Remember when Greece was fixed... when The ECB extended its ELA to Greek banks and bridge loans were provided to repay The ECB? As we noted previously [6], it seems Greek banks are a sell at any price and today's continued crash in National Bank of Greece ADRs ahead of 'supposedly' a Greek bank re-opening on Monday, suggest "mark it zero" is coming soon to some knife-catchers' portfolios.
We doubt that Greek savers will rush to put their money in the banks, and we think Draghi is taking a huge gamble by putting even more ELA into Greek banks just before the same banks will announce at any possible moment they are forced to liquidate existing shareholders. The popular outcry against the banking system once a bail in is confirmed, even if it does not involve depositors initially, will send shock waves through society and rekindle the bank run once more.
Ironically, the one thing that would help preserve confidence in the Greek banking system, is more transparency about the "performing" nature of Greek bank loans: if this amount has hit 50% (or more) on the total €210 billion of loans, then depositor haircuts become virtually inevitable - anything well below that and there would still be a modest cushion before bail-ins have to go up in the cap structure.
Which is also why we fear no transparency will be forthcoming and why we expect that people may be fooled once again into believing their savings are, well, safe only to find out the hard way they are anything but - a hard lesson that investors in insolvent Greek banks are about to learn first hand.
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