Sovereign Debt

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

Tony Robbins warned about the risk of dollar devaluation and spoke about the opportunities in gold

All you need to know.

As Predicted Last Year, The French and the Greeks Are In A Race For The Biggest Bank Run! Each stock showcased has led the drop as well...

Below we present two more charts for your rubbernecking pleasure. First, we observe the just released data showing Spanish bank borrowings from the ECB: at €287.8 billion, this was a €24 billion increase from April, €235 billion from a year earlier, and the highest ever. More importantly, as can be seen on the first chart below, for the first time since June of 2011, Spanish bank ECB borrowings increased to more than those of Italy, which at just €272.7 billion rose a mere €2 billion from April month (to a new record as well). In other words, both Italy and Spanish banks are now spurned by counterparties everywhere, but Spain's a little bit more than Italy's. Yet before Italy gloats, it bears reminding Italy that its own offsetting factor, and where it is weakest, its insane public debt, just hit a new record high of €1.95 trillion, pushing the country's debt to GDP ratio well into the 120%+ range.

False solutions in sight

Yesterday, Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter ruffled the unelected Italian PM's feather by saying "forget Spain, Italy is next in the bailout line" - a statement which as expected was promptly loudly refuted, mocked, and scorned by everyone possible: the type of reaction that only the truth can possibly generate in Europe. So far so good: after all the typical European reaction to any instance of the truth is loud screams of "lies, lies" and promptly sticking your head deep in the sand. However, this time around Italy may not have the benefit of the doubt, nor the benefit of some sacrificial replacement of a prime minister: Silvio is long gone, and at this point switching one banker figurehead with another will do precisely nothing. Which is why this morning's assessment from Bloomberg economist David Powell is spot on: "Italy would probably be forced into receiving a bailout if it were to face another two weeks like the last seven days." But the punchline: "The bad news for Italy is the country’s stock of debt is already as large as Spain’s may become after years of fiscal turmoil. In other words, Italy already is where Spain may be heading."

Just because there aren't enough traumatizing events in the next week to look forward to, the market has already set its sights on the next "big" (let down) event in Europe - the EU summit on June 28/29, which will only benefit just one class - Belgian caterers. But for some odd reason there is hope that Europe will, miraculously and magically, after years of failing at this, come to some understanding over either Eurobonds, a fiscal union, a deposit insurance, banking union, or some or all of the above (expect many daily rumors regarding any of the above to incite small but violent EUR and ES short covering rallies). However, as we have been observing for the past 3 years, and as David Einhorn summarized visually, nothing will come out of this latest summit. JPM explains why the one thing that can save Europe is a non-starter, and will be for years.

What are capital controls? Simply, capital controls are policies which restrict the free flow of capital into, out of, through, and within a nation’s borders. They can take a variety of forms, including:

• Setting a fixed amount for bank withdrawals, or suspending them altogether
• Forcing citizens or banks to hold government debt
• Curtailing or suspending international bank transfers
• Curtailing or suspending foreign exchange transactions
• Criminalizing the purchase and ownership of precious metals
• Fixing an official exchange rate and criminalizing market-based transactions

Establishing capital controls is one of the worst forms of theft that a government can impose. It traps people’s hard earned savings and their future income within a nation’s borders. This trapped pool of capital allows the government to transfer wealth from the people to their own coffers through excessive taxation or rampant inflation… both of which soon follow.

As subordination and the inevitable cram-down of European sovereign debt becomes increasingly clear, the 'legal-arbitrage' that we were first to point out back in January in our Subordination 101 post (which worked out extremely well for Greek PSI holdouts), is beginning to be priced into Spanish debt also. As we pointed out yesterday (here and here), being long non-local-law Spanish bonds against a short in a well-matched local-law Spanish bond offers significant upside should things start to get really-ugly (as opposed to the current just-ugly) in Europe. It seems obvious to us that, arbitrage aside, bond portfolio managers should be seeking out these non-local-law bonds and swapping into them (as part of their Fiduciary duty to their investors) if their mandates force them into owning Spanish bonds. In the meantime, as is clear from the chart below (and noted that liquidity/sourcing of the non-local-law bonds is tough but that's why you pay your bond broker so much) that the 'trade' or swap is beginning to be positioned (and especially the last two days where the non-local-law bond has actually risen in price as the local-law bond has crashed).

European credit markets are near one-week wides, having tumbled dramatically since yesterday's open. Investment grade credit is leading the charge followed by senior financials as professional investors look for macro protection - we suspect ahead of this weekend's election. However, European equities are modestly higher from yesterday's close and remain higher than Friday's close. Credit markets had their own dead-cat-bounce at the open this morning but that has since faded significantly, so for now, as we have said again and again 'credit anticipates and equity confirms', it seems credit is seeing something a little less sanguine ahead for now. In the meantime, Spanish and Italian sovereign debt is pushing higher in yield (Spain +74bps from yesterday's open to euro-era record highs) and Swiss 2Y rates have hit a new record low at -36.6bps.

...and after all of those fancy acronoyms (ECB, EFSF, EU, ESM, ASS, BS, etc.), Italy is essentially just one big Greece. No, I'm not oversimplifying, just look at the bank bailout bailing out the insolvent country circular arguments!

Turkey remained the world's number one minter of gold coins in 2011. There is an increasing tendency for gold bars to be retail investors' vehicle of choice – although gold coins still retain a majority market share. Turkish people can pay in gold in certain foreign exchange houses and most jewellers will accept gold as payment. Turkish banks are is now offering digital gold saving accounts. Turkey expanded its gold reserves by 29.7 metric tons in April. Turkey’s bullion reserves climbed to 239.3 tons last month meaning that Turkey increased their gold reserves by 14% in April. The central bank on March 27 doubled the share of lira reserves banks can hold in gold to 20%, saying it would provide 6.1 billion liras ($3.3 billion) of extra liquidity. "This addition," the WGC says, "was the result of a policy change under which the central bank will now accept gold in reserve requirements from commercial banks to help the banks utilize their gold in managing their liquidity." Some analysts have suggested that the increase in Turkish gold reserves, as reported by the IMF, may actually be a form of “double accounting”. Whereby the gold held in Turkish banks client’s gold account is transferred from the local bank as a reserve to the central bank, from where it then figures as gold reserves.

All you need to know.

As Many Have Predicted for Years