Italy

Time to start stocking up on those long term, OTM armageddon puts yet?

And now back down:

• FITCH SAYS ITALY RATING MAY BE CUT IF IT LOSES MARKET ACCESS
• FITCH SAYS ITALY RATING COULD BE CUT TO LOW INVESTMENT GRADE
• FITCH SAYS ITALY IS PROBABLY ALREADY IN RECESSION
• FITCH SAYS MONTI GOVERNMENT MAY REMAIN IN POWER TO APRIL 2013

We are trying to decide what is funnier: Italy cancelling bond auctions and telling the world it does not need the cash, even as its Treasury Director tells the world the country will need to raise €440 billion... that's €440,000,000,000 in cash, next year, or that as Reuters reported earlier, the country has simply decided not to issue preliminary Q3 GDP data. It makes sense: due to austerity Greece had to clamp down on ink costs and as a result was unable to print tax forms. And now Italy gets two ministers for the price of one (PM and FinMin) and now its statistic office is cutting back on calculator and abacus costs. Very prudent and we are sure the ECB will be delighted with this proactive expense management.

It is oddly fitting that Goldman Sachs, which now has Europe by the short and curlies, would make the first official introduction of its puppet Italian government.

I probably won't even have time for an "I told you so" as the business sectors and "to be funded entities" that have been floating on hopium catch a hard dose of reality and start collapsing.

Not on even a Sunday is the headline barrage over:

• MARIO MONTI ASKED TO FORM NEW ITALIAN GOVERNMENT
• MONTI TO MAKE COMMENTS AFTER ACCEPTING OFFER TO LEAD ITALY
• MARIO MONTI THANKS NAPOLITANO FOR OFFER TO FORM GOVERNMENT
• MARIO MONTI SAYS ITALY MUST BE PROTAGONIST IN EUROPE
• MARIO MONTI SAYS HE'LL ACT TO SAVE ITALY FROM CRISIS

And so the international advisor to Goldman Sachs drones on. In the meantime, the €300 billion in BTP sales is set to resume in just over 13 hours.

While at a glance this may seem like a straightforward question with a simple and obvious answer, troubled Italian bank UniCredit has released a ponderous article comparing and contrasting the two heavily indebted, politically challenged, and growth-retarded nations. Comparing debt-to-GDP ratios and trajectories, GDP growth, and unemployment (as well as funding needs), the answer actually becomes a little less obvious and boils down to the central bank (as does every trading decision in the world currently). Furthermore, their (admittedly biased) perspective leaves one wondering whether to invest in a country that hopes things will miraculously improve on its own, or in a country that has realized that reforms are needed and that has shown the willingness to take the painful steps in the right direction? Or c) none of the above.

This morning brings the latest, or the third, in the ongoing pitch book of Italian bonds by Goldman's Francesco Garzarelli, in which the strategist hopes that third time will be the charm for calling the bottom to the BTP collapse (sold to you, Goldman client). What apparently has Goldman confused is how its former employee Mario Draghi has let BTP spreads hit the record and unsustainable levels they did yesterday. To wit: "We were actually quite surprised not to see more forceful intervention by the central bank in secondary markets after the LCH announced it would raise initial margin requirements (and wrong in assuming it would have helped keep the Italy vs. AAA spread close to 450bp – it closed yesterday at 500bp over, but is now back at 450bp)." Here Goldman confirms what we suggested on Monday: that the ECB is now nothing but a policy enactment and dictator overhaul tool: "In this context, Italy still has to comply fully with the ECB’s ‘requests’ dated August 8, while Greece’s commitment to more austerity in exchange for financial support has continued to sway (at the time of writing, news that former ECB no. 2 Papademos would take the helm is encouraging)." Even so, the future to Goldman is quite cloudly :Granted, one positive collateral effect of market tensions has been to precipitate a political shakeup in Italy. But the collateral damage created by the price shock in Italian bonds to the stability of the EMU project (aggravated by explicit talk of countries being expelled from the single currency) is high and quite lasting. It will probably take a leap forward into deeper forms of fiscal risk-sharing (Prof Monti is a long-time proponent of Eurobonds) to get the market properly functioning again." OTOH, Barclays has done the math, and as we pointed out a few days ago, is not surprised.

Earlier today Italy sold €3 billion in 1 year Bills at an average yield of 6.087%, the highest since September 1997, and almost 3% higher compared to a month ago, when it prices at 3.570%. Yet there was a stunning twist: the 1 Year was trading at a whopping 7.75% in the gray market minutes before the auction, or almost 200 bps wide of the auction result, something which never happens under normal conditions unless the invisible hand of the central bank has anything to say about it. Now we know already that the ECB stepped in to aggressively mop up Italian bonds in the secondary market immediately after the auction to bring 10 year yields below 7%, however briefly: the bond has since widened above that level once again. Yet what is shocking is the primary market strength for the 1 year: since the ECB is prohibited by law from intervening in the primary, auction market, we wonder just what illegal backdoor funding scheme the ECB has concocted with friendly banks in order to have the auction price where it did, and how much money was transferred by back door channels to keep Europe from imploding one more day. Considering that the EURUSD was trading below 1.35 just prior to the auction at around 3 am, and has since regained losses, just as we expected yesterday, please remind us to add this latest illegal central bank intervention feature to the list of things to uncover once Europe blows up and the ECB's secret trading records are laid out for all to see. In the meantime, here is the Wall Street snap reaction to the Bill auction.

Dismal data from French manufacturing and industrial production along with growing chatter of a 'core' Europe strategy having been discussed is sending spreads among sovereign bonds notably wider. As a reminder Italy faces a rather large 1Y bill auction later this morning and the front-end of the BTP curve is underperforming as 2s10s inverts for the first time since August 1994.

So much for the US decoupling. Following 5 days of persistent refusals to deal with reality, the real world finally came back with a bang, and while the overall market tumbled the most in two months, it is really financial stocks that took the brunt of today's beating. As the chart below shows, the XLF has literally collapsed with most major banks on the ropes, and the broker dealer index down 6.45% the most since August 10. The reason? Italy of course, and the fear that once the country is forced to write down its debt, the bank failures will proceed in waves: first Italian banks, then French, and then everyone else, especially those that have already been in the market's crosshairs for their exposure. And if today was ugly, tomorrow promises to be an absolute bloodbath with Italy deciding to proceed with the issuance of €5 billion in 1 year Bills into what may well be a bidless market.

Yesterday's Barclays report that Italy is past the point of no return was very prescient. As of today, nobody can deny that Italy is about to drag the entire Eurozone down unless the ECB can come up with a real plan to monetize the debt, as opposed to backing some retarded contraption such as the EFSF which only the criminally stupid eurocrats can conceive, and which even the perpetually optimistic market has seen right through at this point. In other words: print. Lots. So until Mario Draghi gets off the phone with the corner office at 200 West for instructions on how to best proceed, here is a visual summary courtesy of Reuters, of where the max pain is concentrated. Needless to say, we are all so lucky that French banks managed to sell off their exposure to unwitting bagholders who took the sticky EURUSD as an all clear signal, instead of what it was this entire time: a side-effect of EUR repatriation as French banks were dumping USD-denominated assets and shoring up capital.

Some much needed clarity from the people who run Europe's printers. And, just as in the case of Credit Suisse, Goldman is desperately pushing for Italy to avoid precisely the outcome that Berlusconi has said is coming, namely early elections: "These could be held in mid-January at the earliest, although they would most likely be postponed until the Spring amid market turmoil. This would represent the worst scenario for markets, in our view. Since President Napolitano is aware of this, he will probably try to resist dissolving Parliament at this juncture. Also, most centrist parties would want to change the electoral law before a new vote takes place. All these scenarios will take some time to play out, a couple of weeks at least. In the meantime, the higher priced Italian government bonds will continue to be sold, as gradually higher margin requirements are applied. On our central case, intermediate to long-end bonds should continue to be supported relative to AAA-rated securities by the ECB."

Yesterday, when describing the situation in Europe, Robert Rennie, chief currency strategist in Sydney at Westpac said, "with Italy we’re talking about the third-largest government bond market in the world going into a meltdown situation." That meltdown situation could commence as soon as a few hours from now when the 2010 budget review is voted on. Here is Credit Suisse Giovanni Zanni summarizing the probability outcome matrix for Italy between today's key vote and the November 15 multi-year budget votes, both of which are implicit votes of confidence in Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, whose position over the past month or so has been controversial, to say the least. In summary the outcome probability is as follows: no elections and new "national unity" government: 30%; no elections and broad center-right coalition government: 30%; early elections: 30%; and Berlusconi stays: 10%.

As the following update from the World Gold Council reminds us, at the end of October, Italy had 2,451.8 tonnes of gold, or roughly $140 billion dollars at today's price. We doubt we are the only ones keeping track of all this gold (most of it almost certainly 'safe and sound' about 150 feet deep under the infamous LIberty 33 location). We also doubt we are the only ones curious about its future, which we see as have five distinct possible outcomes: i) nothing; ii) it is currently being shipped quietly from The New York Fed to Italy for "general corporate purposes); iii) it has already been shipped and is currently being loaded up in Silvio's private jet; iv) the G-20 is already preparing to launch a formal demand that in order to remain in the Eurozone and to find the EFSF, which will be used to buy Italian bonds, Italy will have to do its patriotic duty and remit it to the ECB, an extortion attempt which was tried with Germany last week and which failed spectacularly; or v) it is being lent out to other countries who have long since sold their gold and continue to pretend they have some hard asset backing to the currencies issued by their own central banks. We hope to get an answer shortly.