ratings

Contamination, power shortages, and scandals: the people confront the almighty nuclear power industry. But no easy way out.

One of the big stories of the week was that Morgan Stanley “reduced” its exposures to Italy by $3.4 billion mostly by unwinding some swaps they had on with Italy. Morgan Stanley booked profit of $600 million on the unwind. The timing couldn’t have been worse coming on the heels of the “Darth Vader” resignation at Goldman Sachs, attracting more attention to profits on derivatives trades was the last thing the investment banks need. Much of the outrage seems misplaced though. In this case, don’t blame Morgan Stanley, blame Italy, and be very afraid of what else Italy has done.

Now in the curious world we live in today; this only came out in public as the answer to a question raised in the German Parliament. Some reflection on the nature of these guarantees, that the European Union had decided not to tell us about, causes me to think of them as “Ponzi Bonds.” These are the seeds of a great scheme that has been foisted upon us. Bonds of a feather that have flocked together and arrived with the black swans one quiet Wednesday afternoon. The quoted and much ballyhooed sovereign debt numbers are now known to be no longer accurate and hence the lack of credibility of the debt to GDP data for the European nations. Stated more simply; none of the data that we are given about sovereign debt in the European Union is the truth, none of it. According to Eurostat, as an example, the consolidated Spanish debt raises their debt to GDP by 12.3% as Eurostat also states, and I quote, that guaranteed debt in Europe “DO NOT FORM PART OF GOVERNMENT DEBT, BUT ARE A CONTINGENT LIABILITY.” In other words; not counted and so, my friends, none of the data pushed out by Europe about their sovereign debt or their GDP ratios has one whit of truth resident in the data.

Here is where the parasitic 1% have their problem. What they have “sold” the American public as the spirit of the nation is now in direct opposition to reality. In fact, it has become so obviously untrue that the population is waking in drove to the truth and the truth is that we have a utterly corrupt, sociopathic minority running the nation like a giant criminal syndicate for their own power and money. Therein lies their weakness however. They have no philosophy. These guys are actually so twisted that all they think about is how can they keep growing their money and power. Furthermore, they are operating under an exposed playbook of control. Just take a look at Obama’s approval ratings. They are plunging. They are plunging despite fabricated economic numbers and biblical stock market rigging to make things look good. They are plunging because people are waking up and seeing all of this for what it is. A gigantic scam. All the signs I see point to increasing desperation on their part and exponential awakening on the part of the meat of the bell curve. These guys are toast and what we should now be focusing most of our attention on is what kind of society we want when this one collapses. Hopefully the other side of the bell curve can influence the debate for the first times in five thousand years. That is my hope and my vision of the future.

We have previously discussed the substantial, and growing, threat to the German economy that is the Bundesbank's negative TARGET2 balance, which we have formerly dubbed Europe's €2.5 trillion closed liquidity loop, which just rose to a new record over €550 billion (in "Has The Imploding European Shadow Banking System Forced The Bundesbank To Prepare For Plan B?", "Goldman's Take On TARGET2 And How The Bundesbank Will Suffer Massive Losses If The Eurozone Fails", and most recently  in "Dear Germans: Bring Out Ze Checkbooks") which in turn merely represents the taxpayer funded capital flow to insure that the Eurozone remains solvent for one more day as Germany's peripheral trading partners receive rescue capital every day in the form of recycled German current account surplus. It now appears that the Bundesbank president has taken to these allegations of monetary instability strongly enough to where he has just released the following response on Target2 in "What is the origin and meaning of the Target2 balances?" Full letter below.

All you need to read.

In keeping with the tradition of waking up to reality with a several month delay on downgrades (if being the first to upgrade insolvent Eurozone members), here comes Fitch, to boldly go where Moody's went long ago.

• UNITED KINGDOM L-T IDR OUTLOOK TO NEGATIVE FROM STABLE BY FITCH
• FITCH AFFS UNITED KINGDOM AT 'AAA'; REVISES OUTLOOK TO NEGATIVE

As a reminder, UK consolidated debt/GDP is... oh... ~1000%

All you need to read.

Going into the US open, European equity markets have carried across some risk appetite from last night’s Wall Street news that 15 out of 19 major US banks had passed the Fed’s stress test scenarios. This risk appetite is evident in Europe today with financials outperforming all other sectors, currently up over 2%. Data released so far today has been relatively uneventful, with Eurozone CPI coming in alongside expectations and Industrial Production just below the expected reading for January. Taking a look at the energy complex, WTI and Brent crude futures are seen on a slight downwards trajectory so far in session following some overnight comments from China, highlighting the imbalance in the Chinese property market, dampening future demand for oil. Looking ahead in the session, the DOE crude oil inventories will shed further light on the current standing of US energy inventories.

And the real lesson, dear friends, is that the good old USA is a subprime nation

Back to basics with some definitions:

DEFAULT, n. Semi-mythical celestial occurrence that passes by Earth every 76 years. 
I was worried for a second about that Greek default, but I realise there's nothing to see now and all is well.

FEDERAL RESERVE, n. A wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
The Federal Reserve voted to give a few more billion dollars to Wall Street.

US GOVERNMENT, n. Another wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
We seem to be running out of Goldman Sachs alumni here in the Treasury. No, wait, we've still got hundreds of 'em. 

Germany just launched a €480 billion fund that it will use to backstop its banking system should a Crisis hit. And in the fine print, which no one has caught,... the fund will also allow German banks to dump their EU sovereign bonds... as in German banks'  PIIGS/ EU exposure disappearing in an instant. So... why would Germany do this?

I hold up my hand, “One moment please” as I introduce you to the 800 pound Greek Gorilla that is about to enter the room. Allow me to now present to you the “OTHER” Greek debt that is outstanding and will have to be accounted for as the country defaults. Detailed below are some of the “OTHER” sovereign obligations of the Greek government which have now been submitted to the ISDA and I list some of them below. You will note that there are bank bonds, Hellenic Railway bonds, Urban Transportation bonds et al that are guaranteed by Greece. You will also note that there are bonds tied to Inflation, Floating Rate Notes, Asset-Backed securities and a whole mélange of other structured products with a Greek sovereign guarantee. What we all thought was fact is now clearly fiction and default will now bring “Acceleration” one could reasonably bet in all kinds of these securitizations and in all kinds of currencies.  This could come from the ratings agencies placing Greece in “Default” or it could come from the CDS contracts being triggered depending upon each indenture and you will also note that a great many of these off balance sheet securitizations are governed by English Law and not Greek Law. You may also wish to consider the fallout to the banking system as the lead managers of all of these deals could find themselves behind the eight ball as various clauses trigger and as the holders of these securitizations line up at the judicial bench [ZH note: there is a reason why Allen & Overy is getting paid $1500 an hour to indemnify ISDA with a plethora of exculpation clauses - they know what is coming] The ISDN numbers are on all of these securities and the lead managers may be found on Bloomberg or other sources as well as the holders of the debt.  The curtain just lifted and the show is about to get way too interesting!

Given various talking-heads' comments on today's PSI deal (which as noted actually increased Greece's gross debt load), we thought a 'map' of the current ratings across the European Union was worth resetting some perspective.

The somewhat amusing part of this entire transaction is that the debt of Greece has been INCREASED. Greece and the EU handed private holders $138Bn in write-offs but with the addition of the new loan, $171Bn, the gross debt for Greece increased by $33Bn and this is if all of the legal challenges favor Greece. The total debt of Greece (sovereign, municipal, corporate and bank) has just increased from $1.20 Trillion to $1.233 Trillion and all accomplished by this brilliant plan that did nothing except to tag investors and ramp up the debt load for the country. Take this and add in the austerity measures and perhaps demands for more coming later today as the EU has its summit and an economy that is quickly sinking into the sea and unemployment that is surging and then you can visualize that the absurd has become the impossible and quickly conclude that more Greek loans will have to be forthcoming; or not with some form of Greek exit. The much bandied about notion that all of this will reduce the Greek debt to GDP is little more than a joke. For the past two years there has not been one, one, accurate projection for Greece concocted by the IMF/EU/ECB and I see no end to this now. Some quick math on my part indicates, in 2020, a debt to GDP ratio exceeding 170% and that is being kind and using optimistic assumptions. Just this morning the new numbers released for Greece showed a 7.50% deficit increase as opposed to the projected -5.50% number. This is one more case of quite inaccurate projections and a worsening economy for the country.