Rating Agencies

Greece defaults & if it works, what makes anyone with a thirdof a synapse think that Portugal/Ireland will NOT jump in line to stiff creditors? This is more the end of the beginning than the beginning of the end of the crisis.

All you need to read.

All you need to read.

And not because his Rule doesn't have teeth.

And I thought securitization ment they where going to keep the loan docs in a safe place in some bank vault some where...

After months (it seems like years) of trying to avoid a CDS Credit Event, it looks like one is inevitable.  The Greek 5 year CDS is at least 70 bid which may be the highest ever.  The game plan seems to be that Greece will put in retroactive CAC laws.  The PSI will come in below 100%.  Greece will trigger the CAC clauses on the Greek bonds, and we will get 100% participation in all those bonds, and we will get a Credit Event.  The interesting part is that depending on what they manage to do with English law bonds, the only bonds outstanding (not in the hands of the central bank only bonds, and troika loans) will be the new bonds.  If they start CAC’ing each bond, it is possible that there will be no existing bonds outstanding left.  Settlement would be based on the new bond (yes, ISDA has a Sovereign Restructured Deliverable Obligation clause – Section 2.16 of the definitions).  With the amortization schedule in place (and not including any value attributable to the GDP strippable warrants), I get that the new bonds would trade at 30% of par with a yield of just over 13%.  I would be careful paying up for CDS here, because settlement will be against these new bonds, not existing bonds if every old bond is CAC’d.  And given the attitude out of Greece late yesterday, and harsh IMF demands, we may well see that. 

Think this time around finally the Greek deal is done? Think again. OpenEurope lists the "many" questions still surrounding the second Greek bailout that remain unanswered. We would add that this is hardly an exhaustive list, and believe the key question, to put it simply, is a CAC is a MAC? Because if the answer is yes, the deal is off.

Mainstream media is desperately scrambling to fill copy with stories of collaboration, rescue, heroism, sacrifice, and altruism among the European leaders. The dismal reality facing real people and real participants is quite different and as Peter Tchir points out "How many 'untruths' have become so accepted that they are now treated as facts or axioms". In an effort to get to the facts and reality, we disentangle Bloomberg's 'Greek Rescue' story and note the increasingly Orwellian nature of the events unfolding across the pond. But anyways, the machine is grinding along towards headlines of "rescue" where Greece will have been "saved" and "default will have been avoided" and it will be "great that banks and politicians worked to save Greece" in spite of the "lingering doubts that Greece will fulfill its obligations".

First comes the CACs. Then the forced debt exchange offer. Finally - default: as defined by both the rating agencies and ISDA, together with triggered CDS.

Now everybody's bank bashing, of course the reason to bash the banks is 4 years old, despite Bove-like analysis to the contrary. I will discuss this on CNBC for a FULL HOUR tomorrow from 12 pm to 1pm.

The good people at Knight put together a comprehensive list of potential ratings for banks in Europe after Moody's came out with their outlooks. We agree that banks getting shifted to non-investment grade is a big deal.  We saw the impact for Portugal once it got taken out of the indices, and we think for banks it will be an even bigger deal to lose that investment grade status.  Sure, they can still go to the LTRO, but it is hard to function as anything other than a zombie bank once you lose that rating...

For a while now we have said that the very weakest link in Europe is not the banks, not the ECB, not triggered CDS, and not even the shadow banking system (well, infinitely rehypothecated Greek bonds within a daisychain of broker-dealers, which ultimately ends up at the ECB at a negligible repo discount, that could well be the weakest link - we will have more to say about this over the weekend) but two very specific insurers: Italy's mega insurer Assecurazioni Generali, which at last check had more Greek bonds as a % of TSF than anyone else, and Europe's biggest insurer and Pimco parent, Allianz, which is filled to the gills with pretty much everything (for more on Generali, or as we like to call it by its CDS ticker ASSGEN read here, here, here, and here). Well, Moody's just gave them, and the entire European space, the evil eye, and soon the layering of margin calls upon margin calls, especially if and when Greece defaults and a third of ASSGEN's balance sheet is found to be insolvent, will make anyone who still is long CDS those two names rich. Assuming of course the Fed steps in and bails out the counterparty the CDS was purchased from.

It was a bad week for freedom loving people, but I believe there are enough patriots left in this country to change our course. We are being buried under a blizzard of lies on a daily basis. We have a choice. We can support the existing corrupt crony capitalist establishment (Obama & Romney) or we can declare war on lies, deceit and misinformation by rallying behind the only person who would truly attempt to reverse decades of corruption, sleaze, incompetence, bloat, debt accumulation, and a warped version of free market capitalism – Ron Paul. He is the only public figure willing to level with the American people and tell them the truth. Will we let the concept of truth fade out of the world? The choice is ours. 

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” –   George Orwell

It's getting to the point where the rating agencies are so far behind the reality curve that they are putting the system at risk again, and again, and again...

A few weeks ago, some of the more naive media elements reported that Greece has "all the cards" in its negotiations with private creditors, a topic we had the pleasure of deconstructing in its entirety to its constituent flaws? Well, a day ahead of the February 15 Eurozone meeting at which Greece's fate is finally supposed to be settled, things appear to be quite amiss. As a reminder, a critical part of the Greek debt deal is the private sector's agreement to roll over existing holdings into new bonds, which as we learned may now see the 15 cent per bond sweetener into new EFSF debt reduced. According to the Handelsblatt, that is now off the table. Dow Jones summarizes: "Some central bankers expect that Greece will fail to enlist enough private investors in a voluntary debt restructuring to avoid a technical default, a German newspaper reported Tuesday.  Greece is likely to make its case for a voluntary debt swap after a meeting of euro group finance ministers Wednesday, the Handelsblatt newspaper says. The Greek government is seeking to lower its burden by EUR100 billion. Handelsblatt cites unnamed central bank sources as saying the country will fail to achieve that goal, leaving the government little choice but to make the write-down mandatory for investors holding out. Requiring investors to take a loss would prompt credit rating agencies to declare a debt default for Greece, an event with unforeseeable consequences for financial markets. The report doesn't specify whether its sources are with the European Central Bank or with the German Bundesbank. Neither bank would comment early Tuesday." Which of course is not news: after all even the rating agencies have long warned a Greek default is now inevitable, and a CDS trigger will follow. The only thing that there is massive confusion over is whether and how this event will impact everyone else, and whether it will lead to an explusion of Greece from the Eurozone. Optimism is that it is all priced in. So was Lehman.