CDS

You see it wasn't North Korean torpedoes, it was the South Korea Sovereign Destabilization Fund, LLC. Its principals are all about to be exiled by the SEC to St. Helena for life.

We have officially moved from a Greek tragedy to a Greek surreal comedy. After nearly a month-long scapegoating campaign in which Greek PM G-Pap said he would spit in the faces and skullf#@* all those who dared to buy Greek CDS (because as we have all been lied to by everyone who doesn't know the first thing about CDS, it is CDS buying not bond selling that drives spreads), with the stupidity reaching as far and wide as the Spanish and German secret services, which said they would spy on CDS traders in London and New York, Greek daily Kathimerini has just uncovered that the biggest speculator, holding 15%, or $1.2 billion of the total $8 billion in Greek notional CDS, has been a firm that operates about 2 blocks away from the parliament building in Athens - the state-owned Hellenic Post Bank (TT)! Luckily poetic justice is about to be served, as every single media outlet tomorrow will apply the same circus monkey treatment to G-Pap and his clownshoes henchmen, not to mention the chorus of obese idiots over at the European Commission who fell for the ruse (speaking of EU idiots, has anyone heard of Jenny Craig relapse patient Joaquin Almunia in the past 2 months, with his "Greece will never demand a bailout" arrogance). While there had been speculation that Greek banks were selling Greek CDS to hedge funds, it had never crossed anyone's mind that a Greek bank could be betting on the collapse of its own sovereign host (especially one which does not own Bernanke's printing press), and that in such size! Frankly this beats even our very own AIG fiasco by orders of magnitude in stupidity.

Some weeks ago we presented evidence that the sovereign CDS market pales in comparison with cash notionals outstanding, and furthermore, we demonstrated that sovereign spreads have been led by cash selling, which has been followed only subsequently by CDS moves, not the other way around. The fact, however, did not stop the bashers. Today, ISDA, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, has issued the following statement, which along the lines of our observations, refutes claims that CDS speculators are to blame for widening (but not, shockingly, tightening) in sovereign spread moves.

Those that want to ban CDS don't understand how the world works. They certainly don't get the fact that the US mortgage market is one gigantic CDS mess.

Presenting an update of North American Investment Grade CDS. While Month To Date the credit market has ripped in line with equities, with just CTL and AA marginally wider for the period, Year to Date the vast number of names is still wider than at January 1, or at beast unchanged, demonstrating that credit is certainly not as enthused about the equity market activity over the past two and a half months.

More postcards from a post-austerity Greece where 10,000 protesters take to the streets. Pick the CDS speculators out.

The Washington Post reports that the next "Lehman-sized" event may be just around the corner, as the European Commission is now supporting a ban on trading sovereign CDS. While we are in process of tracking down whether this is actual news or just some exaggeration based on semantics, we will caution, once again, that the consequences of a CDS trading ban will be severe and very likely result in the opposite of what the EC intends on achieving. Keep in mind that everyone expected the Lehman bankruptcy to be contained as it was at best a fringe cog in the financial system. The result was a systemic collapse as one interlinked component of the financial fabric imploded after another. The rush to unwind CDS positions ahead of a ban will be massive and have unpredictable consequences. But the biggest threat is what happens to bond prices, which once basis trades are made impossible, will be promptly unwound, leading to pervasive selling of the cash leg not by speculators but by plain vanilla mutual fund idiot money. What scapegoaters seem to forget is that the vast majority of existing sovereign CDS notional is tied into perfectly boring insurance "basis" trades, in which the bond is held in combination with associated CDS. Once there is an inability to have hedged cash sovereign exposure, the demand for European sovereign paper will plummet, achieving precisely the opposite of what the CDS ban is attempting to accomplish.

The meeting between the Greek Minister Of Prime Scapegoating and the US Secretary of Treasury Defrauding ("I used TurboTax") has ended "satisfactorily": idiotic lunacy, which we are now convinced has mutated and gone airborne, has spread and now Geithner is very likely infected. According to preliminary reports president Obama may be contagious as well. G-Pap is quoted by Market News as saying that "President Barack Obama gave a positive response to the European efforts to combat some aspects of market speculation that could destabilize markets and the euro." Seriously, is this just some sick, perverted scheme to make going long the dollar (short the euro) illegal? Can we just make it so much easier and simply hand Benny and the Inkjets the constitution to use as 1-ply Treasury Paper one of these days?

This is just getting ridiculous. First the NYT had some choice words over the weekend in describing the whole CDS fiasco, which alas did not have quite the desired effect, and now the BBC is out with a primer on SPECULATION ANALYSIS (yes, a primer), in which it has the following stunner:

Government bonds come with an insurance policy, called a credit default swap (CDS).

At this point: i) everyone has become an overnight "expert" on CDS, ii) every "expert" is patently wrong on what CDS is, iii) insane college green preachers have incorporate the word CDS to go right before harlot, and right after apocalypse, iv) "Unprincipled speculators are making billions every day by betting on a Greek default" according to Papandreou, even though the DTCC notes the net notional in Greek CDS is only $9 billion, v) the SEC is about to get involved meaning activation of WOPR can't be far behind.

Sorry, Merkel, Papanderou et al. BaFin finds that there is no sign that CDS speculation is involved when it comes to Greek government bonds, even as the volume in cash bonds has spiked. As a reminder - selling bonds has the same effect as buying CDS. And guess what: the real Greek cash-CDS basis is negative 112 bps (for "experts" this is swap-clean basis, i.e., Greek CDS minus German CDS compared to GGB minus Bunds). This means that cash bonds are far and ahead a leading indicator, and much more dominant when it comes to determining actual price/yield levels. So does this mean that GGB sellers will now be demonized with the same ferocity as those meddling CDS traders? Hopefully, this will finally be the end of the CDS as satan's spawn topic.

While we are not sure how Betty Liu feels about Rogers' invitation to come eat some Wienerschnitzel, what is certain is that Greek PM Papandreou is not too happy with the commodities pundit right about now. When asked should Europe bail out Greece, Jim says: "No, of course not, they should let Greece go bankrupt. It would be good for the euro, it would be good for Greece, it would be good for everybody." Alas, more true words have rarely been spoken. And with every financial professional already on the same side of the boat as Rogers, politicians are now left on their own to do what they know best: i.e., the wrong thing...and over and over again, and if someone can be blamed (evil, evil CDS speculators come to mind), so much the better. Also, should anyone wish to take a brave foray into the political arena (which appears is now the best paying job in the world, incidentally, just after Goldman CDS traders, hehe) on the crest of the anti CDS bashing, now is the time. It appears quite a few have risen to the challenge.

“We must succeed at putting a stop to the speculators’ game with sovereign states. We can’t allow speculators to be the profiteers of Greece’s difficult situation. Derivatives must be curbed.” - Angela Merkel

A recent conference call conducted by Goldman focusing on the implications of Basel II on the derivative credit business, headed by GS chief credit strategist Charlie Himmelberg, had some cautionary observations. Some of the key ones: bank capital requirements would increased by 11.5% overall and 223.7% in bank trading books. The biggest impact would fall on seniorsynthetic tranches, and where B and BB tranches would see an above average impact, so would AAA. Yet the key observation is the impact on specific bank names, where we see that while Bank of America would be impaired, assuming $193 billion of Tier 1 capital, the total Tier 1 Capital Impact from estimated capital charges would be more than half, or $107.9 billion, Morgan Stanley is most at risk, with just $46 billion of Q3 Tier 1 Capital, which may see as much as $269 billion in impact from capital charges. Another interesting bank-specific observation: Goldman's estimate of the size of Morgan Stanley's unmatched CDS exposure, which GS has at $2.7 trillion in sold protection versus just $2 trillion in purchased. Combined with "other purchased protection" $786 billion, MS has the greatest capital charge exposure ($1.5 trillion) compared with both Bank of America ($600 billion) and JPMorgan (just $114 billion).

With governments fueling "La Terreur" towards all things financial, it's hardly surprising that market players are running scared after talk of market clampdowns and restrictions. However, before we panic and cut all our positions it's important to understand what's motivating governments. What are their true objectives and what lasting impact can they have on markets? Once we understand this can we place our bets more securely and objectively.

Goldman's chief Euro strategist Erik Nielsen is out with another note, this time one of praise and wild-eyed adoration for the increasing desperation in Greek polemics (note, not actions: those tend to be more of the semi-violent police clashing, people striking variety). Well, duh, of course Greece will promise it will take out a second-lien on the Parthenon (and a first on the Acropolis): the country will be out of money in two weeks for Pete's sake! Aside from the pandering desire to be next in line as lead underwriter on the next Greek multi-billion swap (and receive fees, millions of dollars in juicy fees), Nielsen does provide a good narrative that ties in the Greek bail out, and the recent anger against CDS "Speculators" who will at the end of the day be the validation for why Europe will have "no choice" but to bail out Greece, as it is solely through their vile scheming that GGBs are trading so much lower compared to where they should be trading. Because taking a cue straight from the US market, none of this bankruptcy stuff is relevant at all when dealing with capital markets.