default

2012 looks like it is going to be an extremely painful year.

The reason why the EURUSD took a big step lower in the past minutes is because Fitch has come out with a note in which it has assigned an AAA rating to the amended EFSF program. That in itself is not an issue, what is however, to the market is the announcement that a 50% Greek haircut would be an event of default. That said this is not to be confused with an ISDA determinations committee ruling that CDS has been triggered: we now know this will never happen and is the reason why basis trades across the board are exploding as all sovereign CDS is effectively being unwound. Regardless, the market does not seem to be liking the fact that someone's head is not stuck in the sand. Fitch also adds that it is critical that ECB carry on bond purchases, something which neither the ECB nor Germany have agreed to. It also adds that Greek PSI deal is a necessary step, and that the effectiveness of the summit deal depends on details. This is important considering Greece was barely able to get 85% acceptance in its 21% proposed haircut. The 50% will be even more interesting. Fitch concludes that the market is likely to see further market volatility. That is a given.

Following the inevitable transition of Harrisburg, PA into bankruptcy once the realization that the can can no longer be kicked down the road, it now appears that even the formerly "safe" Jefferson County, which was expected to avoid default, may itself devolve into a Chapter 9 (Jefferson County Democratic Lawmakers May Derail Debt Deal) following another political SNAFU. So while we wait on whether another $3.1 billion in muni debt will go toward the ultimate validation of M-Dub's thesis (if not calendar of events), the next city already prepping to go down the tubes is long-troubled epicenter of the credit bubble: Stockton, CA. Bloomberg reports, "Stockton, California, which declared a fiscal emergency in May, warned it may default on redevelopment agency debt issued in 2006, citing a shortfall in tax-increment revenue. Debt service will exceed available revenue by about $858,000 in the North Stockton project area, according to an Oct. 12 filing with the SEC." As expected, just like in any other house of cards, once the first one goes, the next ones down realize that those who default first (or among the first) default best, as there will be no money left for the stragglers. Expect to see many more cities biting the bullet and making a mockery of all those who in turn mocked the bearish muni thesis.

A quick look at the JPM earnings this morning would indicate all is well and that the company beat on the top and the bottom line: after all the company generated $23.76 billion in revenue on expectations of $23.26 and EPS of $1.02 relative to an expectation of $0.92. So far so good. The only problem is that unlike in previous quarter, when the primary driver of the bottom line was releasing reserves, this quarter, when everything blew out and blew up, that would have been seen as massively disingenuous, even by such permaclown as Dick Bove (which nonetheless did not stop the bank regardless, and JPM did take a $170 million reserve release, granted less than the $1.2 billion in Q2). So what does JPM do? Why it pulls the "Fair Value Option" card, discussed recently in the context of Morgan Stanley when we speculated whether the bank's biggest asset was their debt. Turns out we had the concept right, but the bank wrong, because $0.29 of EPS Net Income, or $1.9 billion pretax, was a "benefit from debit valuation adjustment (“DVA”) gains in the Investment Bank, resulting from widening of the Firm’s credit spreads." That's right: the fact that JPM spreads blew out in the quarter, and its default risk soared, for one reason or another actually served to "generate" not only net income but also revenue!  And now you see why American banks can never lose - in a good quarter, they release reserves; in a bad quarter they take FVO benefits in the form of Debit Valuation Adjustments, or in this case both! Winner, winner, always a chicken dinner for Jamie Dimon. Expect every other bank to do the same accounting BS this quarter to pad their numbers.

Sarkozy and Merkel continue to make "plans" for what to do... The reality is all they're doing is playing for time while they prepare for a Greek default. Indeed, German officials recently told the Telegraph that a "hard" default for Greece is coming which will feature investors taking a 60% "haircut" on their investments in Greek bonds. 

Goldman knows a thing or two about European equilibria (and the lack thereof): after all, it was its "bleeding financial innovation edge" currency swaps that allowed perpetual fiscal transgressors such as Greece (and who knows who else) to be allowed into the Eurozone in the first place despite never meeting the required Maastricht criteria of 3% deficit/GDP in the first place. Which is why we are happy to bring to our readers not only the latest in peak amusement in the form a podcast from GSAM head Jim O'Neill, but GSAM's "European Game Of Life" where in flowchart form, the Squid summarizes the various good/bad equilibria outcomes for Europe that lead to either Happiness or Misery. Frankly, we fail to see how any country in the European periphery, and soon, core, does not belong in the bottom left. But we are confident that Goldman will tell us, even as it hatches yet another scheme with its top clients on how to short the countries that paid Goldman the big bux for the pig lipstick a few short years ago...

While all eyes this morning are on Chinese CDS (with about an 18 month delay: about par for a centrally planned market), which has finally blown out, the shifting of attention has done nothing to fix the situation in Europe, where CDS is once again wider across the board.

Update: the correct translation is that as of 5pm the debt has not been paid.

In this messed up post-Keynesian world which is so insolvent, it is virtually impossible to keep track of who is about to default, either technically, selectively, or really, who is already bankrupt, who is hyperinflating, and so forth. And while we all know that Europe and the US can at best hope to kick the can for a month at a time until finally they all have to face the truth, we are happy to bring to your attention the latest entrant to the technical default club: Ukraine, which will shortly join its former USSR satellite Belarus in the hyperinflation club. The fact is that the Ukraine is slowly imploding - the government had stopped Treasury payments for all budget expenses in an attempt to accumulate the cash needed to make a coupon payment on debt and which apparently investors are unwilling to roll. In all fairness, the news update indicates that the country just barely made the 5.3 billion hryvnia payment, but that may be it for now. What about the next one? Time to add some Ukraine CDS to that bankrupt sovereign basket, no matter how overflowing it may be at this point.

And 9:55 am update in which Mantega responds to Valor (and ZH):

• MANTEGA SAYS BRAZIL ISN'T PREPARING ANY MEASURE

So far the only strategic use of "unnamed government officials" has been to leak rumors, whose sole purpose is to test the market's short covering squeeze potential and to discover just how long the half-life of one after another ever more incredulous rumor is. And since the only thing to come out of Europe in the past month in terms of problem resolution (no really: there has not been one policy that has been enacted since the July 21 Greek bailout), this is a useful strategy. Alas, as Europe is about to find out, this works both ways, because as Brazilian financial site Valor Economic reports, none other than perpetual optimist Brazil, the same country that is supposedly according to one set of rumors preparing to bail out all of Europe, with or without the rest of the BRICs, is now preparing for a Greek default within the week. From Valor: "Something must happen. Greece is a few days [from bankruptcy]" said a high official source.

In a surprisingly candid yet traditionally schizophrenic interview on ARD 1 show GuntherJauch, Angela Merkel once again sent the same mixed messages that have forced Berlusconi to smile to her face while saying less than flattering things, ahem, behind (no punt intended) her. While on one hand she said that default is an option under the post-2013 Euro rescue fund and emphasized that a euro-area sovereign insolvency can not be ruled out, she also made it clear that Europe continues to have no Plan B. According to Reuters, "allowing Greece to default on its debt now would destroy investor confidence in the euro zone and might spark contagion like that experienced after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday." Obviously this is not new, and our humble interpretation is to continue to telegraph to the market how unstable the Eurozone is so there are very little expectations and more EUR short squeezes can be accomplished, as well as not pricing in anticipation that emergency liquidity conduits, currently being implemented, actually succeed in case they actually do. Of course, should Europe really succeed in ejecting Greece without Europe imploding which is the interim end game here that would certainly send the EURUSD to well over 1.50. Alas, we put chances of that happening at about 1%.

Unless something changes in the next 24 hours, I expect we will hear more and more talk about default, not only of Greece but of other countries and of banks. Just in case that happens, here is some information that may help you make good decisions. There will be lots of chatter about the “likelihood of default” the CDS market is implying, but although it can be a useful statistic, it can also be very misleading. Before jumping into trades based on erroneous assumptions, it is worth spending a few minutes reading this. If all it does is confuse you, maybe that is a good thing in itself, because you won’t take a headline about default probability as fact.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the banks squandered a year to improve their capital base. BAC wasn’t selling cheap options to Warren Buffett when their stock was at 13. The SocGen CEO wasn’t on TV trying to convince investors that they had no funding or capital problems when his stock was at 42. The banks are even worse off than most of the countries, but why should anyone assume that waiting will make it easier for them to digest a Greek default... It seems that a lot has already been priced in and that the contagion is occurring whether we want it to or not, so we may as well let Greece default now and figure out how much has already been priced in and how to really stop the contagion from spreading to Italy and Spain and to banks that deserve to be saved. Let’s just admit it is gangrene and that it has already spread farther than is safe, but it is still better to cut off an arm to save the body. If we keep waiting it may not be possible to save the patient. The patient is getting weaker by the day, and being blind to that is just as big and just as dangerous as letting Greece default now.

Back on July 21, the same day as the Greek bailout redux hit the tape, we speculated that the biggest weakness in the Second Greek Bailout is that the EFSF would have to be expanded to well over the current E440 billion (which even at its current size has not been fully ratified in Europe, and based on recent events may not be implemented until 2012 thanks to Slovenia and Finland), or about E1.5 trillion (and possibly as much as E3.5 trillion). The reason this is a "problem" is that it would have to come exclusively at the expense of Germany which would have to pledge anywhere between 50% and 133% of its GDP (as France would have long since been downgraded and hence unable to participate in the EFSF at a AAA rating). We also assumed that the debt rollover with a 21% haircut would not be an issue as it should have been a formality: on this we were fataly wrong - the debt rollover plan has imploded and means that the entire Greek bailout has collapsed as some had expected. And now that it is clear that contagion is threatening to sweep through the core, it is back to Germany to prevent the gangrene, no longer contagion, from advancing beyond the PIIGS. However, in order to prevent a full out revolution, Germany's economic elite has said it would agree to an EFSF expansion and hence installation of European firewall, but at a price: a "controlled" default by Greece and 50% haircuts for private bondholders (as German banks have long since offloaded their Greek bonds).

The onslaught of half fiction, half lies from Greece continues after the Greek government was forced to deny the latest set of truth leaks, in this case that Greece is preparing for an orderly default, which it obviously is: there is no way the country can hope to implement the terms of the July 21 bail out now, especially with a dead silence on the terms of the bond exchange offer which means it has failed miserably. What it is certainly right about is that there is no truth to a debt haircut being just 50%: it will be far more, and the reality is it the haircut severity probably won't have much of an impact - most French and German banks have long since wound down their Greek exposure. The key question is how long before the other PIIGS follow suit. Another important question is whether the orderly default will come before the next IMF capital injections is provided to the country or after, and if it will be too late for an orderly bankruptcy then, and instead we get a disorderly one. From Reuters: "Greece denied on Friday newspaper reports that one option in the debt crisis would be an orderly default with a 50 percent haircut for bondholders. "Greece denies the reports," a senior government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity." And we all know what official denials mean...

Gone are the days when rating agencies couched the big fat inconvenient truth in big words and wordy phrases like "Selective Default" (predicated upon 90% acceptances of effective bond tender offers, which as has now become clear is not happening) when discussing Greece. French-owned Fitch let the genie out of the bottle this morning when it announced that it now expects Greece to "probably default" (as in the real deal, not some transitory paper definition), "but not leave the Eurozone." In other words, we have replaced one wishful thinking (partially default) with another (full default, but partial implications). Because unfortunately as most know, there is no charter precedent for keeping a bankrupt country in the EU and currency union. Which means eurocrats are now scrambling to not only lay the liquidity groundwork for a Greek bankruptcy (which they did last week with the global USD liquidity lines, which also conveniently lay out the timing for such an event) but also changing the laws furiously behind the scenes to make sure a Greek default does not violate some European clause, which it certainly will. All of this ignores the fact that the financial aftermath of a Greek default will hit the credibility of the ECB more than anything else. How bureaucracy can provision for that we are not too clear.