Archive - Sep 2011 - Story

While little has really been said or done this week with regard to solving any of the structural issues facing Europe, macro data globally has hardly been encouraging, and micro (earnings) have not aggressively beaten earnings, the equity and credit markets have ripped higher. While many have talked of short squeezes, which obviously are at the heart of every trend turn (whether micro or macro), we thought it useful to get some context on this move to judge when/if it will ever stop.

Update: more bad news as Reuters reports that participation in the Greek private sector debt initiative at just under 75% according to financial sources. This is a miserable miss to the required 90% and means that the debt rollover initiative is basically dead in its tracks, as 25% of the bondholders will become holdouts and seek to derail the entire Bailout #2 process in return for massive "nuisance value" payments. Problem is nobody will pay said demanded payment.

Those seeking a reason for the sudden drop on no news, can attribute the weakness in the EURUSD and its 1.000 correlated derivative, the US policy vehicle known as the stock market, to the following news making the rounds brought to us by RanSquawk, namely that Germany is likely to delay ESM legalisation beyond year end of 2011. Specifically, "facing a storm of protest from within its own ranks, Germany's ruling coalition government has delayed discussing the ESM in cabinet meaning that legislation on the Eurozones permanent rescue fund, will not likely be in place by end of this year as hoped." As a reminder, Stark quit due to disagreement over the SMP's usage. This most recent update means the SMP program, not only will not end as was expected originally in September, but will be forced to monetize Italian debt for at least three more months, and likely much longer, until the EFSF is activated, some time in Q1 2012. This also means that the ECB's SMP program, currently pregnant with €140 billion of PIIGS bonds, will expand to double its size by the end of the year, further pushing the zEURo lower as Europe continues with its explicit debt monetization on the books, and not as was envisioned before, using an SPV in the form of the EFSF.

The UMichigan read for consumer confidence came slightly better than uber-depressionary, printing at 57.8, on expectations of 57, and better than the apocalyptic 55.7 from August. To put the number in perspective, it is the second lowest since February 2009. To algorithms all that will matter, however, is that it is rising. What they will completely ignore is that consumer expectations, or the outlook for the future, just dropped yet again, from 47.4 to 47, the lowest print since May of 1980! More troubling to the Fed is the read on inflation expectations, which after declining for months, rose in both 1 year (from 3.5% to 3.7%) and 5 year (from 2.9% to 3.0%) expectations.

The biggest scandal to rock the White House since Bill Clinton needed a refresher on the definition of the word "the" has gone fully mainstream after Jon Stewart dedicated his segment last night to "That Custom Tailored Obama Scandal You Ordered." His summary: "Fox News call your doctor, because the erection you currently have is going to last longer than 4 hours." Spot on. One thing is missing, however: someone should advise Jon that the missing link, Goldman Sachs, is also, and quite naturally, involved.

S&P futures only managed 2 moves of 1% so far. That qualifies as stability in this market. Credit indices are all a little bit better on the day, but off their tights. MAIN is currently at 170, or 4 tighter in the day. It got as tight as 166. It is trading close to 10 bps rich to fair value. Basically a strong indication that hedges have been taken off, or people are long for a trade, but the underlying markets with higher bid/offers, and a large backlog of potential new issues, hasn't been as fast to declare the "all clear" signal. Those hoping for some great announcements today out of the meetings in Poland have been largely disappointed. But the great thing about those waiting for big positive announcements, is now they are expecting them over the weekend. Nothing has changed in Europe and none of the comments support the view that a Greek default is off the tables.

With each passing day bringing us new predictions in the form of research reports, white papers, analyses, and plain old rants on what a Greek default would mean for the Eurozone, for the Euro, for markets, and the for world in general, it is clear that absolutely nobody knows what will happen. Alas, since this topic will be with us for a while until the can kicking finally fails, many more such prognostications will be forthcoming. Today, we present three different pieces, one from Reuters, which gives a 30,000 foot perspective, one a slightly more technical from Citi, looking at a Greek default from a rates point of view, and lastly, a primer from Goldman's Huw Pill, looking at the aftermath of the current situation for the euro area, with or without a Greek bankruptcy. While we have no idea what will happen to global markets should Greece default, and it will, we are 100% certain that we will present many more such analyses in the future as more and more people piggyback on the Cassandra bandwagon.

In news that will likely not surprise many, Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia reports that according to a just terminated member of the Greek Statistical Authority, Greece artificially misrepresented its 2009 15.4% deficit number to Eurostat in order to obtain aid from the EU and IMF. Per professor Zoe Georgantas "The deficit was artificially inflated in 2009 to show that the country had the largest deficit across Europe, including that of Ireland was 14% in order to justify all these severe measures against the country. And we presented in the Eurostat 15,4%." While there appears to be a substantial political back story here, and we would be careful at taking these claims at face value, the last thing Europe needs is for its people to realize that they have been duped (and continue to be so), by the PIIGS countries, which as we pointed out before on several occasions, have figured out that the balance of power in capital extraction is entirely in their favor, and paradoxically see their position strengthened, the weaker they are, as the Eurozone has no alternatives but to keep ploughing ever more capital into these bankrupt nation. As such it would not be surprising if Italy's official deficit has also, like in Greece, been substantially misrepresented in an adverse light recently,after being shown to be far better than reality for years, simply to have a stronger political case for demanding more EU and IMF funding. 

There are two mainstream market assumptions that, in my mind, prevail over all others. The continuing function of the Dow, the sustained flow of capital into and out of the banking sector, and the full force spending of the federal government are ALL entirely dependent on the lifespan of these dual illusions; one, that the U.S. Dollar is a legitimate safe haven investment and will remain so indefinitely, and two, that China, like many other developing nations, will continue to prop up the strength of the dollar indefinitely because it is “in their best interest”. In the dimly lit bowels of Wall Street such ideas are so entrenched and pervasive, to question their validity is almost sacrilegious. Only after the recent S&P downgrade of America’s AAA credit rating did the impossible become thinkable to some MSM analysts, though a considerable portion of the day-trading herd continue to roll onward, while the time bomb strapped to the ass end of their financial house is ticking away. China, being the second largest holder of U.S. debt next to the Fed, and the number one holder of dollars within their forex reserves, has always been the key to gauging the progression of the global economic collapse now in progress. If you want to know what’s going to happen tomorrow, watch what China does today.

• European equities traded higher supported by news of a coordinated action by various central banks to enhance USD liquidity in order to ease funding concerns surrounding European banks
• EU’s Juncker said that the Eurogroup discussed collateral issue, and collateral will be given for Greek loans at an appropriate price
• EU's Rehn said France, Italy, Belgium and Spain have all ratified more flexible EFSF, adding that the first step in Eurobonds is a feasibility study which the Commission will present this autumn
• Moody’s and S&P placed UBS ratings on review for a potential downgrade

• Euro Ministers Spar on Collateral for Loans (Bloomberg)
• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner ignored President Barack Obama’s order to consider dissolving Citigroup (Politico)
• Lagarde warns IMF could withhold Greek loan (FT)
• Spain to Impose New Wealth Tax (WSJ)
• Looming U.S. decision on Taiwan risks China rift (Reuters)
• GM Adjourns Union Talks With No Agreement (Bloomberg)
• UBS $2 billion loss to trigger investment bank retreat (Reuters)
• European Bank Blowups Hidden With Shell Games (Bloomberg)
• House Republicans Push Stopgap Spending Bill (NYT)
• Geithner urges unity in tackling euro zone crisis (Reuters)

The markets are breathing a collective sigh of relief as the major global players, with the exception of the Chinese, are now sitting at the same table determined to forge a path through this political and economic malaise. Gold is trending lower as the risk trade is reduced. It is a relief that the U.S. administration has dispatched their boy wonder, Messrs Geithner, to Europe, whether he can calm nerves and create a political consensus is the question. The European Project is at a fork in the road, do they bind themselves together politically and fiscally and socialise the burden  where rich pick up the tab for poor or do they withdraw into their domestic political worlds and turn their backs on what is arguably the greatest economic union in the history of the world. The nexus of the issue is the same as it has always been, can you have an economic union without political union. The answer would seem to be..... maybe, as long as nothing too serious happens, but the moment the economic cycle shifts down a gear, domestic populations suffering from economic contraction will go tribal and look after their own first. A thought provoking paper by the UBS economist, Paul Donovan, articulated the choices facing Europe in a paper "How to break up a monetary union" written in February 2010. His central thesis is that in its current form the Euro just does not work, especially a one size fits all interest rate policy.  Here are some excerpts from his excellent report.

As the Eurozone prepares for the Ecofin meeting in Poland, where the consensus among Unicredit, Barclays, and BNP analysts and pretty much everyone else is that there would be a discussion for the EFSF to be leveraged under a TARP-like solution, the three Eurostooges, Juncker, Rehn and Trichet have hit the tape with various soundbites. Here is the European partyline which luckily never changes.

Just as we had suspected, Bloomberg is now reporting that BofA has gone all M.A.D. on the hand-that-feeds by leaving the possibility of bankruptcy for its trade-of-the-decade, accretive-within-a-year, coulda-been-a-contender business unit Countrywide Financial Corp. The entity remains a separate legal entity under the BAC capital structure with $3.8bn of direct Senior Unsecured and Senior Subordinated debt and an aggregate exposure around $6.5bn from all the sub-entities under the CFC entity. Of course, threatening the use of this legal route will not be a tidy process and will likely bring in doubt the rest of BAC's capital structure to a greater or lesser degree and is unlikely to bode well for BAC's capital market access and trading partners - but perhaps that won't be a problem once the FDIC's living wills are in place.

The last two weeks have been full of headlines regarding the volatility and decompression of sovereign spreads around the world. What has been more intriguing to us than day-after-day of discussing Greek 2Y yields or French 5Y CDS has been the relative increases in net notional credit protection outstanding on Germany. The German credit worthiness and sovereignty stands at the heart of any solution to the crises in the Euro-zone and it appears market participants are increasingly pricing in that risk transfer. This is exactly the same transmission we saw in the US when the Fed/TSY announced day-after-day of acronym-laden support mechanisms and shouldered more and more of the private balance sheet risk. This week, both Brazil and Germany overtook Spain in terms of net notional CDS outstanding.