Frontrunning: February 22

• The deflationist: a profile of Paul Krugman (New Yorker)
• China new village makes Chanos see Dubai times 1,000 (Bloomberg)
• Goldman cranks up p.r. engine to turn sinner into saint (Post)
• Hey recovery.gov, The "stimulus" actually raised unemployment (IBD)
• Another one jumps on the bandwagon - Nathaniel Rotschild calls for ban on sovereign CDS (Les Echos (in french), via DealBook)
• Euro worst to come as Greece hammerlocks ECB on rates (Bloomberg)

RANsquawk 22nd February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

RANsquawk 22nd February Morning Briefing - Stocks, Bonds, FX etc.

Obama Proposal To See Federal Government Block Health Insurance Rate Hikes

It's good that the rest of the economy is humming along, and the whole record unemployment thing is under control, cause we were wondering when the president would refocus his efforts on such mission critical things as having the government determine health insurance rates. Apparently the answer to the last question is tomorrow. According to the NYT, "Obama will propose on Monday giving the federal government new power to block excessive rate increases by health insurance companies, as he rolls out comprehensive legislation to revamp the nation’s health care system, White House officials said."

Greece: T-Minus 30 Days To Funding D-Day (Give Or Take)

In this interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou makes it clear that Greece has enough cash to get it through another 30 days (and likely less), or to last it thought "Mid-March." While this statement was likely supposed to remove pressure from expectations that Greece will auction off another €5 billion this week, which as we disclosed previously will most likely not happen, this revelation will likely not achieve the required goal. It has been well known for a long-time that Greek bond maturities culminate with €16.7 billion over April and May. Specifically, there is €8.22 billion maturing on April 20. The fact that there is a lag time of at least a month between when Greece should be rolling maturities and actually in need of funding, will likely be taken as a sign of additional weakness, as spending apparently has not moderated by one bit. This means that Greece will now have to raise double the amount as it approaches the funding deadline when taking into account the natural deficit generated between mid-March and April 20. How happy the EU, and Germany in particular, will be with this disclosure will be seen in tomorrow's Greek CDS market.

Greek (Dis)Information Update: No Greek Bond Offering This Week

As we head into a new week, one of the bigger development expected out of Europe will be "imminent" launch of a €5 billion Greek bond issue, to prefund some of the nearly €20 billion in maturities expected over the next 3 months. However, bulls who expect this "good news" to force short covering may have to put the champagne on ice. Dow Jones previously quoted the former Public Debt Management Agency head Spiros Papanikolaou (who was replaced by former Goldman operative Petros Christodoulou), "There will be another syndication, most likely 10 years. We will go for EUR3 billion to EUR5 billion and depending on the market reaction it could be more, although a 10-year bond is a bit more difficult" to make their case that the new auction is imminent. Yet it is this very same Papanikolaou, who when quoted by Debtwire, pours cold water all over the bulls plans: "Reports about us imminent issuing a ten-year bond auction are totally inaccurate - there is no truth in it at all." And so the great Greek disinformation sopa opera continues.

Guest Post: Bailout Or No Bailout - That's The Question

There are several strong arguments within the European Union for NOT bailing out Greece, as well as to do so. One alternative is probably just as likely as the other. But the case for letting Greece default on their debt is gaining traction among European politicians.

Accounting Gimmicks Have Boosted The Collective S&P 500 Cash Balance By Over $150 Billion Since The Start Of The Crisis

Much has been said lately about the record cash balance on the books of S&P 500 companies (ex. financials- those are a different story altogether). Bullish pundits claim that this money will be used for all sorts of M&A, stock buybacks, expansions, etc., to make the point that companies can't wait to go out spending, so we should all front run them and buy whatever public companies may one day be on the auction block. We decided to take the inverse approach - by looking at the balance sheet and the cash flow statement of the S&P 500 companies (again, ex fins), we have attempted to understand just what the source of all this excess cash is. Listening to any of the permabulls on CNBC, one could easily get the impression that all this newly record cash comes simply from excess revenue which, courtesy of massive layoffs and a collapsing SG&A line, feeds an ever increasing retained earnings line, which in turn goes straight to cash. While this is certainly possible, our analysis indicates that the primary source of cash over the past year has really been a very generous cash "rotating" adjustment in some critical CapEx and Net Working Capital items. Our findings demonstrate that of the nearly $130 billion in additional cash on the books of S&P 500 companies from June 2008, through September 2009, two key sources, net working capital and a reduced capex spend, have generated over $150 billion, meaning organic operations have accounted for a whopping -$20 billion (yes, negative) of incremental cash.