ratings

A lot of stuff in here this morning.

It appears that Greece will not even have to wait until the dreaded March 20 funding D-Day. As was earlier reported, Greek PM Lucas Papademos may resign if he is unable to persuade his coalition unity government to agree to further Troika demands for additional austerity. It now appears that there will be no agreement, and thus the primary demand from the Troika for further cash disbursement will not be met. The FT reports: "All three party leaders in Greece’s teetering national unity government have opposed new austerity measures demanded by international lenders, forcing eurozone finance ministers to postpone approval of a new €130bn bail-out and moving the country closer to a full-blown default. Representatives of the so-called “troika” – the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – have demanded further cuts in government jobs and severe reductions in Greek salaries, including an immediate 25 per cent cut in the €750 minimum monthly wage, before agreeing the new rescue. But representatives of all three coalition partners, including centre-left Pasok of former prime minister George Papandreou and the centre-right New Democracy of likely successor Antonis Samaras, said they were unwilling to back the government layoffs." Now we have been here before, and as a reminder the last time Greece threatened to pull out of Europe with the G-Pap referendum threat back in the fall, G-Pap was promptly replaced with the Trilateral Commission member and former ECB Vice President, Lucas Papademos. The problem is that for him to obtain power, he needed to form a coalition government. Well, that now appears to be in tatters, as not one party is willing to break to the Greeks that the minimum wage of €750 will be cut even further. The question is who will blink first this time, as it is quite likely that neither the Troika nor Greece want an out of control default. Unless, of course, this was Germany's plan B to the imposition of a Greek commissar all along...

• Greece's Hazardous Road to Restructuring (WSJ)
• Spain Coaxes Banks to Merge to Purge Losses (Bloomberg)
• Brussels Discovers New €15bn Black Hole in Greece's Finances (Guardian)
• UK Recession Predicted to Return (FT)
• Senate OKs insider trading curbs on lawmakers (Reuters)
• China Limits Mortgages for Foreigners (Bloomberg)
• Villagers scramble for fuel in Europe's big chill (Reuters)
• SNB Head Warns of Political Fallout After Crisis (FT)
• Portugal Bond Rout Overstates Greek Likeness (Bloomberg)
• Bernanke Says He Won’t Trade 2% Inflation-Rate Target for More Job Growth (Businessweek)

A few days after Germany proposed the stripping of Greek fiscal authority from the insolvent country, in exchange for providing funding for what German FinMin Schauble called today a "bottomless pit" (and Brüderle chimed in saying that "a default of the Greek government would be bitter but manageable), Sarkozy decided to demonstrate his "muscle" if not so much stature, and openly denied Germany, saying "There can be no question of putting any country under tutelage." Sure enough, it was now Germany's turn to reciprocate the favor. According to Bloomberg, "Finance ministers from the four euro- area countries with AAA ratings -- Germany, Finland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- will meet in Berlin tomorrow afternoon, a German Finance Ministry spokesman said." And as is well known, FrAAnce no longer a member of this, however meaningless, club. "The gathering is part of a a series of meetings convened by officials from the highest-rated euro states, the spokesman said, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity. Ministers will discuss current issues without briefing reporters after the meeting." And so the gauntlet of public humiliation is now once again back in Sarkozy's court. The good news: if the de minimis Frenchman does not get his act in order, and overturn the massive lead that his challenger in the April presidential elections has garnered, he will need to endure the humiliation for at most 3 more months. In other news, it appears that when it comes to saving political face, the rating agencies are actually quite useful.

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

All you need to read.

• Merkel Seeks to Reassure China (FT)
• German-IMF Rift Stalls Greece Deal (WSJ)
• Survey of Banks Shows a Sharp Cut in Lending in Europe (NYT)
• Bernanke to testify on economy and deficit (AP)
• House votes to freeze congressional, federal pay (WaPo)

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!!!????

All you need to read.

The post-hoc (correlation implies causation) reasons for why the initial LTRO spurred bond buying are many-fold but as Nomura points out in a recent note (confirming our thoughts from last week) investors (especially bank stock and bondholders) should be very nervous at the size of the next LTRO. Whether it was anticipation of carry trades becoming self-reinforcing, bank liquidity shock buffering, or pre-funding private debt market needs, financials and sovereigns have rallied handsomely, squeezing new liquidity realities into a still-insolvent (and no-growth / austerity-driven) region. Concerns about the durability of the rally are already appearing as Greek PSI shocks, Portugal contagion, mark-to-market risks impacting repo and margin call event risk, increased dispersion among European (core and peripheral) curves, and the dramatic rise in ECB Deposits (or negative carry and entirely unproductive liquidity use) show all is not Utopian. However, the largest concern, specifically for bondholders of the now sacrosanct European financials, is if LTRO 2.0 sees heavy demand (EUR200-300bn expected, EUR500bn would be an approximate trigger for 'outsize' concerns) since, as we pointed out previously, this ECB-provided liquidity is effectively senior to all other unsecured claims on the banks' balance sheets and so implicitly subordinates all existing unsecured senior and subordinated debt holders dramatically (and could potentially reduce any future willingness of private investors to take up demand from capital markets issuance - another unintended consequence). We have long suggested that with the stigma gone and markets remaining mostly closed, banks will see this as their all-in moment and grab any and every ounce of LTRO they can muster (which again will implicitly reduce all the collateral that was supporting the rest of their balance sheets even more). Perhaps the hope of ECB implicit QE in the trillions is not the medicine that so many money-printing-addicts will crave and a well-placed hedge (Senior-Sub decompression or 3s5s10s butterfly on financials) or simple underweight to the equity most exposed to the capital structure (and collateral constrained) impact of LTRO will prove fruitful.

Ever want to know what a documentary that spits the truth about the rating agency scam and overall Ponzi would look like if it actually aired on international TV???

All you need to read.

On Friday the FDIC reminded us that the banking crisis continues, closing and selling several institutions in arranged transactions.   This may seem gloomy news, but please note that the shareholders of the acquiring institutions just made a lot of money.

Festive Friday fun:

• FITCH TAKES RATING ACTIONS ON SIX EUROZONE SOVEREIGNS
• ITALY LT IDR CUT TO A- FROM A+ BY FITCH
• SPAIN ST IDR DOWNGRADED TO F1 FROM F1+ BY FITCH
• IRELAND L-T IDR AFFIRMED BY FITCH; OUTLOOK NEGATIVE
• BELGIUM LT IDR CUT TO AA FROM AA+ BY FITCH
• SLOVENIA LT IDR CUT TO A FROM AA- BY FITCH
• CYPRUS LT IDR CUT TO BBB- FROM BBB BY FITCH, OUTLOOK NEGATIVE

And some sheer brilliance from Fitch:

• In Fitch's opinion, the eurozone crisis will only be resolved as and when there is broad economic recovery.

And just as EUR shorts were starting to sweat bullets. Naturally no downgrade of France. French Fitch won't downgrade France. In other news, Fitch's Italian office is about to be sacked by an errant roving vandal tribe (or so the local Police will claim).

After Wikipedia and Wikileaks shone light on science, history and politics, Wikirating may bring open source financial transparency to the web. Attempting to iron out structural problems of traditional rating procedures, Wikirating is open source, fully transparent and retrieves its results from participants input. Initiated by Austrian mathematics Dorian Credé and and finance whiz Erwan Salembier, ratings are derived from weighted user input. They stress to point out that their model will improve with rising user input who also have a say in improving the formulae used.