within IMF, SDR allocation and management, and so on.

If loans to countries such as Greece are included in the list of major issues, it means that the United States has a "veto" on whether or not to issue loans to the IMF, because the United States still has about 17% of the voting power.

Although the bill will need to go through several rounds of voting and the president's final signature before it can become real law, it is only a matter of time before the bill finally becomes law when there is no opposition from the initial first round of voting.

The market is violently shaken!

The most intuitive manifestation is in the exchange rate market, where the exchange rate of the euro against the dollar has almost fallen. And it fell for as many as four days in a row, once falling below the 1.25 mark, hitting a new low in nearly 17 months.

The stock markets of various countries, which were greatly encouraged by the rescue mechanism proposed by the European Union, were also affected by this news, not only stopping the short-term upward momentum, but also faintly changing to continue to fall.

Of course, in addition to the uncertainty of this news, there are also reasons for successive fiscal austerity policies in various countries.

Anyway. The news caused a huge stir in the global financial markets and made investors realize. Even as the EU bails out its member states, the rest of the world has a different agenda.

The crisis is still there!

The reaction of Europe to this situation was not unpleasant, and it did not take long for their countermeasures against this US bill to appear!

The first is Greece, the center of the storm. Just two days after the U.S. passed the bill, Greek Prime Minister Papandreou announced in an interview with CNN that Greece could take legal action against U.S. investment banks for their role in the brewing of Greek debt.

At the same time, it was also revealed that the Greek parliament is currently investigating the currency swap agreement reached between the Greek government and Goodman in 10 years, and whether it helped the Greek government at that time to cover up the scale of the debt.

This trick. It is aimed at the big capital institutions of the United States, in order to warn them not to continue to stir up trouble.

After the U.S. rating agencies were gently held accountable, the Europeans realized that their strategy of smashing the rating agencies to stabilize the market had failed, and they immediately had to seize another institution, the investment banks that run rampant around the world.

In a debt crisis, investment banks play no less important role than rating agencies. Rating agencies may only make a macro judgment, but investment banks have long extended their tentacles to their clients, informing their clients in advance of the debt crisis that there will be a problem, and quietly pumping blood (money) from the organism of these countries. The two can be said to complement each other in terms of function and cooperate seamlessly.

There is nothing to be done with the rating agencies in the United States, but that does not mean that there is no way to deal with the investment banks in the United States, because they have operations all over the world, and Europe is one of their key cities. Under such circumstances, properly knocking on the US investment banks has become the inevitable choice of political leaders in various European countries.

Immediately afterwards, the heads of state of Europe began a round of diplomatic mediation in response to the new US bill and its possible serious consequences.

The President of France, the second largest economy in the eurozone, announced a visit to Japan on this day. According to the announced itinerary, after his two-day visit to Japan, he will also fly directly to Yanjing for a three-day state visit to China.

Naturally, anyone with a discerning eye can see that the French president is enlisting the support of the major economies other than the United States. Asia's super-economies have become the target of his wooing.

Adhering to the principle that the outside world must first secure the interior, the EU has also begun to settle accounts for the United Kingdom, which is dragging its feet in the rescue. This time, it was not Germany and France that jumped out, but countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium. At the same time, the foreign ministers or finance ministers of their countries spoke out at the same time, and in view of the reluctance of Britain to join in the European rescue process, if there is a financial crisis in Britain in the future, then "only God can save them"!

Although only the opinion of the top of some small countries. But this undoubtedly represents the opinion of the entire European Commission. Although the UK's financial situation has so far been relatively healthy, it is only a matter of time before the UK is shocked in the minds of some European executives.

Apart from that, what surprised observers the most was a plan hatched by the German chancellor. Although it has not been officially written so far, the meaning of targeting the American side is too strong!

The most surprising thing about the whole plan is to suggest to the European Commission that in the future it may lead to the "orderly bankruptcy" of certain countries in the eurozone!

Because of the funding plan of nearly 150 billion euros in the entire rescue plan, the female prime minister's popularity has plummeted. Although Germany has undoubtedly participated in the eurozone bailout plan so far, on the one hand, in order to win public opinion, and on the other hand, to counter the interference of the US side in the overall bailout plan. Merkel and her staff pondered and finally came up with a shocking plan.

That is, to allow certain eurozone countries in deep crisis to "go bankrupt in an orderly manner".

The specific content of the whole plan is that the budgets of the eurozone countries will be submitted to the ECB for separate review. If some countries fail the scrutiny, or violate the EU's budgetary rules, they will not receive the 750 billion euros bailout from the EU.

And if these countries don't get bailouts, waiting for them to default on their debts is the only way. At that time, under the arrangement of the European Council, these countries will be declared bankrupt "in an orderly manner".

This news was first reported by the German Handelsblatt, and naturally it was decided in the German government and parliament and reported to the European Council. There is still a long way to go before it is approved by the Council of Governors and becomes the norm for the budgets of eurozone countries. But a discerning person can see at a glance that this bill is the one aimed at the United States.

The U.S. bill is also aimed at Greece. The country, which already has a debt of more than 100% of GDP, is the most financially ill country in the entire eurozone. The United States' wishful thinking is to put pressure on the IMF to allow the eurozone's debt to continue to spread and expand.

And Germany's new rumor is also aimed at Greece. With Greece's current financial situation, it is difficult to meet the requirements of the EU budget. In this case, the European Council can stop aid to Greece in a grand manner. Turning it into a justifiable bankruptcy would not only appease the discontent of the German public with aid to Greece, but also cut off the possibility for the United States to continue to make a fuss about Greece, and would allow the limited funds to be spent on countries that are less financially well-off.

Kill three birds with one stone!

"Merkel's trick is quite powerful!"

After reading the relevant news, Zhong Shi did not speak for a long time. After a long while, he let out a long sigh, looked out the window leisurely, and couldn't help but exclaim, "This is completely-for-tat!" I can't see that this female prime minister is really quite capable! ”

"It's nature!"

Jiang Shan also felt the same way, "This is a woman with a doctorate in physics, not only intelligent, but also has extraordinary political wisdom and decisive courage." ”

"But what's next?"

Admiration and admiration, Jiang Shan always remembers his role, and they can't intervene in the contest between these big powers at all, and can only watch them have a fierce confrontation between silently with a posture of looking up. For Tianyu Fund and Zhong Shi, it is to take advantage of their big fight, waiting for opportunities to reap more benefits.

"I don't know!"

For the first time, Zhongshi felt lost about the situation.

In the past month, the European debt crisis has swept Greece again, this time with Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, forming a name called the "European Pig Five".

But with the formation of the European Council's €750 billion bailout mechanism, the wrestling of the whole thing has risen to a height that cannot be controlled by bellstones. So far, at least, Bell Stone and his allies have been unable to do much at all. As for what to do in the future, it depends on the trend of the fighting methods of the two sides.

"Oh no!"

At this time, a message jumped out of the Bloomberg terminal, Jiang Shan only glanced at it slightly, and his face suddenly changed.

"Huh?"

Zhong Shi turned his face and glared at the other party with some dissatisfaction. Jiang Shan's startling interrupted his train of thought, which made him subconsciously a little annoyed.

Jiang Shan didn't care about Zhong Shi's hesitant face at the moment, pointed to the screen and said: "The German government has just promulgated a policy to prohibit shorting when there is no spot on hand. ”

"What?"

Hearing this, Zhong Shi raised his eyebrows and raised his voice slightly, "Wouldn't it?" The German government can't be so stupid, right? ”

He was greeted with a wry smile on his face.

On March 28, the German Financial Supervisory Authority announced an order to prohibit short investment in these targets without borrowing 10 large German financial stocks and eurozone government bonds from now on, until March 31, 2011.

If you don't have cash on hand, the act of directly shorting is called "naked shorting". It can be said that this order of the German Financial Supervisory Authority is essentially to restrict the "naked shorting" of some targets! (To be continued.) )