It is good to ponder what reasonable people think, who offer variant points of view from your own – and then to question your own presuppositions. And thus I commend to you the recent essay of Marshall Auerbach. He is among those calling for the ECB to cut loose and print, as the “only way” to save the Euro. As he says, this is kind of like asking turkeys to vote for Thanksgiving. I should also mention that GaveKal issued a note this morning, saying that: “As much as we hate to do so, we have little choice but to return to the unfolding Euro debacle where, with Italian bond yields now touching 7.4%, the battle lines are now very clear. As we have argued before, either the ECB steps in and purchases risk assets very aggressively in a manner reminiscent to what the HKMA did in 1998, or a number of Southern European countries, and perhaps even France, will be forced to impose capital controls, shut their markets, declare a weeklong bank holiday, and re-issue national currencies that stand to pass the test of time.” And Dennis Gartman chimes in: “Talk of bank holidays and the like by gentleman such as those at GaveKal is not normal, and nor should it be; however, such talk is the order of the day. Things are becoming more and more chaotic with each passing moment, and it matters not at this point who is at the helm in Italy or at the helm in Greece, for things are in motion now that cannot easily be put back into the bottle. Pandora’s Box has been opened, or in W.B. Yeat’s term, ‘The centre cannot hold/the falcon cannot hear the falconer.’ ” From Marshall’s intro: “The markets are again in free-fall and, once again, a lazy Mediterranean profligate is to blame. This time, it’s an Italian, rather than a Greek. No, not Silvio Berlusconi, but his fellow countryman, Mario Draghi, the new head of the increasingly spineless European Central Bank. “At least the Alice in Wonderland quality of the markets has finally dissipated. It was extraordinary to observe the euphoric reaction to the formation of the European Financial Stability Forum a few weeks ago, along with the ‘voluntary’ 50% haircut on Greek debt (which has turned out to be as ‘voluntary’ as a bank teller opening up a vault and surrendering money to someone sticking a gun in his/her face). To anybody with a modicum of understanding of modern money, it was obvious that the CDO like scam created via the EFSF would never end well and that the absence of a substantive role for the European Central Bank would prove to be its undoing.”