Archive - May 24, 2011 - Story

• French government says China backs Lagarde for IMF (Reuters)
• ...but, China has actually not backed Lagarde (WSJ)
• “You Americans Are Funny” — You Start an IMF (Forbes)
• Norquist Emerges as Barrier to U.S. Debt Deal (Bloomberg)
• Scarcity, Usefulness, and Getting an Edge (Hussman)
• Bullard Says Fed May Keep Rates, Balance-Sheet Steady to Assess Economy (Bloomberg)
• For Global Steel Industry, China Poses Guessing Game (WSJ)
• Goldman Finding Third Time a Charm in Russia (Bloomberg)
• Greece Will Accelerate State Asset Sales to Stem Debt Crisis as Bonds Drop (Bloomberg)
• It can go wrong? It will go wrong (WaPo)

The Greek bankruptcy, pardon, sovereign liability management exercise, pardon reprofiling, is once again front and center in the news this morning, after Moody's had some words of caution about a broad spillover effect in Europe should Greece file. From Reuters: "A Greek debt default would hurt other peripheral euro zone states and could push Portugal and Ireland into junk territory, Moody's said on Tuesday, warning it would classify most forms of restructuring as a default.  "A Greek default would be highly destabilising and would have implications for the creditworthiness of issuers across Europe," Moody's Investors Service's chief credit officer in the region, Alastair Wilson, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "This would result in more highly polarised credit worthiness and ratings among euro zone sovereigns, with the stronger countries retaining very high ratings and the weaker countries struggling to remain in investment grade." And yet a Greek bankruptcy seems increasingly more inevitable after a brand new fissure has now appeared in the government, after the chief opposition, New Democracy, party leader Antonis Samaras said he would oppose the latest round of austerity which, nonetheless, must pass in order for Greece to not run out of funds in 2 months, as we previously reported, and finally set off the dominoes. While the political bickering will likely hit fever pitch, and result in new and increasingly more violent protests in Athens, it is likely that austerity will pass as western banks are licking their chops at acquiring Greek "privatized" assets, at least when it comes to infrastructure and real estate, banks not so much, at below cost prices.

Gold has reached a new record nominal high in British pounds due to the growing risk of stagflation in the U.K. and due to Moody’s somewhat belated threat to cut its ratings on most UK banks. This was not helped by Chinese ratings provider Dagong Global Credit downgrading the U.K.’s local and foreign currency sovereign credit rating from AA- to A+ with a negative outlook. The increasingly powerful Chinese credit rating agency warned that the U.K. government's fiscal deficit is likely to be a very high 9% of GDP this year and the U.K.'s banking system has a large amount of risk exposure, which could create risks for the government. It estimates that about 40% of the banking system's GBP 2 trillion worth of assets is exposed to risk.

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With everyone trading the GBP in the overnight session eagerly awaiting the leaked Moody's report that the rating agency, which has yet to be at least 2 years behind the curve, is set to downgrade "more than a dozen British financial institutions to reflect the eventual withdrawal of Government support for the banking industry", China has gone and upstaged the beating around the bush poser by downgrading the UK outright from AA- to A+, with an outlook negative. The premise: stagflation and deteriorating "debt repayment capability." Poor fools: they have yet to meet the full debt repayment capability of 20 Primary Dealers.