Archive - Nov 30, 2012 - Story

• Turns out no free lunch after all: Greeks rage against pension calamity (Reuters)
• Athens banks told of debt buyback ‘duty’ (FT)
• U.N. Gives Palestinians 'State' Status (WSJ)
• Obama's Cliff Offer Spurned (WSJ)
• Republicans Reject Obama Budget as He Sells It to Public (Bloomberg)
• Macau Gangster Who Missed Boom to Be Freed After 14 Years (Bloomberg)
• China Economic Optimism Returns in Poll as Xi Beats Hu (Bloomberg)
• Spain May Escape European Bailout, Former ECB Board Member Says (Bloomberg)... but they won't
• After a bashing, BOJ weighs "big bang" war on deflation (Reuters)
• Recession Left Baby Bust as U.S. Births Lowest Since 1920 (Bloomberg)
• Japan unveils second Y880bn stimulus package (FT)

One of the indirect beneficiaries of the German generosity which allowed a token EUR44 billion to be released for Greece, with the bulk of the proceeds used to pay off hedge fund and Western Europe bank creditors, are Greek banks, who will fight for the remaining scraps and use them to plug their massively underwater balance sheets. However, as we reported yesterday, the same Greek banks not only want their cake, but they now have a set of conditions that must be met for them to eat it too.

With a vote of 473 in favor, 100 against, and 11 abstentions in the German Bundestag, Europe's AAA-club gets the formal green light to pay off hedge fund holders of Greek bonds, and to preserve the solvency of Deutsche Bank, also incorrectly known elsewhere as "the third Greek bailout." As for Greece, we expect a 4th "bailout" within 3-6 months. In fact after today's spectacular collapse in Greek retail sales which plunged 12.1% in October, make that 2-5 months.

There was some confusion as to why yesterday various Eurozone consumer confidence indices posted a surprising jump and beat expectations virtually across the board: turns out Europeans had an advance warning of today's horrendous economic data among which we learned that Eurozone October unemployment just hit a record 11.7%, up 0.1% from September (we are trying to get data if the Eurozone is gaming its unemployment number the way the US does by collapsing its labor participation rate), with Italy unemployment surging to 11.1% from 10.8%, on expectations of a 10.9% print, French consumer spending in October was down 0.2%, compared to an unchanged reading in September, but far more troubling was that German retail sales imploded at a rate of 2.8%, the biggest monthly collapse in 4 years, and worse than even the most bearish forecast. Do we hear "Sandy's fault."