Greece

This weekend’s not so secret meeting was the first step towards what could be a rapid end game of Greek debt restructuring. The lenders are unlikely to give Greece the exact same terms as Portugal and seem intent on demanding collateral against future loans. Greece must resist providing collateral since it now realizes it will not be able to pay back all the debt. Greece will push hard for better terms, but if collateral is required, it will be in Greece’s best interest to restructure sooner rather than later. Since the sovereign restructuring process is a negotiation without much ability to use the courts, Greece will find a way to minimize the damage to itself and its citizens while creating a debt structure that is sustainable. This will all be done while retaining the Euro as its currency. Greece may be looking at re-introducing new Drachmas, but this round of restructuring will still be in Euros.

• Under our sovereign ratings criteria, a commercial debt rescheduling typically constitutes a default.
• In our view, there is increased risk that Greece will take steps to restructure the terms of its commercial debt, including its previously-issued government bonds.
• Accordingly, we are lowering both the long- and short-term ratings on Greece to 'B' and 'C', respectively.
• We are leaving both ratings on CreditWatch Negative.

Well, nobody is leaving the eurozone (as expected), but EU is merely ratcheting up the rhetoric one notch seeing full well what happens to countries that continue to endorse unlimited banker bail outs. And it is likely that the war of words will simply continue escalating until such time as the Greek restructuring becomes inevitable, which will likely happen not sooner than a year from now due to Greek bailout liquidity availability and nobody will push the country to do the inevitable until there is even one spare euro in the coffers for fears of what will happen to Deutsche Bank and the European financial domino. So for those wondering what happened at last night's secret finance minister meeting, one one hand, as Dow Jones reports, Greece "asked its euro-zone partners to ease the country's deficit targets as it struggles to comply with strict austerity terms set under last year's financial bailout agreement, a senior euro-zone government official said Saturday. The senior official said Greece acknowledged that it is unlikely to be able to return to the bond market next year and might need to tap the European Financial Stability Facility, the EU's new bailout fund, for funding. A German proposal to possibly extend the maturities of Greek debt falling due in 2012 also was discussed, this person said. Athens has a long-term borrowing requirement of EUR27 billion in 2012. "Greece has asked for the deficit targets to be eased, specifically to push the budget deficit target of 3% of GDP in 2014 forward by at least two years."" Alas, as expected the latest panhandling attempt by Greece was met with abject failure: "No decisions were taken, according to the Commission's statement. Greece's request for easier terms didn't win the assent of Germany and other participants in Friday's meeting, according to a senior European official." In other words, the country is on autopilot, and possibly worse. Per Bloomberg: "European Union officials may require Greece to provide collateral for aid as policy makers struggle to prevent the euro area’s first sovereign debt restructuring, said a person with direct knowledge of the situation."In other words, for the first time since Weimar, a country may soon be forced to collateralize superpriority debt issuance to foreign creditors: an exercise not really seen in international politics since the Weimar war reparations... and at least Germany had its own currency back then. Summary: the EU just told Greece to prepare for Debtor in Possession loan issuance. Basically should Greece default, and it will, the Parthenon will go to Germany, Santorini will go to Luxembourg, Piraeos will likely end up in IMF hands, and the Chinese will own the rest. Welcome to sovereign debt restructurings for the 21st century.

Just as expected:

• EU'S JUNCKER SAYS `STUPID' TO TALK OF GREECE EURO EXIT
• EU'S JUNCKER SAYS `NO WAY' GREECE WILL LEAVE EURO AREA
• EU MINISTERS TO DISCUSS NEW `ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM' FOR GREECE

But yes, the EURUSD will open at 1.43 on Monday, not 1.45. FX ping pong game mission accomplished.

From Reuters: Senior Greek government official denies report that Greece raises possibility of leaving Eurozone. So pretty much everyone has denied this, the EUR has crashed, and in a worst case the EUR is one step closer to reverting to its fair value: the DEM? Of course, with a record number of EUR longs, meaning the spec bandwagon in the EURUSD is orders of magnitude greater than the silver trade, the kneejerk response was down, and likely wrong. And yes, if Greece has gotten so far, German banks are certainly now happy to write off their exposure, and convert their EUR-denom Greek exposure to the drachma. The only question is what the impact to the ECB would be. As per Spiegel: "The European Central Bank (ECB) would also feel the effects. The Frankfurt-based institution would be forced to "write down a significant portion of its claims as irrecoverable." In addition to its exposure to the banks, the ECB also owns large amounts of Greek state bonds, which it has purchased in recent months. Officials at the Finance Ministry estimate the total to be worth at least €40 billion ($58 billion). Of course, the ECB can simply print, print, print.

• GREECE THREATENS TO LEAVE EURO AREA, GERMANY'S DER SPIEGEL SAYS
• FINANCE MINISTER FROM EUROZONE AND EU COMMISSION HOLDINGS CRISIS MEETING TODAY IN LUXEMBOURG
• MEETING AGENDA INCLUDES POSSIBLE NEAR-TERM DEBT RESTRUCTURING FOR GREECE
• EUROGROUP CHAIRMAN JUNCKER "TOTALLY DENIES" MEETING TO BE HELD TODAY TO DISCUSS GREECE
  • And cue panic and furious denials:
    
• French finance ministry official cannot neither confirm or deny Spiegel report of emergency Eurozone meeting
• Austrian Finance Minister spokesman says Eurozone breakup "absolutely unthinkable"
• German government source says theres no plan for Greece to leave the Eurozone
  
• Senior Greek government official denies report that Greece raises possibility of leaving Eurozone
  
• IMF SAYS IT HAS `NO COMMENT' ON REPORT OF GREEK EURO EXIT BID
  

This does not sound like the sound of European consensus: "The leader of Finland’s euro-skeptic True Finns party, Timo Soini, said Europe’s crisis-handling mechanism “doesn’t work” and Greece will default on its debts as efforts to keep the country afloat have failed. He spoke today in a phone interview with Bloomberg Television." More like the sound of inevitability...We wonder how this will be spun by Trichet. In the meantime, things in carry land are getting worse and worse, as the USDJPY hit 79.60 overnight, a level at which the Japanese economy joins Europe and the US in full contraction mode. The summer of central bankers' discontent is coming fast and furious.

And two more highlights from a floundering Europe once again "validating" the EUR spike to near multi year highs. Eurostat came out earlier and reported that the Greek budget deficit, while declining from 15.4% of GDP in 2009 to 10.5% in 2010, missed expectations by a mile, or over 10%, after consensus was for a deficit print at 9.4% of GDP. And while the second to last PIIGS domino to fall also saw its deficit decline modestly sequentially from 11.1% of GDP to 9.2% in 2010, the country's total debt/GDP rose from 53.3% to 60.1%. With austerity like that, who needs the Teamsters?

It appears rumors that Greece is set to restructure its debt are about to come true. According to Greek daily Ta Nea, reported by the Guardian, "the government was mulling "a velvet restructuring" that would include extending outstanding debt and a voluntary agreement with lenders to modify repayment terms." More: "Greece  is considering ways to restructure its debt – such as by extending the life of its loans – two national newspapers claimed on Friday, joining a flurry of recent reports on the prospect that Athens might be forced to default." Not surprising, this comes hot on the heels of continued lies about the stability and viability of the eurozone and the euro, which recently surged to nosebleed levels only to allow it to drop from the highest possible position when the realization that the dominoes are falling finally sets in. But never one to be bound by the confines of reality, where one is accountable and responsible for their actions¹ (1: except all millionaires and billionaires bailed out by the Bernanke Put), Greece is now calling in Interpol to put the blame for its latest and greatest bankruptcy on a Citigroup trader: "A London trader working for US bank Citigroup  is to be questioned by investigators over an email at the centre of an investigation by the Greek authorities into rumours that Athens could be forced to restructure its national debt as early as this weekend." So, it is a trader fault for pointing out the market's reaction to what is so glaringly obvious even a caveman finance minister from Athens will realize it, and not the fact that one needs to apply a new Excel #Ref! patch in order to express Greek debt to GDP. The lunacy. The lunacy.

One of the more interesting "war zones" that most have never heard of is not in North Africe, nor in the Middle East, but in Greece. Meet Keratea, a small city of 15,000 people located close to Athens, where after over 100 days of struggle between authorities and the broder population, the riot police has officially decided to abdicate the city to its fate in what is the first popular mini-revolution in the developed world. From the Independent: "As explosions boom, the town's loudspeakers blare: "Attention! Attention! We are under attack!" Air-raid sirens wail through the streets, mingling with the frantic clanging of church bells. Clouds of tear gas waft between houses as helmeted riot police move in to push back the rebels. This isn't a war zone, but a small town just outside Athens. And while its fight is about a rubbish dump, it captures Greece's angry mood over its devastated economy. As unemployment rises and austerity bites ever harder, tempers seem to fray faster in Greece, with citizens of all stripes thumbing their noses at authority. Some refuse to pay increased highway tolls and public transport tickets. There has been a rise in politicians being heckled and even assaulted. Yesterday, in Thessalonika, scores of activists were arrested after violent clashes with police." Meet the new and improved face of austerity: now in a small town in Greece, which is about to default all over again, and soon in many other places in the increasingly more insolvent European periphery.

Even as Greek debt hits new and improved daily record highs each and every day, with the Bund spread for 10 years hitting a ridiculous 1,140, the country continues to pretend it has capital markets access. Although in theory it still does. Even with a Greek restructuring now virtually assured, although as the CreditSights note below notes this would be a political suicide event, the country still managed to sell €1.625 billion of 3 month Bills at the stunning rate of 4.10. Reuters reports: "Greece sold more than 1.6 billion of three-month debt on Tuesday, raising funds to roll over 800 million euros ($1.14 billion) of maturing government paper later in the month, with yields rising above 4 percent. It was priced to yield 4.10 percent, up 25 basis points from an auction in February and around the rate of about 4.2 percent Greece pays on its EU/IMF bailout loans." Yet even with the "attractive" yield the Bid To Cover plunged from 5.08 to 3.45, as the only bidders were banks themselves propped up by the ECB and China: according to PDMA foreign investors accounted for 36% of the issue.

Yields on Greek government bonds are soaring, with the 2-year yielding over 20% and the 10-year firmly on its way to 15 percent! Who will be paying up for all this mess?

And so we see another tipping point in action: while absolutely nothing has changed in the fundamentals of Europe's insolvent peripherals, today, for the first time since early January, we are seeing an absolute bloodbath in the risk gauges of the European periphery. As the PIIGS list below shows, spreads are surging, and while it is no surprise that Greece is now trading north of 1200 bps following a weekend full of Greek default chatter, the important observation is that Spain and Italy are once again in the default mix.

• Portugal 615 (+15) - officially insolvent
• Italy 156 (+13)
• Ireland 588 (+21) - officially insolvent
• Greece 1225bp (+89) - officially insolvent
• Spain 250 (+16)

It seems that the ECB has now resigned to letting Greece fail. While previously any time we had a whopping 2 point drop in one day the ECB would promptly step in and be the buyer of only recourse in peripheral debt, it has been deathly silent today. And as the chart below demonstrates Greek debt is about to go bidless: a par 10 Year note is trading at 62, with the resulting yield now literally going parabolic. And the 2 Year is now at 16.5%. Luckily for a globalized economy, dominoes are completely isolated and what now appears to be a certain "chain reaction" in creditor defaults will have no impact on the Russell 2000: after all the Fed is surely prepared for this contingency.

Almost a year to the day from the first Greek bailout, we thought we would revisit just how successful Europe has been in masking its pervasive insolvency, and just how far Europe has ultimately gone over the past year. As the chart below shows, pretty far. Especially if one measures the displacement by the shift in the Greek bond curve whose 3 year point just passed 18%. Buy it, hold it for 5.5 years and double your money.