Lehman

Equity markets are dislocating from credit and volatility risk. "Real " risk markets suggest something bigger could be happening sooner than later. We see some similarities to the famous 2008 Lehman week.

We noted the particular shift in Europe's sentiment toward Greece back in January, observing that ever since the "favorable" uptake of the LTRO (all of which has since been recycled and parked at the ECB's deposit facility which was at €510 billion as of today), Europe has become convinced that letting Greece fail is not a bad idea (an idea which is so ludicrous, and so Lehman deja vuish it makes us shudder, and which CS' William Porter wrote his entire February 10 piece "The Flaw" on, an excerpt of which can be found here). This culminated with the following observations by UBS. Ever since then everything Europe has done has been in preparation of an "orderly" Greek default (odd - try as we might we fail to find that section in the MiniCode MiniRules) and all the posturing about Greece saving itself has been beyond a farce. Yet as has been beaten to death, the final outcome won't be certain until March 20, at which point the market may finally grasp the new reality. In the meantime, here is Peter Tchir explaining how Germany just broke up with Greece... via a text message.

A few weeks ago, some of the more naive media elements reported that Greece has "all the cards" in its negotiations with private creditors, a topic we had the pleasure of deconstructing in its entirety to its constituent flaws? Well, a day ahead of the February 15 Eurozone meeting at which Greece's fate is finally supposed to be settled, things appear to be quite amiss. As a reminder, a critical part of the Greek debt deal is the private sector's agreement to roll over existing holdings into new bonds, which as we learned may now see the 15 cent per bond sweetener into new EFSF debt reduced. According to the Handelsblatt, that is now off the table. Dow Jones summarizes: "Some central bankers expect that Greece will fail to enlist enough private investors in a voluntary debt restructuring to avoid a technical default, a German newspaper reported Tuesday.  Greece is likely to make its case for a voluntary debt swap after a meeting of euro group finance ministers Wednesday, the Handelsblatt newspaper says. The Greek government is seeking to lower its burden by EUR100 billion. Handelsblatt cites unnamed central bank sources as saying the country will fail to achieve that goal, leaving the government little choice but to make the write-down mandatory for investors holding out. Requiring investors to take a loss would prompt credit rating agencies to declare a debt default for Greece, an event with unforeseeable consequences for financial markets. The report doesn't specify whether its sources are with the European Central Bank or with the German Bundesbank. Neither bank would comment early Tuesday." Which of course is not news: after all even the rating agencies have long warned a Greek default is now inevitable, and a CDS trigger will follow. The only thing that there is massive confusion over is whether and how this event will impact everyone else, and whether it will lead to an explusion of Greece from the Eurozone. Optimism is that it is all priced in. So was Lehman.

Europe's now painfully transparent policy of demanding that Greece decide to default on its own is becoming so glaringly obvious, we truly fear for the intellectual capacity of everyone who ramps the EURUSD on any incremental "europe is saved" rumor. As a reminder, yesterday we said, in parallel with the Greek irrelevant MoU vote: "The only real questions are i) what the Greek population may do in response to this latest selling out of a population "led" by an unelected banker, which if history is any precedent, the answer is not much, and ii) how Germany will subvert this latest event, and put the bail [sic] back in Greece's court once again." We documented on i) earlier today - a couple of burned down buildings, a few vandalized store fronts, lots of tear gas and that's about it, as people still either don't believe or can't grasp the seriousness of the situation. As for ii) we now get the first indication that not all may be well on Wednesday. From the FT: "European officials rushed to finalise details of a €130bn Greek bail-out on Monday amid signs Germany and its eurozone allies may not be prepared to approve the deal at a finance minsters’ meeting on Wednesday, despite Athens backing new austerity measures." And so the bail [sic] is once again back in Greece's court, where however since the last such occurrence, the parliament has 43 MPs less. Quite soon, the only person left in "charge" of the country will be the ECB apparatchick and unelected banker Lucas Papademos.

• Eurozone dismisses Greek budget deal (FT)
• Germany Says Greece Missing Debt Targets in Aid Rebuff (Bloomberg)
• Germans concerned over Draghi liquidity offer (FT)
• Azumi Says Japan Won’t Be Shy About Unilateral Intervention (Bloomberg)
• Schaeuble Signals Germany Is Flexible on Revising Terms of Portuguese Aid (Bloomberg) - food euphemism for "next on the bailout wagon"
• Venizelos Tells Greek Lawmakers to Back Budget Cuts or Risk Exiting Euro (Bloomberg)
• Putin May Dissolve Ruling Party After Vote (Bloomberg)
• HK Bubble pops? Hong Kong Sells Tuen Mun Site to Kerry for HK$2.7 Billion, Government Says (Bloomberg)
• Gross Buys Treasuries as Buffett Says Bonds Are ‘Dangerous’ (Bloomberg)

UPDATE: Ironic timing (via Bloomberg)...*VENIZELOS SAYS GREECE FACES CHOICE OF STAYING IN EURO OR NOT,  *GREEK DEBT SUSTAINABILITY NO WAY NEAR 120%, DE JAGER SAYS, and *ECB SHOULD CONTRIBUTE TO REDUCTION OF GREEK DEBT, JUNCKER SAYS

In an incredibly candid 'informal' discussion caught on video by Portugal's TVi24 television crew, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble gives Portuguese finance minister Vitor Gaspar 'the nod' that after the Greek deal is done, Germany will relax the conditions of the financial assistance program for Portugal. While the soundtrack is a little flaky, it is clear that the German finmin notes they must remain resolute in their conditions against Greece in order to maintain the appearance of 'seriousness' with the fellow members of the Greek parliament and more importantly the people of Germany. It would appear that once they have flexed their muscles against the Greeks (think Lehman?) then (and only then) can (and will) they 'help' the Portuguese. Perhaps the hard default is the way they expect this to play out with the assumption they can post-hoc avoid contagion in some manner but nevertheless, Samaras' comments this afternoon on growth and a focus away from austerity do not sit in any way complementary to Schaeuble's comments in this candid-camera moment.

Portuguese TV is having a field day with the clip as they note: Vítor Gaspar was "looking like a student trying to impress the teacher," was how the commentator saw the episode. Adding, the minister "did everything but say that not only is doing everything right as even very fond of the austerity policy."

We have discussed forecasts for the second (and certainly not last ) February 29 3 Year LTRO in the past, with expectations for its size ranging from €1 trillion all the way up to a mindboggling €10 trillion. Today, Goldman has conducted a poll focusing on investors and banks, to gauge the sentiment for what has over the past 2 months been taken as the latest Deus Ex, which is really nothing than yet another bout of quantitative easing, only one in which the central bank pretend to be sterilizing 3 year loans by accepting any and virtually all collateral that banks can scrape off the bottom of their balance sheets (as a reminder, back in the financial crisis, Zero Hedge discovered that the Fed was accepting stocks of bankrupt companies as collateral - certainly the ECB is doing the same now). And once the banks get the cash instead of lending it out, or using it for carry trades, they simply use it to plug equity undercapitalization due to massive asset shortfalls on their balance sheets which are mark-to-unicorn^TM, yet which generate zero cash flow, even as banks have to pay out cash on their liabilities. In essence, the banks convert worthless crap into perfectly normal cash with the ECB as an intermediary: and that is all the LTRO is. Luckily, as we pointed out, even the idiot market is starting to grasp the circular scam nature of this arrangement, and the fact that it is nothing short of Discount Window usage, and because of that, the stigma associated with being seen as needing this last ditch liquidity injection is starting to grind on the banks. It is only a matter of time before hedge funds create portfolios in which they go long banks which openly refuse to use LTRO cash, and short all the other ones (read every single Italian and Spanish bank out there, and most French ones too) because at the end of the day one can only fool insolvency for so long. But once again we are getting ahead of the market by about 3-6 weeks. In the meantime, and looking forward to the next LTRO, whose cash will be used exclusively to build up "firewalls" ahead of the Greek default, here is what Goldman's clients expect to happen...

While hardly surprising to anyone who actually paid attention over the past two months to events in Greece (instead of just reacting to headlines) where among those on strike were the very tax collectors tasked with "fixing the problem", we now get a first glimpse of the sheer collapse in the Greek economy, which also confirms why Germany is now dying for Greece to pull its own Eurozone plug (predicated by a naive belief that Greece is firewalled as was discussed before. As a reminder Hank Paulson thought that Lehman, too, was firewalled on September 15, 2008). And what a collapse it is: according to just released data from Kathimerini, budget revenues lagged projections by €1 billion in the very first month of the year. "Revenues posted a 7 percent decline compared with January 2011, while the target that had been set in the budget provided for an 8.9 percent annual increase. Worse still, value-added tax receipts posted an 18.7 percent decrease last month from January 2011 as the economy continues to tread the path of recession: VAT receipts only amounted to 1.85 billion euros in January compared to 2.29 billion in the same month last year." This it the point where any referee would throw in the towel. But no: for Europe's bankers there apparently are still some leftover organs in the corpse worth harvesting. Unfortunately, at this point we fail to see how this setup ends with anything but civil war, as the April elections will merely once again reinstate the existing bloodsucking regime. We hope we are wrong.

In all the excitement over the December 21 LTRO, Europe forgot one small thing: since it is the functional equivalent of banks using the Discount Window (and at 3 years at that, not overnight), it implies that a recipient bank is in a near-death condition. As such, the incentive for good banks to dump on bad ones is huge, which means that everyone must agree to be stigmatized equally, or else a split occurs whereby the market praises the "good banks" and punishes the "bad ones" (think Lehman). As a reminder, this is what Hank Paulson did back in 2008 when he forced all recently converted Bank Holding Companies to accept bail outs, whether they needed them or not, something that Jamie Dimon takes every opportunity to remind us of nowadays saying he never needed the money but that it was shoved down his throat. Be that as it may, the reason why there has been no borrowings on the Fed's discount window in years, in addition to the $1.6 trillion in excess fungible reserves floating in the system, is that banks know that even the faintest hint they are resorting to Fed largesse is equivalent to signing one's death sentence, and in many ways is the reason why the Fed keeps pumping cash into the system via QE instead of overnight borrowings. Yet what happened in Europe, when a few hundred banks borrowed just shy of €500 billion is in no way different than a mass bailout via a discount window. Still, over the past month, Europe which was on the edge equally and ratably, and in which every bank was known to be insolvent, has managed to stage a modest recovery, and now we are back to that most precarious of states - where there is explicit stigma associated with bailout fund usage. And unfortunately, it could not have come at a worse time for the struggling continent: with a new "firewall" LTRO on deck in three weeks, one which may be trillions of euros in size, ostensibly merely to shore up bank capital ahead of a Greek default, suddenly the question of who is solvent and who is insolvent is back with a vengeance, as the precarious Nash equilibrium of the past month collapses, and suddenly a two-tier banking system forms - the banks which the market will not short, and those which it will go after with a vengeance.

Ok, we get the hint. End the foreplay already and file finally. From Bloomberg: "Greece’s Prime Minister Lucas Papademos requested the country’s Finance Ministry to prepare a document on the implications of a Greek default, Panos Beglitis, spokesman for the socialist Pasok Party said. The Prime Minister yesterday told the leaders of the three political parties supporting his interim government that he asked the Ministry “to record accurately and realistically all the consequences of the country’s exit from the euro zone,” Beglitis said today in an interview with Radio 9, according to a transcript of his comments e-mailed from the Athens-based offices of Pasok." And yes, the market initially rallied just after Lehman filed. It didn't last long, because guess what, it was priced in... incorrectly.

Something quite notable has shifted in recent weeks in Europe, and it originates at the European paymaster - Germany. While in the past it was of utmost importance to define any Greek default as voluntary (if one even dared whisper about it), and that the money allocated to keep the Eurozone whole would be virtually limitless, this is no longer the case. In fact, reading between the headlines in the past week, it becomes increasingly obvious that Greece will very soon become a new Lehman, i.e., a case study where the leaders are overly confident they can predict the outcomes of letting a critical entity default, and manage the consequences. Alas, this only proves they have learned nothing from the Lehman case, and the aftermath is still not only unpredictable but uncontrollable. But that's a bridge that Europe will cross very shortly. And what is truly frightening is that this crossing may happen even before the next LTRO hits the banks' balance sheets, thus not affording Euro banks with sufficient capital to withstand the capital outflow and funds the unexpected. In the meantime, here is UBS summarizing the palpable change in European outlook over Greece, and over the entire "Firewall" protocol.

Following up on our report from this morning that according to former Greek defense minister, German submarine chief procurer, and not to mention Jenny Twenty repeat offender, Evangelos "Xanax" Venizelos, we learn that the god of Deus Ex Machinae is about to abandon Greece, after an announcement by that most magic unicorn-infatuated of bureaucrats, Eurogroup head Jean-Claude Juncker made it clear that Greece is all but finished. As Reuters reports, "The possibility of a sovereign default by Greece cannot be ruled out, Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers from the single currency zone, said in a German magazine on Saturday." Translation: A Greek default on that €14.5 billion bond maturity D-day of March 20, is now inevitable. In an advance copy of comments to news weekly Der Spiegel, Jean-Claude Juncker was quoted as saying Greece could no longer expect solidarity from other euro zone members if it cannot implement reforms it has agreed. "If we were to establish that everything has gone wrong in Greece, there would be no new programme, and that would mean that in March they have to declare bankruptcy," he said. So after years of delaying the inevitable sovereign Lehman weekend, it is finally here. As a reminder, when Lehman filed, everyone, at least those in charge, thought the fall out could be contained. It couldn't, and the Fed had to step in with roughly $30 trillion in backstops, guarantees, and asset purchases. The same will happen this time.

The vast majority of professional investors are unable to contemplate truly dark times for the markets. After all, the two worst items most of them have witnessed (the Tech Bust and 2008) were both remedied within about 18 months and were followed by massive market rallies.Because of this, the idea that the financial system might fail or that we might see any number of major catastrophes (Germany leaving the EU, a US debt default, hyperinflation, etc.) is on par with Bigfoot or Unicorns for 99% of those whose jobs are to manage investors' money or advise investors on how to allocate their capital. 

Was the Chapter 11 Petition of MF Global Holdings filed fraudulently?

You're about to hear a big boom come from across the Atlantic, but I've yet to hear a peep from the rating agencies. And many of you guys think they were delinquent during the other credit bubble!!!????