Archive - Jul 2015 - Story

Facing a new “deadline” to submit a viable proposal to EU creditors and keep Greece in the eurozone, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras faced friends and enemies at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, where there was no shortage of fireworks from both sides of the Grexit debate. 

• Greece and China expose limits of 'whatever it takes' (Reuters)
• China no longer has a market: China Stock Sellers Frozen Out of 71% of Market (BBG)
• China’s Market Rescue Makes Matters Worse as Prices Lose Meaning (BBG)
• China Stocks Plunge as State Support Fails to Revive Confidence (BBG)
• China Market Rout Spreads From Stocks to Price of Pig Food (BBG)
• China’s State-Owned Firms Ordered Not to Cut Share Holdings (BBG)
• Greece Requests Three-Year Bailout in First Step Toward Meeting Creditors’ Demand (WSJ)
• Greece Faces Euro Exit Unless Demands Accepted by Sunday (BBG)

Greece formally requested a three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund Wednesday and pledged to start implementing some of the overhauls demanded by creditors by early next week. Crucially for Greece’s creditors, the letter says the government would start implementing some measures, including on taxation and pensions, by the beginning of next week, though it doesn’t go into details. The letter is a first step toward fulfilling a demand by international creditors, who have given Athens until Sunday to come up with tougher measures they would impose in return for desperately needed financing that could keep the country from bankruptcy and even worse economic turmoil. 

Today's market battle will be between those (central banks) "hoping" that a Greek deal over the weekend is finally imminent (which on one hand looks possible after a major backpeddling by Tsipras - who may never have wanted to win the Greferendum in the first place - yesterday in Brussels and today during his speech in the Euro Parliament, but on the other will be a nearly impossible sell to Greece as any deal terms will be far harsher than the deal offered by the Troika 2 weeks ago and will have no debt reduction), and those who finally noticed that the Chinese central planners have effectively lost control.

It's shaping up to be a rough year for CEOs at Europe's most notorious rate rigging, scandal laden investment banks. Just three months after Brady Dougan left Credit Suisse and barely 30 days since Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen tendered their resignations at Deutsche Bank, Barclays has shown CEO Antony Jenkins the door.

*CHINA TRADING HALTS LEAVE 54% OF ENTIRE STOCK MARKET FROZEN, CHINA'S SHANGHAI COMPOSITE INDEX FALLS 8%, MOST SINCE 2007
There's "panic sentiment" currently in our stock market with "unreasonable selling" pressure - China's stock regulator spokesman. PBOC TO KEEP SUPPORTING CHINA SEC. FINANCE FOR STABLE STK MKT

Call it "game theory" gone horribly "chaos theory."

The Greek prime minister who decisively and unexpectedly pushed for a referendum on the last weekend of June, "never expected to win Sunday's referendum on EMU bail-out terms, let alone to preside over a blazing national revolt against foreign control." He got just that, and in a landslide vote at that even though "he called the snap vote with the expectation - and intention - of losing it."

No, this is not a line at an Athens ATM. It is a soup kitchen in Porto, Portugal...

There is much to enjoy and savor, but it is overwhelmed by moron madness. We’ve come to believe that Aldous Huxley’s fears have been manifested on the boardwalk of Wildwood and across our entire nation. The masses don’t read books. We are inundated with so much useless information, we have been reduced to passivity and egotism. The truth is buried in a sea of irrelevance and our culture is based upon triviality. Our almost infinite desire for distractions and pleasure have produced a profoundly abnormal society. The ignorant masses are acting normally only in the context of living in a sick, demented, abnormal society.

We explained this in words (here and here), but here are the pictures...

Given the weekend ’s events it bears repeating that the echoes of 1914 are growing louder and louder. We are likely embarked on the death spiral phase of a game of Chicken, just as in the summer of 1914. The stakes are, for now at least, not nearly as cataclysmic today as they were a century ago, but the social and political dynamics are eerily alike.

The impact of a full-blown financial crisis in China, if it materializes, on the economy would likely be severe. On corporate earnings, other than the drag from slower growth, many companies may have to book stock-market related losses over the next few quarters by our assessment. Stock lending related losses could run into Rmb trillions.

GREEK PROPOSALS HAVE TO GO BEYOND WHAT BAILOUT INSTITUTIONS DEMANDED BEFORE REFERENDUM
MERKEL RULES OUT DEBT 'HAIRCUT'
JUNCKER: LAST MOMENT FOR GREEK GOVT WILL BE MONDAY MORNING

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients. The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return. When the firm moved to a new building last year, it kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for Holder.

Over the past two weeks, China has resorted to an eye-watering array of policy maneuvers and pronouncements in a desperate attempt to resurrect the country's margin-fueled equity bubble. Amid the chaos, Morgan Stanley — whose "don't buy this dip" call might well have been the straw that broke the dragon's back, so to speak — is out with a detailed history of Beijing's plunge protection playbook.