Sovereigns

First it Egan-Jones (of course). Then S&P. Now Fitch (which sees the Spanish bank recap burden between €60 and a massive €100 billion!) joins the downgrade party of rating agencies that have Spain at a sub-A rating. Only Moody's is left. What happens when Moody's also cuts Spain from its current cuspy A3 rating to sub-A? Bad things: as we explained on April 30, when everyone has Spain at BBB or less...

With all proposed Spanish bank bailout plans so far either shot down, or found to be inadequate, the question always has boiled down to whether Germany, which as we have noted in the past is the true lender of last resort in Europe, not the ECB, will agree to the trade off of preserving the Eurozone, i.e. temporarily ending the latest Spanish risk flare out, in exchange for the risk of political disgrace domestically, where more and more people are against sweeping European bail outs, due to soaring "contingent liabilities" which increasingly more people on the street are realizing are all too real (see: TARGET2). On the other hand, a direct bank bailout request for Spain using traditional European channels, which would fund the government, would result in a deterioration in the Spanish sovereign leverage, and make the country even riskier, thereby putting more pressure on the banks, and so in a toxic loop. It now seems that this dilemma may have been resolved, at least on paper. As Reuters reports, "A deal is in the works that would allow Spain to recapitalize its stricken banks with aid from its European partners but avoid the embarrassment of having to adopt new economic reforms imposed from the outside, German officials say. While Berlin remains firm in its rejection of Spain's calls for Europe's rescue funds to lend directly to its banks, the officials said that if Madrid put in a formal aid request, funds could flow without it submitting to the kind of strict reform program agreed for Greece, Portugal and Ireland."

First Moody's cut the most prominent Austrian banks, and now it is Germany's turn, if not that of the most undercapitalized German bank yet: "The ongoing rating review for Deutsche Bank AG and its subsidiaries will be concluded together with the reviews for other global firms with large capital markets operations." Punchline: "Frankfurt am Main, June 06, 2012 -- Moody's Investors Service has today taken various rating actions on seven German banks and their subsidiaries, as well as one German subsidiary of a foreign group. As a result, the long-term debt and deposit ratings for six groups and one German subsidiary of a foreign group have declined by one notch, while the ratings for one group were confirmed. Moody's also downgraded the long-term debt and deposit ratings for several subsidiaries of these groups, by up to three notches. At the same time, the short-term ratings for three groups as well as one German subsidiary of a foreign group have been downgraded by one notch, triggered by the long-term rating downgrades."

For the second day-in-a-row, European volumes are light with stocks and credit generally trading sideways in a tight range. European credit spreads are illiquid (and mostly just reracked by skeleton desks in mainland Europe) as sovereign CDS are generally closed completely (we've seen very few runs). Optically, much is being made of the 4th day in a row of compression in Spanish and Italian bond yields - which is ironic given the Spanish comments on being shut-out of the markets and their pending auction this week - but as we pointed out last week, the lack of CDS discipline being enforced (with London shut) as basis traders and financials-versus-sovereign trades become the marginal drivers of demand for sovereign debt. Do not believe that the markets of the last two days in Europe represent anything but marginal flow - tomorrow's return of the credit market will be the test of where reality is really perceived by market participants. EURUSD weakness today, reverting to unch from Friday and the deterioration in EUR-USD basis swaps is all you need to know on where liquidity is. Clearly the LTRO3 trade is being placed in financials-sovereigns-land, we only hope they are not disappointed.

The Fed and the ECB have successfully concealed the fact that many of the big money center-like banks are truly zombified to the nth degree. What do you think happens when secondary shocks rumble through the system and banks are expected to show an prove?

If the U.S. Federal Reserve were a hedge fund, its phones would be ringing off the hook with prospective investors wanting fresh allocations and Ben Bernanke would be zipping around the French Riviera in a gold-plated helicopter.  The Fed’s multibillion-dollar position in Treasuries is nicely in the money with the recent moves to record lows risk-free yields, after all.  But it’s policy outcomes, not returns, that the Fed is after.  By that measure, the current record low payouts in “Safe Haven” bonds (U.S., Germany, U.K, for example) are troublesome.  There is, of course, the worry that they portend a global recession.  This concern cannot be waved away with the notion that a worldwide flight to quality totally upends the bond market’s historical function as a weather-vane of economic expansion and contraction.  Beyond this concern, however, Nic Colas of ConvergEx sees two further worries.  The first is that the Fed has needlessly compromised its independence by pursuing bond purchases that, in hindsight, were unnecessary in the face of the current economic outlook and investment environment.  The second is that interest rates have been demoted to a supporting role in kick starting any global economic recovery. As with unfriendly aliens unpacking their bags at a landing site, the move to record low rates around the world is a truly menacing development. Historically, low interest rates have generally sparked economic recovery.  In the current environment, this gas-down-the-carb approach seems to have simply flooded the engine of growth.  Other factors are at play, as I have outlined here. The real answer is simply more time.

Depending on whether you look at broad liquid risk markets or narrow manipulated 'repressed' illiquid markets, your take on today's European action will be different. Equity markets were crushed. Corporate and Financial credit spreads blew wider. Volatility (Europe's VIX) exploded over 36%. So far so good? But Italian and Spanish bonds rallied. It seems EUR96 was the line in the sand that the ECB (or their proxy banks) decided was enough for Spanish 10Y bonds and that was where they were defended to (though we are suspicious why ECB would step in now after 4 months absence). There was eventually some notable divergence between underperforming Spain and outperforming Italy by the close (+40bps on the week vs +27bps). We suspect that much of the sovereign outperformance was a combination of Sovereign CDS-Bond basis traders (buying bonds and buying protection in Spain to lock in that wide spread) and a replay of the short financial credit, long domestic sovereign credit trade (as in banks will underperform the sovereign if things hit the fan/wall). That is the flow that was evident when looked at across markets. All in all, a terrible end to an awful week and hopefully we have helped explain why sovereigns outperformed (technicals) as CDS remain at wides and stocks at lows.

We finally get to continue what we started in 2008. Becuase the TPTB insisted on kicking the can down the road, the resulting pain will be excruciatingly devastating versus simply horrible! Alas, once you get you short positions/puts/futures in before the inevitably ill-informed short ban, money can still be made. 

While it will be no surprise to any ZH reader (with our attention to Swiss 2Y rates) the world is undergoing a massive capital flight to safety. Rick Santelli gave this topic his special treatment today, pointing out that "capital is detouring - to avoid risk", and outlining just how big a 'crash' lower in yields we have seen among many of the supposedly safest sovereigns as money floods to safe-havens (including UK, US, Japan, Germany, and Holland). What is most important is that Rick outlines why we should care - when all around are yawning on about how cheap 'dividend' stocks must be given low interest rates - since it changes the nature of capital (the life-blood of our markets) from risk-taking to absolute safety-seeking - as he points out that "it isn't necessarily about our own economy's numbers, it isn't even about who we export to; it's the fact that if capital continues to get somewhat impaired, you'll have more data points as investors not only rethink about their capital but everybody rethinks everything in the capital structure that makes business go round."

It seemed the 'but but but we're oversold' argument was holding up in early trading in Europe as EURUSD, sovereign bonds, corporate and financial credit, and stocks rallied out of the gate. It didn't take long however for the technicals from CDS-Cash traders to wear off and Spain and Italy sovereign debt started to leak back wider. This accelerated pushing everything off the edge as European stocks and financials & investment grade credit fell to recent lows. Interestingly high-yield credit (XOVER) remains an outperformer. By the close, credit markets were pretty much unchanged from last night's close having given back all the knee-jerk improvements on the day but equities remained lower - with a late day surge saving them from total chaos. EURUSD gave back all of its early gains to end the European day lower once again - though off its lows - even as Germany 2Y trades with 0.2bps of negative and Swiss 2Y rates plunge below -25bps. For the month, EMEA stocks were a disaster - Italy and Spain down 12 and 13% and the broad Euro-Stoxx -8.3% (-8.7% YTD).

The global monetary system which has evolved and morphed over the past century but always in the direction of easier, cheaper and more abundant credit, may have reached a point at which it can no longer operate efficiently and equitably to promote economic growth and the fair distribution of its benefits. Future changes, which lie on a visible horizon, may not be so beneficial for our ocean’s oversized creatures. Both the lower quality and lower yields of previously sacrosanct debt therefore represent a potential breaking point in our now 40-year-old global monetary system. Neither condition was considered feasible as recently as five years ago. Now, however, with even the United States suffering a credit downgrade to AA+ and offering negative 200 basis point real policy rates for the privilege of investing in Treasury bills, the willingness of creditor whales – as opposed to debtors – to support the existing system may soon descend. Such a transition occurs because lenders either perceive too much risk or refuse to accept near zero-based returns on their investments. “There she blows,” screamed Captain Ahab and similarly intentioned debt holders may soon follow suit, presenting the possibility of a new global monetary system in future years, or if not, one which is stagnant, dysfunctional and ill-equipped to facilitate the process of productive investment.

Europe was a sea of red (apart from Bund prices) today. With yesterday's window-dressing done and overnight dismissal of Spain's hopeful ECB-workaround, European equity and credit markets were dismal, EURUSD ended under 1.2400, and 2Y Bunds at 0.00% yield. Financials underperformed in stocks and credit with senior bank spreads back up to 300bps and LTRO Stigma jumping 12bps to 177.5bps (near record wides). Spain and Italy dominated both single-name banking and non-banking credit and equity moves as well as sovereigns with Spanish 10Y now +45bps on the week and Italy +37bps (with Belgium, France, and Austria all around 9bps wider). All European equity indices are down for the week with Spain down almost 8%. EUR-USD 3Y basis swaps turned back lower (worse) back to -70bps - not a good sign for funding (especially in light of the drop in LTRO we noted yesterday). On a final note of despair, Spanish 2s10s is now flatter than at any time since LTRO1 - implying that any LTRO debt used to fund a real carry trade is now a loser.

The man that called nearly every big bank collapse of the decade says EU nations don't stand a frozen raindrop's chance in hell of bailing out banking systems literally multiples of domiciles' GDP. So now what???

And to think it was not even 2 hours ago that a regurgitated and largely impotent news story hit the WSJ (following up on an identical Reuters story yesterday, as ZH noted), sending the EURUSD higher by 50 pips. As we said, expect Germany to come out with a prompt refutation in minutes. The minutes in question were 90. The official denial to Gollum's lie panderings has arrived courtesy of Market News: "Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a regular press conference here that the German rejection of the idea of any direct recapitalisation of banks by the ESM "is well known." Summary: B+ for effort, C for execution, C- for market reaction halflife, and F for content, as usual.

So the EC wants the ECB to bypass the EFSF and use the ESM to recap EU banks?  That was the rumor that shifted global stock markets by 1% in a matter of minutes? It has been awhile see we looked at the EFSF Flowchart or had a detailed look at the EFSF Guidelines but it looks like it is time to dig a bit deeper into what is possible and what is not. The ESM is not yet up and running.  There was talk that it would be done by June or July of this year, but in typical EU fashion I don’t think much progress has been made towards that promise.  So right now the EU is stuck with EFSF and the potential to set up the ESM. The market got carried away with the promise of LTRO as a sovereign debt savior, instead it created a potential death spiral. Spanish and Italian bonds are definitely getting crushed today, but with Spanish 10 years above 6.5% and Italian 10 year bonds nearing 6%, the potential for intervention rises.  The secondary market is affecting the primary market, which is driving up the cost of funds, creating more pressure on the budget deficits.  The countries are painfully aware of that, as is the ECB.