Bad Bank

It started off as the perfect storm for futures: after Sunday night's latest plunge in WTI, which saw it drop to the lowest price since Lehman, the double whammy that has now forced Deutsche Bank to become the first major institution to forecast no growth for S&P500 EPS in 2015, namely the strong dollar, reared its ugly head and the EURUSD seemed dangerouly close to breaching the all important 1.04-1.05 support level we first noted last week. However, overnight parties tasked with preserving "financial stability" appear to have once again stepped in, and not only has the EURUSD rebounded off 1.05, but crude is now just barely down from the Friday close as all firepower is put to the same use, that sent the Shanghai Composite soaring by 2.3% overnight, and which sent the Dax over 12,000 for the first time ever.

Moments ago we got confirmation that the next domino from the appearance of the Austrian black swan has tipped over, following a Reuters report that Germany's deposit protection fund will take over the property lender Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank AG (DuesselHyp), which has "run into problems" due to its exposure to Austrian lender Hypo Alpe Adria's "bad bank" Heta.

When even JPMorgan strongly implies that the ECB's QE is about to fail, one short week after it started, now may be a time to panic: "In all, we note the above analysis challenges the ability of the Eurosystem to meet its quantitative target without distorting market liquidity and price discovery."

Austria’s decision to wind down Heta Asset Resolution AG sent ripples through the financial system, causing credit rating downgrades in Austria and bank losses in Germany: "It’s a mini-Greece going off in the heartlands of Europe." Here are some of the consequences, and delightful ironies, of a completely unexpected black swan landing in the south of Austria.

When we parsed the newly released 2009 Fed transcripts yesterday we were too busy looking to uncover things like a previously unreported plan to create a bad bank to look for signs of central planner levity, but fortunately, the research department at Bloomberg was looking for the important stuff. Thanks to their efforts we have the official Fed Chuckle Count for 2009.

- “Bail-in is now the rule” - EU Finance Minister Noonan  - Austrian bondholders today … international depositors tomorrow ... We urge readers to diversify deposit holdings and acquire allocated gold to protect their wealth during the next phase of the banking crisis.

Not "contained." Just six short months ago, the 2Y bonds of Austria's bank bank - HETA Asset Resolution AG - were trading well above par as the world and his mom reached for yield (~6%) in all the wrong places. Today, following the "spectacular development" over the weekend that the bank will be wound down due to the discovery of an $8.5bn "hole" in its balance sheet, the 2Y HETA bonds are trading below 50c on the dollar (at a yield of 54%). This is indeed Austria's "Lehman" moment as for the first time in the new European 'bail-in' era, senior debt is getting a massive haircut.

Slowly, all the lies of the "recovery", all the skeletons in the closet, and all the bodies swept under the rug are emerging. Moments ago, Austrian ORF reported that there have been "spectacular developments" in the case of the Hypo Alpe Adria bad bank, also known as the Heta Asset Resolution, where an outside audit of Heta's balance sheet exposed a capital hole of up to 7.6 billion euros ($8.51 billion) which the government was not prepared to fill, the Austrian Financial Market Authority said.  The punchline: "The finance ministry noted that creditors can be forced to contribute to the costs of winding down Heta - or "bailed in" - under new European legislation that Austria adopted this year so that taxpayers do not have to shoulder the entire burden."

Based on Bloomberg data, Doral Bank is the 3rd largest (by assets) bank in Puerto Rico...or rather was. After a 58% collapse in the share price today, news broke after the close:

*PUERTO RICO'S DORAL BANK PLACED UNDER FDIC RECEIVERSHIP, BANCO POPULAR AGREES TO BUY DORAL BANK OPERATIONS

It appears Non-Performing Loans were over 40%. Popular will take the deposits (and 8 of Doral's 26 branches) and the FDIC eats the bad debt (estimates to cost the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $748.9 million).

Earlier today the ECB's Erikki Liikanen, tired of pleasantries and dealing with what to Europe is a completely incomprehensible and illogical stance, one which is essentially a massive defection by Greece in the European "prisoner's dilemma", and which while leading to a Greek financial collapse and Grexit - both prerequisites to a subsequent Greek economic recovery unburdened by the shackles of the Euro - would also unleash a European depression, came out and directly threatened Greece that it now has 1 month until the end of February to reach a deal with the Troika, or else the ECB would cut off lending to Greek banks, in the process destroying the otherwise insolvent Greek banking sector.

Rather than be a problem, Syriza may well be a solution, if it plays its cards right, but that still leaves politicians and investors denominating Tsipras et al as a problem, if not a menace. The world’s major banks got rich off the back of the Greek population at large, and when their wagers got so absurd they collapsed, the banks saw to it that their losses were transferred to European -and American – taxpayers. And those taxpayers are now told to vent their anger at 'those cheating, lazy Greeks'. The Troika, the EU, the IMF, and the banks whose sock puppets they have chosen to be, are a predatory force that has come a long way towards wiping Greece off the map. And that’s what Syriza has set out to remediate. And for that, they deserve, and probably will need, our unmitigated support.

The sixth anniversary of Zero Hedge is just around the corner, and so, for the sixth year in a row we continue our tradition of summarizing what you, our readers, found to be the most relevant, exciting, and actionable news of the year, determined by the number of page views. Those eager for a brief stroll down memory lane of prior years can do so at their leisure, by going back in time to our top articles of 2009,2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. For everyone else, without further ado, these are the articles that readers found to be the most popular posts of the past 365 days.

One bank is already set to benefit from the ABS program no matter what its actual outcome and impact on the European economy: the same bank that spawned none other than ECB's head... Mario Draghi. According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs Group says it’s adding staff to its European asset-backed securities business as the bank prepares for a resurgence in the $305 billion market that shrank more than 40 percent over the past four years.

As we previously reported, the ECB's latest stress test was once again patently flawed from the start. Why? Because as we noted earlier, in its most draconian, "adverse" scenario, the ECB simply refused to contemplate the possibility of deflation. And here's why. Buried deep in the report, on page 75 of 178, is the following revelation which contains in it the scariest number presented to the public today.

In a striking admission that Mario Draghi's "strategy" about the ECB's Private QE future, aka ABS monetization plan, is nothing short of converting Europe's central bank into a "bad bank"  repository for trillions in bad and non-performing debt, the FT yesterday reported that "Mario Draghi is to push the European Central Bank to buy bundles of Greek and Cypriot bank loans with “junk” ratings, in a move that is set to exacerbate tensions between Germany and the bank." It is expected that the former Goldmanite will unveil details of a plan to buy hundreds of billions of euros’ worth of private-sector assets at tomorrow's ECB meeting.