Belgium

The La Stampa rumor that the IMF would bail out Italy has come and gone, roundly refuted by none other than the IMF as expected, but not before lifting futures by over 30 points in the premarket session, and setting a very favorable tone to the market overnight. How long it lasts now depends on the amount of time it takes the bipolar market to realize that the tapped out consumer, already at near multi-year lows in savings, will be unable to carry this holiday period despite what the Retail Federation reported about supposedly record Black Friday sales. But for now all is forgiven and not a moment too soon: after all S&P had just downgraded Belgium which was coming to market with a new 10 year bond issuance. And courtesy of the US consumer, the auction was not a failure, yet still pricing over 1% higher compared to a month ago, or at 5.659% compared to 4.372% on October 31. Still, the bid to cover rose, and thus the modestly successful auction saw the 10 year yield drop 16bps to 5.7%, the biggest decline in a month and the first in 6 days; hit 5.91% earlier, highest since  2000. Just shortly before Belgium, Italy sold €567MM in 2.6% 2023 Inflation Linked linkers at a bid to cover of 2.16 but most importantly at a yield of 7.3%. This was an epic collapse compared to the last such issuance from October 27 when 2.1% I/Ls due 2021 priced at a 2.14 B/C and a 4.61% yield: nearly a 2.7% increase. And somehow this unsustainable yield (not to mention another BTP auction tomorrow) is considered a good thing: the 10 Year dropped to just over 7% in the auction aftermath after hitting 7.3% earlier. And for now Europe is on the backburner with all eyes on how few contracts of ES can get the S&P up 3% today: all signs of a perfectly functioning market.

The dominos are now falling daily, if not hourly. We give AustriAAA a few days at the most. Just as we hinted earlier in the week when the Dexia deal started to crumble, it seems a major driver of the downgrade is the country's financial sector risk.

Belgium just can't get a break. While its simultaneously arguing with France and Luxembourg over Dexia's bailout burden and suffering under a total lack of government, Merkel's unequivocal comments on Euro-bonds did nothing to save the ailing nation. Then business confidence prints worse than expected continuing its worse slide since 1993. Not only are Belgian government yields at record highs but so is the spread to German Bunds (at 350bps) and French OATs as Dexia's credit also cracks to record wides.

Presented with little comment (Belgium spreads +26bps) - but with Fitch worrying over France and Dexia becoming more of an anchor, perhaps the ECB is applying its own special type of pressure to get the deal done (or to force Rehn's austerity measures) - by not intervening.

If anyone is surprised that things in Europe will get massively surreal before this is all over, we suggest finding another thread. In the meantime, for the latest example of the utter chaos and "make it up as we go along" we go to the ECB which has just, in very polite terms, warned Belgium that its bailout-cum-nationalization plan may not be quite feasible. From Bloomberg: "The European Central Bank advised Belgium not to backstop Dexia SA’s interbank deposits and to avoid providing guarantees on debt maturing within three months because it risks interfering with the central bank’s monetary policy." Reading between the lines here, it means that the ECB is effectively telling national governments to not try and become their own central banks under the ECB's umbrella, which would likely result in not only in various sovereign downgrades (that is guaranteed) but in loss of conviction in the European Central Bank, something which the insolvent European continent and the insolvent hedge fund in its core, aka Jean-Claude Trichet Capital et Cie. which holds hundreds of billions of Greek bonds at par, can certainly not avoid. It gets better: "The ECB also said the planned debt guarantees for Dexia may last as long as 20 years, which is inconsistent with European Union guidelines for national support measures to be temporary in nature, according to a statement published on the Frankfurt- based central bank’s website and dated Oct. 13. Belgium sought the ECB’s opinion on draft legislation that would grant state guarantees on Dexia loans." Oops: the ECB may have just scuttled the currently envisioned Dexia bailout plan. Oh well, just like with the Greek 50% bond haircut, so here to it is now back to the drawing board.

Chaos theory states than in complex systems, a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan can cause tornadoes in California. Whether or not that is true, a Banker in Belgium buying Greek bonds can impact the lives of factory workers in Germany. Europe continues to head down the path of making the system more complex than ever and ensuring that no bad lending, investing, or borrowing decision is ever punished.

We would point out that USD Libor is wider again this morning but at this point it is irrelevant: for a multi-billion core European bank to go insolvent "overnight" (nobody could have foreseen it and all that), and with Libor to still be trading under 1%, and specifically, under the USD FX swap line penalty rate, it means that the BBA market is either completely broken or criminally corrupt and colluded. Take your pick. So instead we will focus on what actually does matter in the market, such as the fact that ever more banks are exhibiting the fear and loathing discussed earlier this weekend, with an unprecedented scramble to dump every last eurocent in the "safety" of the ECB's clutches: as of Friday, a whopping €255.6 billion ($345 billion) in cash stood idle, and hence as far away as possibl;e from normal interbank liquidity, parked with the ECB: the highest since June 30, 2010. Expect this number to jump even more tomorrow when the Monday, aka "post-Dexia" number is released. And elsewhere, as expected, Belgium sovereign bonds are already starting to take on ever more water, as Belgium and France 10 year notes fall and the French 10 yield hits highest in over a month. Belgium and France govt bonds will be pressured as fallout from Dexia highlights risks and costs to state from banks’ exposure to peripheral debt, Padhraic Garvey, strategist at ING, writes in note. Specifically, the Belgium 10 Year yield is at +7bps to 4.05% while the 2-yr yield +4bps to 2.34%. At least the curve is not massively inverting just yet. In France, the 10 Year yield is +7bps to 2.83%, the highest since Sept. 2. The spread widening in these two countries will not stop as an imminent rating agency downgrade overhang is now a threat to bondholders of both countries. Said otherwise, the Dexia-Belgium CDS compression trade is alive and profitable.

The latest from Bloomberg on the story that just won't quit: "Belgium received approval from France to buy as much as 100 percent of Dexia SA (DEXB)’s Belgian consumer bank as part of proposals to dismantle the French-Belgian lender, three people with knowledge of the talks said. [read: Good Bank is fully nationalized; only Dexia's approval is now needed, and that has not come yet...] The price of the Belgian bank is under discussion at a meeting of Dexia’s board of directors in Brussels, and an agreement on that transaction may be announced as soon as tonight, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private."

To all those who bought Belgium CDS as per our compression trade suggested earlier today, congratulations. Oh and the part in the Moody's announcement where it says that a main driver of the review is "The uncertainty around the impact on the already pressured balance sheet of the government of additional bank support measures which are likely to be needed" means that anyone harboring even the smallest hope that France will be within 100 parsecs of Dexia when the broke bank is nationalized, may be slightly disappointed.

We must have missed the moment when Jim Cramer defended Morgan Stanley today, but judging by the company's CDS which is +30 to a ridonculous 610/650, he must have said something positive. In fact, the bank's "outperformance" is only matched by that of Waffled which as we have been saying since Friday is going to meet Dexia about halfway. Today it is +23 to 290/300, the worst performer of any country in the world.

Two months ago we said core European default risk is about to surge on risk transfer fears. This morning German CDS just hit a record. Yesterday, and on Friday, we said Belgium CDS is about to be monkeyhammered. Sure enough, Belgium is the worst performed of all European sovereigns, +18 on the day and soaring and threatens to go offerless as we type on imminent Dexia nationalization fears. And there's your alpha for the day.

Fear is quite obviously rearing its ugly head once again tonight and Belgium's ever-ready-for-an-understatement finance minister Reynders told La Tribune that the euro area may need as much as two years to overcome the sovereign debt crisis. We think it will all be over one way or another by then. As the US Treasury market opens for business tonight, yields are reflecting the fearful action seen in futures markets and dropping notably. The 2Y has just traded at its lowest yield ever at 15.12bps and the 10Y is trying its best to hold above yet another Maginot line at 2.0026%. Credit markets are also starting to crack wider as they open for trading with financials and non-financials notably wider already. While risk-assets in general are offered and safe-haven TSYs are bid, we are seeing PMs gently glide higher and note an interesting article in today's FT that asserts European Central Banks have resumed net-buying Gold after 20 years of consistent selling.

Just when we thought the world was running out of headlines, here come something that will send futures scurrying for even more safety. According to Belgian Nieuwsblad, the CEO of Belgium's biggest bank has just resigned. As a reminder, Dexia is the one European bank that in the 2008-2009 period borrowed more money from the Fed than anyone else, and which we have discussed on several occasions in the past few months as being rumored to be on the receiving end of a variety of liquidity "complications" and countreparty concerns. Typically rumors of that nature, coupled with the sudden departure of the CEO, end up being proven as fact shortly to quite shortly. In other news, we are happy to announce the expansion of the PIIGS to BIG PIS following the arrival of the latest country to join the sovereign and bank funding crisis.

Kiss the free market goodbye. Spain's and France's regulator have both just announced that the short selling ban, which was supposed to expire tomorrow, has now been extended until the end of September 30, and November 11, respectively. Add to this Belgium and Greece whose regulators announced they will lift its own short selling ban "when conditions allow", or some time in October, in and we can pretty much be confident that the European market rout seen earlier is due to someone leaking the news that price discovery in Europe is now officially over.

Stop the presses. Barely did we have time to report that European regulators failed to impose a coordinated short selling ban, that Bloomberg reports that the countries most impact by the market plunge are about to impose standalone short-selling bans. These are Belgium, Italy, Spain and France. In other words, it really is on and the 2008 Lehman PTSD flashbacks may now resume. Until we get a headline that says it isn't. The rescue of the Borsa Italian is now more schizophrenic than that of Greece. As a reminder, in the previous post the FT quoted Abraham Lioui, a professor at the Edhec business school in France, who said “It is the worst thing to do right now. This would signal to the market there may be something fundamentally bad that is happening."  He is correct. Something is fundamentally very wrong and about to break.