Creditors

• Merkel Seeks to Reassure China (FT)
• German-IMF Rift Stalls Greece Deal (WSJ)
• Survey of Banks Shows a Sharp Cut in Lending in Europe (NYT)
• Bernanke to testify on economy and deficit (AP)
• House votes to freeze congressional, federal pay (WaPo)

All in, with an opt out?

Anyone who went to bed with the EURUSD about to breach 1.30 to the downside may have been surprised this morning to see it trading nearly 150 pips higher. Checking the headlines for news of a Greek deal however would be futile, as one did not occur. Instead what did, were more promises of a deal being "imminent" even as Greece is doing all it can to appease intransigent creditors, offering GDP upside warrants (something that did not work too well for Argentina), with the IMF stating it demands guarantees that this time Greece will follow through with promises. Oddly enough the German demand for fiscal overrule has gotten lost in the noise but is certainly not forgotten and last we checked Merkel has not withdrawn this polite request. Still futures are up, primarily on a smattering of better than expected PMIs, in China and Europe. Alas, the Chinese PMI beat as discussed last night, was more of a cold water shower as the market had been hoping for much more defined promises of PBoC intervention and instead got a lukewarm Goldilocks economy which could last quite a bit longer without RRR-cuts. As for European PMI numbers being better than expected, we only wonder if these now correlate with the prevailing unemployment rate throughout the Eurozone.

Because the last time the administration got involved in the car space the results were so positive (for the unions if not so much for creditors), it appears we may be approaching another episode where central planning will make the decisions in the US auto space. Only this time instead of creditors, the impaired party will be China. Reuters reports: "Midwestern U.S. lawmakers and union groups on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to restrict imports of auto parts from China that they said benefited from massive illegal subsidies and threatened hundreds of thousands of American jobs. "We need to stand up to the bully on the block," U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said, referring to Beijing. "The bully on the block continues to take our lunch money and we need to stop that," she said." Odd - China was not complaining when the Obama administration was providing massive subsidies (whether or not illegal remains to be seen  - surely Holder is all over it) to the solar and other "green" industries. In other words, just like Solyndra and Ener1, who are merely the first of many artificially subsidized entities, provided such great if highly transitory results for US employment, let's recreate the experiment at the wholesale level, by implicit subsidies and while also angering America's biggest creditor. Something tells us this proposal has a definite probability of passing. In the meantime, central planning for everyone.

Your article gives the appearance of having been ghost written by Andrew Levander and/or the JP Morgan legal department.

The most recent addition to the "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise" pile comes from Reuters, which reports that the latest out of Greece is a proposal for even greater cuts for creditors than previously expected. From Reuters: "Greece's private sector creditors could take a loss of more than 70 percent in a planned debt swap, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Tuesday. "There is a very serious discussion based on new facts. We are talking about a PSI much greater than the original," he told lawmakers, referring to private sector involvement in the deal. "We are talking about a haircut on the net present value exceeding 70 percent," he said." What this means, simply, is that when calculating the NPV of the post-reorg bond, the Yield to Maturity is now less than 30%, and thus is likely going to have a cash coupon of about 3.6%. This is relevant because as is known, one component of the creditor recovery is receipt of EFSF bill in lieu of cash to the tune of 15 cents of notional, and the balance, at least until this point, would have been a 35% yielding piece of post-reorg paper. That was the case when the cash coupon was 4%. Going forward, and assuming a 3.6% cash coupon, the return on this fresh start debt drops substantially. Needless to say, creditors will almost certainly balk at this, because when it comes to calculating real yield, most are expecting a roughly 90% recovery at best on the EFSF strip (as every fund will scramble to dump their paper), so 14 cents on the total, and then funds are also hoping for at least 1 year of current yield, i.e., cash coupon. It becomes iffy around the 2 year mark, as it is a roughly 90% probability that Greece will file for bankruptcy yet again just after the first coupon is paid, at least according to hedge fund return calculations. It also means that nobody gives a rats ass about the IRR, but most are only concerned with what the cash coupon will be that they can collect for one, max two years. Which explains why at 14 cents + 3.6 + 3.6 or 21.2, which is where Greek paper trades currently, there is absolutely no upside for creditors, and the only real upside option is to hold out for sovereign debt litigation, where the recovery could be as high as par. Expect no deal to come out of this, despite what the IFF, which now likely represents just Deutsche Bank and SocGen, says. So much for that upper hand.

The post-hoc (correlation implies causation) reasons for why the initial LTRO spurred bond buying are many-fold but as Nomura points out in a recent note (confirming our thoughts from last week) investors (especially bank stock and bondholders) should be very nervous at the size of the next LTRO. Whether it was anticipation of carry trades becoming self-reinforcing, bank liquidity shock buffering, or pre-funding private debt market needs, financials and sovereigns have rallied handsomely, squeezing new liquidity realities into a still-insolvent (and no-growth / austerity-driven) region. Concerns about the durability of the rally are already appearing as Greek PSI shocks, Portugal contagion, mark-to-market risks impacting repo and margin call event risk, increased dispersion among European (core and peripheral) curves, and the dramatic rise in ECB Deposits (or negative carry and entirely unproductive liquidity use) show all is not Utopian. However, the largest concern, specifically for bondholders of the now sacrosanct European financials, is if LTRO 2.0 sees heavy demand (EUR200-300bn expected, EUR500bn would be an approximate trigger for 'outsize' concerns) since, as we pointed out previously, this ECB-provided liquidity is effectively senior to all other unsecured claims on the banks' balance sheets and so implicitly subordinates all existing unsecured senior and subordinated debt holders dramatically (and could potentially reduce any future willingness of private investors to take up demand from capital markets issuance - another unintended consequence). We have long suggested that with the stigma gone and markets remaining mostly closed, banks will see this as their all-in moment and grab any and every ounce of LTRO they can muster (which again will implicitly reduce all the collateral that was supporting the rest of their balance sheets even more). Perhaps the hope of ECB implicit QE in the trillions is not the medicine that so many money-printing-addicts will crave and a well-placed hedge (Senior-Sub decompression or 3s5s10s butterfly on financials) or simple underweight to the equity most exposed to the capital structure (and collateral constrained) impact of LTRO will prove fruitful.

No shame. 

All you need to read.

What is the bottom line?  The stark decline in the BDI today should be taken very seriously.  Most similar declines have occurred right before or in tandem with economic instability and stock market upheaval.  All the average person need do is look around themselves, and they will find a European Union in the midst of detrimental credit downgrades and on the verge of dissolving.  They will find the U.S. on the brink of yet another national debt battle and hostage to a private Federal Reserve which has announced the possibility of a third QE stimulus package which will likely be the last before foreign creditors begin dumping our treasuries and our currency in protest.  They will find BRIC and ASEAN nations moving quietly into multiple bilateral trade agreements which cut out the use of the dollar as a world reserve completely.  Is it any wonder that the Baltic Dry Index is in such steep deterioration? Along with this decline in global demand is tied another trend which many traditional deflationists and Keynesians find bewildering; inflation in commodities.  Ultimately, the BDI is valuable because it shows an extreme faltering in the demand for typical industrial materials and bulk items, which allows us to contrast the increase in the prices of necessities.  Global demand is waning, yet prices are holding at considerably high levels or are rising (a blatant sign of monetary devaluation).  Indeed, the most practical conclusion would be that the monster of stagflation has been brought to life through the dark alchemy of criminal debt creation and uncontrolled fiat stimulus.  Without the BDI, such disaster would be much more difficult to foresee, and far more shocking when its full weight finally falls upon us.  It must be watched with care and vigilance...

Both the ECB and the Fed are accepting poorer and poorer sludge and collateral to back various liquidity schemes.

You've just crossed over...

When the first revision of the second Greek bailout to the tidy round number of €130 billion was announced, we scoffed, mockingly. Because a country which then had a 7% budget deficit, and now has a deficit that will be well in the double digits, and not to mention a banking system that is now hollow following tens of billions in deposit withdrawals as month after month the Greek bank run gets worse, would obviously need much more liquidity (but banish the thought that it is a solvency crisis...) Sure enough, earlier today Der Spiegel broke the news that the second bailout, which has yet to be re-ratified, and absent Greece meeting demands to cede fiscal sovereignty, is likely a non-starter, would be increased to €145 billion "citing an unidentified official from the so-called troika." So whether or not this is true is irrelevant: what matters is that Spiegel released the article in the same series of posts in which it explained just why Germany has full right to demand (via European enforcement mechanisms or however) virtually anything in exchange for the ongoing endless bailout (such as: Merkel macht Wahlkampf für Sarkozy and Griechenland sträubt sich gegen EU-Aufpasser). Which means one thing only: the great propaganda spin machine is now on, and its only purpose is to provide Germany a buffer of "having done everything in its power" to prevent the now inevitable Greek default. Which, incidentally, means that a Greek default is inevitable. Because at this point once the default floodgates open, the question will be not where the bonds will trade, but just how big the impairment on the European DIP (aka Troika bailout package) will be.

Following yesterday's frankly stunning news that the Troika politely requests that Greece hand over its first fiscal, then pretty much all other, sovereignty to "Europe", here is the Greek just as polite response to the Troika's foray into outright colonialism:

• GREEK GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN DECLARES THAT THE BUDGET IS SOLELY ITS RESPONSIBILITY - DJ

What is interesting here is that unlike the highly irrelevant IIF negotiations which will end in a Greek default one way or another, the real plotline that should be followed is this one: because unless Germany, pardon the Troika, gets the one condition it demands, namely "absolute priority to debt service" and "transfer of national budgetary sovereignty", as well as a "constitutional amendment" thereto. there is no Troika funding deal. Furthermore, since as a reminder the PSI talks are just the beginning, the next step is ensuring compliance, as was noted yesterday ("[ceding sovereignty] will reassure public and private creditors that the Hellenic Republic will  honour its comittments after PSI and will positively influence market access"), any refusal to implement such demands is an automatic dealbreaker. Which means anything Dallara and the IIF say, as representatives of a steering committee that at this point probably constitutes of one bondholder, with the bulk having shifted to the ad hoc committee, is irrelevant. Germany just got its answer. And the next step is, as Zero Hedge first suggested, an epic LTRO in precisely one month, whose sole purpose will be to prefund European banks ahead of the Greek default with enough cash to withstand Europe's Bear Stearns. Although as a reminder, in the US, Bear Stearns only led to Lehman and the global "all in" gambit to preserve the financial system by shifting bank insolvency risk to the sovereigns (a chart showing bank assets as a percentage of host countries' GDP can be found here). But who will bailout the world's central banks which already collectively hold over 30% of global GDP in the form of "assets", or as this term is better known these days, debt?

• Greek Debt Wrangle May Pull Default Trigger (Bloomberg)
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• EU Official Sees Bailout-Fund Boost (WSJ)
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