Sovereign Default

If anybody should be labeled a lunatic, it should be the Democrats and those that are encouraging these unsound financial spending policies.

We recently posted Kyle Bass’s keynote speech at the Americatalyst 2012 conference. One of the main threads running through his thesis is the “Keynesian Endpoint”; covering debt super-cycles, the Federal Reserve’s inability to move rates from 0% and the (unintuitive) interconnectedness of sovereign default and hyperinflation. By way of clarification to global Ponzi we discussed earlier, Addogram has created an excellent infographic plotting the development of these ideas and mechanisms from 1792 to the present day.

“Voluntary” and methodical, at taxpayer’s expense

The natural reaction from policy makers, so far, has not surprised us. Rather than addressing the source of the problem, they have and continue to attack the symptoms. The problem, simply, is that governments have coerced financial institutions and pension plans to hold sovereign debt at a zero risk-weight, assuming it is risk-free... and just like since the beginning of the 17th century almost every serious intellectual advance had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine, I fear that in the 21st century, we too will have to begin attacking anything supporting the belief that the issuer of the world’s reserve currency cannot default, if we are ever to free ourselves from this sad state of affairs. This problem truly brings western civilization back to the time of Plato, when there was nothing “…worthy to be called knowledge that could be derived from the senses…” and when “…the only real knowledge had to do with concepts…”. Policy makers then believe in recapitalization and coercive smooth unwinds. With regards to recapitalization, I will just say that we are not facing a “stock”, but a “flow” problem. With regards to smooth unwinds, I think it is obvious by now that the unwind of a levered position cannot be anything but violent, like any other lie that is exposed by truth. Establishing restrictions to delay the unmasking would only make the unwinds even more violent and self-fulfilling. But these considerations, again, are foreign the metaphysics of policy making in the 21st century.

The ongoing debacle surrounding Argentina's holdout over holdouts appears to be escalating (in rhetoric at least) once again. As Reuters notes, negotiations or voluntary payment by Fernandez's government appear almost impossible. Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino called Griesa's ruling "a kind of judicial colonialism". "The only thing left is for Griesa to order them to send in the (U.S. Navy's) Fifth Fleet," Lorenzino told reporters, outlining Argentina's plans to file an appeal against Griesa's ruling with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Monday. Many specialists think it unlikely that the appeals court will reinstate the stay. "It may be an issue of process, but Argentina will struggle to justify why it refuses to pay the $1.3 billion," Eurasia Group analyst Daniel Kerner wrote last week. "Argentina has the resources to meet the payment, so in the end it will be a political decision (and) there does not seem to be any political support for paying the holdouts at all." The Argentina case surely brings into clear view the murkiness of investing in sovereign debt and the increasing difference between ability-to-pay and willingness-to-pay.

Technically, a technical default may still be avoided, but it is now unlikely. As the following presentation from JPM's Vladimir Werning shows, the market has already decided what the "next most likely big picture step" will be. The big question is what the less than big picture next steps will be. And as the following flow chart of options to all "potentially" impaired parties shows, there are quite a few possible steps as the variety of causal permutations has suddenly exploded. For everyone who has gotten sick and tired with following the sovereign default story of one Greece and Spain, please welcome... Argentina, where things are about to get a whole lot more interesting.

What does the Fed's QE 3, a Spanish default, the systemic crisis in the EU and Lehman all have in common?

If you want further evidence that the financial elites are already preparing for a default from Spain and a collateral crunch, you should consider that the large clearing houses (ICE, CEM and LCH which oversee the trading of the $700+ trillion derivatives market) have ALL begun accepting Gold as collateral.

We have just completed a series of videos detailing some of the risks posed to the financial system by the Federal Reserve as well as the European banking crisis. Every investor should see these. 

When it comes to international bondholder process, work out and restructuring (and litigation), on the one hand there is Europe, and specifically the ongoing Greek reorganization into an ever tinier balance sheet by way of cramming down weak-covenant, local-law bondholders (who are "encouraged" to participate in ever more coercive principal recovery events, as defection would result in wipeouts of recoveries in other cross-held bonds of the impaired class should a Grexit-type event occur, which then would lead to massive losses on all European bond holdings for the same creditors: a true Mutually-Assured Destruction scenario, as the IIF's Jacques Dallara understood quite well), and on the other hand there is Argentina. But whereas the European fiasco is still (relatively) structured (at least until Spain et al join the cram down fray, something none other than Lee Buchheit predicted would happen courtesy of the prevalence of local-law bonds in PIIGS outstanding inventory), if getting more complicated with incremental subordination of various junior classes of sovereign debt either due to legal reasons - i.e., local-law vs international-law bonds, structural reasons: the presence of Collective Action Clauses in consent solicitations and "indenture-stripping" thresholds for a holdout class (think perpetual fly-in-the-ointment Elliott), or due to the far more abstract "unimpairability" and primacy of the bondholder - i.e. the IMF, the ECB, or another Official Sector entity (all of which was previously explained here), in Argentina it is a totally chaotic free-for-all, where a distressed creditor holdout is now unilaterally pursuing "incremental recovery" of par in local and international courts of law.

So Spain will suffer a collapse, most likely of its banking system resulting in a sovereign default (barring a bailout). When this happens, some €1 trillion+ worth of collateral (still rated AAA by EU banks) will be sucked out of the system.

Situation “too uncertain,” but for 2013, “we’re pessimistic.”

Chatter is that Rajoy is waiting for conditions to get worse so he can garner easier terms for a Spanish Bailout and seek a compromise whereby he can take a rescue with honor intact has been found. But broadly speaking, confusion reigns in Europe as we wonder how the European Elites will fudge a third bailout for Greece and the fact that the IMF (as we noted here) have admitted that austerity doesn't work how they thought it should/would. But don't expect anything sudden to replace austerity – it remains the only option today, though the debate has begun. So what about something utterly radical such as Gavyn Davies in the FT yesterday where he wrote: “One radical option which is now being discussed is to cancel (or, in polite language, “restructure”) part of the government debt that has been acquired by the central banks as a consequence of quantitative easing (QE).” How will the central bank be recapitalised if it writes off its assets without money printing – why not when inflationary expectations are low? And what would it do to banks?

We believe an unsustainable new global financial architecture that arose in response to the US and European financial crises has replaced an older, more sustainable, architecture. The old architecture was crystallized in Washington- and IMF-inspired policy responses to the numerous sovereign defaults, banking system failures, and currency collapses. Most importantly, the previous architecture recognized limits on fiscal and central bank balance sheets. The new architecture attempts to 'back', perhaps unconsciously, the entire liability side of the global financial system. This framing is consistent with a purely political—institutional stylized—fact that it is nearly impossible to penetrate the US political parties if the message is that there are limits to their power…or that their power requires great effort and sacrifice. This is why Keynesians (at least US ones) who argue there are no limits to a fiscal balance sheet are so popular with Democrats, and why monetarists (at least US ones) who argue there are no limits to a central bank balance sheet are popular with (a decreasing number of) Republicans. Party on! Again, nobody chooses hard-currency regimes – they are forced on non-credible policymakers. Let me put it more positively. If politicians want the power of fiat money, let alone the global reserve currency, they need to behave differently than they have - or the consequences for Gold are extraordinary.

What Draghi did is buy some time. About three months worth of time. But at what cost?