European Central Bank

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Two days ago, when noting that Italy is on collision course with technical insolvency should its bonds remain at current levels for even one more week, we wrote that "As Italy Hints Of Subordination, Did Rome Just Request A "Semi" Bailout?" Of course, yesterday's big market moving rumor was just this - namely that "supposedly" Germany had agreed to provide the underfunded EFSF and non-existent ESM as ECB SMP replacement vehicles, and implicitly to launch the bailout of not only Spain but also Italy. This turned out to be patently untrue, as we expected, despite speculation having been accepted as fact by various UK newspaper and having taken Europe by a storm of false hope, leading peripheral spreads modestly tighter (and Germany naturally wider). Of course, even if Merkel were to allow the ESM/EFSF to effectively replace the ECB secondary market bond buying, which is what this is all about, nothing will be fixed, and in fact it would lead to even more subordination and more bond selling off of positions which are not held by the ECB or ESM. But that is for the market to digest in 4-6 weeks as it appears nobody still understands how the mechanics of the flawed European rescue mechanism works. In the meantime, now that Italy has tipped its hand, it has only one option: to push full bore demanding that someone, anyone out there buy its bonds. Sadly, Germany just said nein. Again.

Recently, there has been an intense debate in Europe on the TARGET2 system (Trans-European Automated Real-time Gross Settlement Express Transfer System 2), which is the joint gross clearing system of the eurozone the interpretation of this system and its balances has provoked divergent opinions. Some economists, most prominently Hans-Werner Sinn, have argued that TARGET2 amounts to a bailout system. Others have vehemently denied that. Philipp Bagus adresses the question of whether this 'mysterious' system, that we have been so vociferously discussing, simply amounts to an undercover bailout system for unsustainable living standards in the periphery? Concluding by comparing TARGET2, Eurobonds, and the ESM, he notes that all three 'devices' serve as a bailout system and form a tranfer union but governments prefer to hide the losses on taxpayers as long as possible and prefer the ECB to aliment deficits in the meantime.

What the MSM is missing is that Spain's failings make this real. Spain is big enough to bring down the whole shebang, right now, and its banks cannot be salvaged with just a hundred billion or so.

All you can read.

• With big conditions, China Offers $43 Billion for IMF Crisis War Chest (Reuters)... US offers $0.00
• Mexico is not Spain: Mexican Yields Drop to Record as Spain’s Borrowing Costs Soar (Bloomberg)
• And live from Las Ventanas al Paraiso: G-20 Leaders Focus on Banks as Spain's Woes Challenge Merkel (Bloomberg)
• German Constitutional Court Gives Victory to Opposition in ESM Suit (WSJ)
• EU Europe’s Leaders Urged to Resolve Crisis (FT)
• Backing Grows for One EU Bank Supervisor (FT)
• Greek Leaders Close to Coalition, Aim to Ease Bailout (Reuters)
• China Economy Improves in June, Commerce Minister Chen Says (Bloomberg)
• China Looks for Loan Boost (WSJ)

In a meaningless "test" of investor appetite for Spain's Thursday issuance of 2, 3 and 5 years bonds, Spain today sold €3.04 billion in 12 and 18 month bills, well inside the LTRO maturity, and completely meaningless from a risk perspective - after all even Greece is issuing Bills. Yet for some reason the market which continues to be dumber by the day, somehow took the "successful" auction as an indication that there is actual demand for standalone Spanish subordinated debt. And what a 'success' it was: €2.4 billion in 12 month Bills were sold at 5.074%, the highest since at least 2003 and possibly on record. This is more than 2% greater than the same such auction at the end of May. In other words, Spain just locked in absolutely unsustainable 1 year rates. It also sold €639 million of 18 month paper at 5.107% compared to 3.302% less than a month ago. The good news: bids to cover for the two maturities, from 1.8 and 3.2, to 2.2 and 4.4 respectively. And of course they would: Spanish banks found what little LTRO cash they had lying around and in act of total desperation tried to do a carry trade whereby 3 year paper priced at 1% is used to buy 1 year paper yielding 5%.

That Italy is now at most days away from technical insolvency is not news: after all we reported on just this a week ago, citing not some fringe lunatics but Bloomberg economist David Powell who said that "Italy would probably be forced into receiving a bailout if it were to face another two weeks like the last seven days." This was a week ago... so one more week left, and things have not only not gotten better, they have gotten much worse. Which is why we were not very surprised to read the following just released news from Reuters: "Italy will push this week at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers for a semi-automatic mechanism involving the European Central Bank or the permanent bailout fund ESM to reduce spreads of euro zone bonds over Germany, Italy's European Affairs Minister Enzo Moavero said on Monday." Having done this for a while, we can tell Italy what the bond market, having perused the above sentence, just read: "semi-bailout." Because if Italy is implicitly demanding assistance from the ECB, and the Spanish bailout vehicle, the ESM, then things are about to hit the country with the €1.25 trillion in debt. It is all downhill from there. Oh, and here is what the bond market reads when they see ESM: "not so semi-subordination." Because if in Europe the idiotic plan to avoid a bank run is to announce preparations for one, followed by furious back pedaling, it is only logical (and we use the term loosely) that an attempt to avert a bailout will be pursued by requesting a semi version. Instead, that action always and only leads to one thing: waving the sellers right in.

The battle fronts have been drawn out: it is literally the world against Germany.

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This just crossing the streams:

• ECB TO STOP PREPARATIONS FOR COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

We have no idea what this means, but rumor is that the ECB finally looked at its "collateral" and found a picture of the Athens Ministry of Finance...

Back in February 2010, in the aftermath of the discovery that none other than Goldman Sachs had facilitated for nearly a decade the masking of the true magnitude of non-Maastricht conforming Greek debt, Zero Hedge first identified the prospectus for a Goldman underwritten swap agreement securitization titled Titlos PLC. We titled the analysis "Is Titlos PLC The Downgrade Catalyst Trigger Which Will Destroy Greece?" because for all intents and purposes it was: at that time a rating agency downgrade of the country would lead to a chain of events which would make billions in assets ineligible for ECB collateral, forcing a massive margin call on the National Bank of Greece, which likely would have precipitated a Greek default there and then.  But that is irrelevant for the time being: what is relevant is Titlos itself, and what Bloomberg did after we posted the analysis. It appears that in following in the footsteps of Mark Pittman, Bloomberg sued the ECB under Freedom of Information rules requesting "access to two internal papers drafted for the central bank’s six-member Executive Board. They show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3, 2010, note attached to the papers and obtained by Bloomberg News. The first document is entitled “The impact on government deficit and debt from off-market swaps: the Greek case.” The second reviews Titlos Plc, a securitization that allowed National Bank of Greece SA, the country’s biggest lender, to exchange swaps on Greek government debt for funding from the ECB, the Executive Board said in the cover note. The ECB's response: "The European Central Bank said it can’t release files showing how Greece may have used derivatives to hide its borrowings because disclosure could still inflame the crisis threatening the future of the single currency." Maybe. But what is far more likely is that the reason why the ECB, headed by none other than former Goldmanite Mario Draghi, is desperate to keep these documents secret is for another reason. A very simple reason:

Mario Draghi - 2002-2005:  Vice Chairman and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs International

It's not all Aston Martins and Brioni suits for hedge fund managers this year. As Bloomberg reports, "It’s a confluence of tricky markets, super-cautious investors and a tough fundraising environment that’s making it a difficult time for hedge-fund managers." The latest addition to the 775 funds that were shuttered last year (the most since 2009) sees California-dreamer Paul Sinclair liquidating his $458mm health-care equity fund as "political decisions made on the other side of the globe have undermined his stock picks and spurred losses for a second year." Physically and mentally exhausted from his travails (planning to spend the summer sleeping and relaxing), Sinclair joins the wannabe likes of Zoe Cruz and three ex-Moore Capital managers, as he honestly notes "I don’t have an edge on Greek elections, the Spanish banking system, what the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Chinese government, Angela Merkel, or the U.S. Federal Reserve will do." It seems an increasing number of masters-of-the-universe are awakening to what retail seemed to figure out over the past few years - that everyone's a hero in a central-bank-liquidity-driven rally - and as one other hedge fund manager noted in his investor letter "Markets seem to be driven more by the latest news out of Europe than by a company’s earnings prospects, we have not weathered the ensuing volatility well." Once again correlations are rising - 30-day correlation coefficient between the MSCI World Index and its members is 0.92, compared with the average since 1995 of 0.73 - as all that over-priced alpha is shown up as 'central-bank' beta.

Has the Spanish bank bailout set a precedent for all other insolvent EMU member countries to follow? Of course. The only question is when is the stigmata of demanding a bailout (which Europe now has no choice but to grant courtesy of set precedent, be it via ESM or otherwise) less relevant than national pride, than preserving one's banking sector, and preferably preempting the kinds of bank runs that pushed Spain to demand a bailout in the first place. For one small Eurozone member country the answer may be if not now, then very soon. Slovenia's Dnevnik asks a simple question: "How serious is the situation of Slovenian Finance - are we on the way of Spain?" The answer, in not so many words: very likely yes.

All you need to know.