Archive - Feb 21, 2010 - Story

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."

You read about it here a week ago. Now read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

There should be no shock here- you know the deal. Toyota, big, popular and profitable... And Japanese. Congress is investigating- it was just a matter of days before they found something juicy.

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.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is outstanding in his expose on Europe's increasingly more evident deflationist cul-de-sac, and the ever more obvious L-shaped "recovery" facing Europe. While it has taken fans of the euro currency a mere two short months to not just diametrically change their exposure vis-a-vis the "long" currency of choice, but to allow speculators to build record euro short positions, the question of how America (and China by virtue of its dollar peg) will deal with euro currency that has no choice but to go lower, becomes an increasingly thorny issue. And to further confound deficit worries, recent overtures by the Fed in the form a discount rate hike make it all too obvious that the bond market will likely soon demand a much more substantial "pound of flesh" to fund America's burgeoning deficit. In this context, the threat of increasing rates, coupled with a euro that could reach $1.25 according to Morgan Stanley, and hit a low of $1.10 according to Albert Edwards, makes the policy prospects before the Federal Reserve so much more daunting.

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.

A must read paper by Redburn Partners, "Gold War - Gold is money and nothing else", written in November 2007, which due to its extreme prescience on not only the shift of the economy following the bursting of the credit bubble, but being virtually spot on in its prediction on the price of gold, can serve as an sufficiently comprehensive introduction to anyone wishing to get up to speed with the primary forces determining the price of gold and its implications in a fiat-money world (and especially the prevailing current variant in which competitive devaluations galore).

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.