Eurozone

• Spiegel: Stop the 130-billion bank transfer! (Spiegel)
• Greece Wins Bailout as Europe Chooses Aid Over Default (Bloomberg)
• Greek pro-bailout parties at all-time low, poll shows (Reuters)
• Eurozone agrees €130bn Greek bail-out (FT)
• Top Banks in EU Rush for Safety (WSJ)
• Medvedev Adviser Says Kudrin Would Be Better Prime Minister (Bloomberg)
• US and Mexico in landmark oil deal (FT)
• McCain calls for US to support Syria rebels (FT)
• Coal Shipments to India Overtaking China on Fuel Shortage (Bloomberg)
• Gillard Shrugs Off Ousting Threat (WSJ)

Those who have been correct about the crisis in recent years question whether a new Greek government will stick to the deeply unpopular program after elections due in April and believe Athens could again fall behind in implementation, prompting lenders to pull the plug once the eurozone has stronger financial firewalls in place. The much used phrase "kicking the can down the road" underestimates the risks being created by European and international policy makers. Some have rightly warned that we will likely soon run out of road. Rather than "kicking the can down the road" what politicians in Europe, in the U.S. and internationally are actually doing is "kicking a giant beer keg down the road".  The giant beer keg is the continual resort to cheap money in the form of ultra loose monetary policies, QE1, QE2, QE3 etc, money printing and electronic money creation on a scale never seen before in history. The road is our modern international financial and monetary system. The risk is that attempting to kick the giant beer keg down the road will lead to many broken feet and a destroyed road.  A European, US, Japanese and increasingly global debt crisis will not be solved by creating more debt and making taxpayers pay odious debts incurred through massively irresponsible lending practices of international banks. The likelihood of continuing massive liquidity injections by the ECB next week and in the coming weeks will help keep the opportunity cost of holding bullion the lowest it has ever been and likely contribute to higher bullion prices especially in euro terms in the coming months.

Yeah, we had the same response as our readers when we saw that freak move in the EURUSD. Apparently, despite the fact that absolutely nothing has been resolved, Reuters just ran a headline that "Euro zone reaches deal on second Greek bailout package." And that is all it took for the EURUSD headline scanning algos to surge by 60 100 pips. That there nothing substantial in it, or that this is merely a rephrasing of the actual Bailout 2 announcement from before, is irrelevant. Here is what the actual Reuters report said.

The FT's Peter Spiegel has scoped up some additional details from the 10 page debt sustainability analysis that is at the basis of the latest Greek bailout talks. Some of the critical details:

• "even under the most optimistic scenario, the austerity measures being imposed on Athens risk a recession so deep that Greece will not be able to climb out of the debt hole over the course of the new €170bn bail-out."
• A German-led group of creditor countries – including the Netherlands and Finland – has expressed extreme reluctance since they received the report about the advisability of allowing the second rescue to go through.
• A “tailored downside scenario” prepared for eurozone leaders in the report suggests Greek debt could fall far more slowly than hoped, to only 160 per cent of economic output by 2020 – far below the target of 120 per cent set by the International Monetary Fund
  • Under such a scenario, Greece would need about €245bn in bail-out aid, nearly twice the €136bn under the “baseline” projections.
• “Prolonged financial support on appropriate terms by the official sector may be necessary,” the report said, a clear reference to the possibility that bail-out funds may be needed indefinitely.
• Even in best case scenario country will need at least €50 billion on top of €136 billion.
• A recapitalisation of the Greek banking sector, which originally was projected to cost €30bn, will now cost €50bn. A highly touted Greek privatisation plan, which originally hoped to raise €50bn, will now be delayed by five years and bring in only €30bn by the end of the decade.

Translated, this is yet another confirmation of what we have claimed all along - that Germany is no longer playing along.

A massive 150bn euro bill exclusively reserved for the EU-IMF funding of the "official" (OSI) and the private (PSI) sector participations in the Greek writedown on Greek debt may be the key factor behind the ongoing delays in the eurozone finance ministers' approval of a second bailout for Greece. This factor remains concealed behind media hysteria about the supposed failure of Athens to comply with a brutal austerity diktat by the EU-IMF-ECB 'troika'....The question is how will the Eurogroup approve these PSI participation costs that far exceed the supposed gain from the 100bn euro "haircut" but also leave nothing to cover Greece's debt servicing obligations for 2012-2014 of at least another 70bn euros to say nothing of possible budget deficits due to the collapse of public revenues in the fifth consecutive year of a Greek depression. All the histrionics about forcing Greece to set up a separate “escrow account that would give legal priority to debt and interest payments over paying for government expenses”, is nothing but a smokescreen for piling massive sums of fresh public debt on Greece's shoulders without lending a single penny to make up for the economic catastrophe meted out on the country.

There is nothing new in this interview of Spiegel magazine with Ken Rogoff, but it is refreshing to listen to a person who has at least some standing in the arena of grand self-delusion (i.e., economics and capital markets), telling it like it is. While he rehashes all the old points, these bear reminding as the key one is what happens to Germany as the can kicking becomes a new default exercise in preserving bank "solvency" at the expense of the last stable economy: when asked if in 2015 the Eurozone will be the same, his response: "It may well be the case that all current members remain in the euro zone, and that Germany keeps on shouldering the ever-increasing debts of other countries. But the price of such a scenario is very high for all involved: southern Europe would become embroiled in permanent stagnation and the German economy would eventually be dragged down to a slower growth trajectory." So even though everyone knows that Europe is doomed in its current configuration, let's all just pretend things shall be well, and keep the even more doomed banks alive for a few more quarters? Is the loss of a banker bonus truly such a great catastrophe to society that countries have to remain in a state of perpetual misery until it all finally unwinds? Judging by today's market action the answer is yes.

Run your on Greek default scenario right here. An online sovereign default calculator, of sorts...

I am staggered at how easily the concepts of Democracy and the Rule of Law – two of the pillars of the modern world – have been brushed aside in the interests of political expediency. This is not just a eurozone phenomenon but of course the removal of elected governments and the instalment of "insider" technocrats who simply serve the interests of the elite has become a specialisation in Europe. Many will think this kind of development is not a big deal and is instead may be what is needed. Personally I am absolutely certain that the kind of totalitarianism being pushed on us by our leaders will – if allowed to persist and fester – end with consequences which are way beyond anything the printing presses of our central banks could ever hope to contain. Communism failed badly. Why then are we arguably trying to resurrect a version of it, particularly in Europe? Are the banks so powerful that we are all beholden to them and the biggest nonsense of all – that defaults should never happen (unless said defaults are trivial or largely meaningless)?...– So, in terms of markets, be warned. My personal recommendation is to sit in Gold and non-financial high quality corporate credit and blue-chip big cap non-financial global equities. Bond and Currency markets are now so rigged by policy makers that I have no meaningful insights to offer, other than my bubble fears...The end of the bubble will be sign posted by either monetary anarchy creating major real economy inflation or by a deflationary credit collapse (if they run out of pumping "mandates"). The end game is incredibly binary in my view, but in between it is pretty much a random walk. Either way, "bonds are toast" in any secular timeframe (due either to huge inflationary pressures, or due to a deflationary credit collapse), which in turn means that asset bubbles in risky assets will get crushed on a secular basis.

Let's put things back into perspective. Europe is lending money to Greece, which according to latest rumors will at least for the time being be in the form of the dreaded Escrow Account, which in turn means that the only recipients of bailout cash will be Greek creditors, whose claims will be senior to that of the government. In other words, it will be up to Greece, and specifically its own tax "collectors" to provide the actual funding needed to run the country as bailout or not bailout, Greek mandatory (forget discretionary) expenditures will not see one penny from Europe. As a reminder, the country is already €1 billion behind schedule in revenue collections which are down 7% Y/Y compared to an expectation of 9% rise. As a further reminder, the one defining characteristic of Greek tax collectors is that they are prone to striking. Virtually all the time. And that is assuming they even have the ink to print the required tax forms. Which last year they did not. So under what realistic assumptions are Greek tax collectors laboring in the current tax year? Why, nothing short of them having to be not 100%, but 200% more efficient. From Kathimerini: "Greece’s tax collectors were told over the weekend that they would have to do a much better job this year at gathering overdue taxes. How much better? Almost 200 percent." And this, unfortunately, is where the Greek bailout comes to a screeching halt, because while it is no secret that Greek "bailouts" do nothing for the country, but merely enforce ever more stringent austerity to mask the fact that all the cash is simply going from one banker pocket to another, it is the pandemic corruption embedded in generations of behavior that is at the root of all Greek evil. And there is no eradicating that. Now tomorrow, and not by 2020.

For several weeks now we have been warning that while the conventional wisdom is that Europe will never let Greece slide into default, Germany has been quietly preparing for just that. This culminated on Friday when the schism between Merkel, who is of the persuasion that Greece should remain in the Eurozone, and her Finmin, Wolfgang "Dr. Strangle Schauble" Schauble, who isn't, made Goldman Sachs itself observe that there is: "Growing dissent between Chancellor Merkel and finance minister Schäuble regarding Greece." We now learn, courtesy of the Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield, that Germany is far deeper in Greece insolvency preparations than conventional wisdom thought possible (if not Zero Hedge, where we have been actively warning for over two weeks that Germany is perfectly eager and ready to roll the dice on a Greek default). Yet it is not only Germany that is getting ready for the inevitable. So is Greece.

The ethics of debt, at least in the officially sanctioned media, boils down to: nobody made them borrow all those euros, and so their suffering is just desserts. What's lost in this subtext is the responsibility of the lender. Yes, nobody forced Greece to borrow 200 billion euros (or whatever the true total may be), but then nobody forced the lenders to extend the credit in the first place. Consider an individual who is a visibly poor credit risk. He would like to borrow money to blow on consumption and then stiff the lender, but since he cannot create credit, he has to live within his means. Now a lender comes along who can create credit out of thin air (via fractional reserve banking) and offers this poor credit risk $100,000 in collateral-free debt at low rates of interest. Who is responsible for the creation and extension of credit? The borrower or the lender? Answer: the lender. In other words, if the lender is foolish enough to extend huge quantities of credit to a poor credit risk, then it's the lender who should suffer the losses when the borrower defaults. This is the basis of bankruptcy laws--or used to be the basis. When an over-extended borrower defaults, the debt is cleared, the lender takes the loss/writedown, and the borrower loses whatever collateral was pledged. He is left with the basics to carry on: his auto, clothing, his job, and so on. His credit rating is impaired, and it is now his responsibility to earn back a credible credit rating....The potential for loss and actually bearing the consequences from irresponsible extensions of credit was unacceptable to the banking cartel, so they rewrote the laws. Now student loans in America cannot be discharged in bankruptcy court; they are permanent and must be carried and serviced until death. This is the acme of debt-serfdom.

Open Europe has published a briefing note outlining the ten questions and issues that still need to be resolved in the coming weeks in order for Greece to avoid a full and disorderly default on March 20. The briefing argues that, realistically, only a few of these issues are likely to be fully resolved before the deadline meaning that Greece’s future in the euro will come down to one question: whether Germany and other Triple A countries will deem this to be enough political cover to approve the second Greek bailout package. In particular, the briefing argues that recent analyses of Greece’s woes have underplayed the importance of the problems posed by the large amount of funding which needs to be released to ensure the voluntary Greek restructuring can work – almost €94bn – as well as the massive time constraints presented by issues such as getting parliamentary approval for the bailout deal in Germany and Finland. While the eurozone also continues to ignore or side-line questions over the whether a 120% debt-to-GDP ratio in 2020 would be sustainable and if, given the recent riots, Greece has come close to the social and political level of austerity which it can credibly enforce.

QE 3?  Been there, done that

Market participants continued to react positively to yesterday’s reports that Euro-zone central banks, via the ECB, are to exchange the Greek bonds they hold for new bonds, without CAC’s, to help the Greek debt deal. As a result, stock futures traded higher throughout the session, led by the financials sector, while the health-care sector which is characterised by defensive-investment properties underperformed. Looking elsewhere, EUR/GBP traded briefly below the 0.8300 level, while GBP/USD continued to consolidate above the 1.5800 level following the release of better than expected retail sales. Hopes that a Greek deal is in the pipeline also lifted EUR/USD, which trades in close proximity to an intraday option expiry at 1.3110.

Yesterday, when the rumor (because it has not been confirmed by the ECB, and most certainly not by the Bundesbank) that the ECB would distribute its "gains" (i.e., personally fund the difference between cost basis and par on Greek bonds - incidentally, a development which BUBA president Jens Weidmann has said would only happen over his dead body) we urged readers  "to ignore the constant barrage of meaningless noise and flashing red headlines" as apparently nobody who trades the EURUSD has any clue what subordination means or has ever participated in any debt for equity transaction. Specifically, with regard to the idiotic EURUSD reaction we said: "Today [yesterday] is a great case in point of a tangential detour which does nothing to change the reality that Germany no longer wants Greece in the Eurozone (remember, oh, yesterday), and that the ECB is merely playing possum with PSI creditors who will block the deal with even greater vigor than before (anyone recall the FT story about the PSI deal being on the verge of collapse not due to the ECB but due to private creditors?) as the ECB's even bigger subordination will simply make the amount of hold outs even greater." We concluded by assuming that "algos will take the required 12-48 hours to figure out what just happened today." Well, the algos are still lost in idiot vacuum tube world, but at least the banks are starting to comprehend what the 'deal' really means and that the Nash Equilibrium is even worse than before. From Bloomberg: "A plan being considered by the European Central Bank to shield its Greek bond holdings from a restructuring may hurt the euro because it implies senior status for the ECB over other investors, UBS AG said. “There are at least two euro-negative dimensions, which will likely lead to euro weakness” as a result of the plan, Chris Walker, a foreign-exchange strategist at UBS in London, wrote in a research report today." Once again, we urge all FX traders to read our primer on subordination, and why and how it will define trading this year, as reactions such as the one yesterday confirm that the market is not only broken but also very stupid. Which is just as those in charge like it.