default

In the past week, almost every single sellside bank and their mother has released a report on "what happens to the US if there is a [default|debt extension|compromise|zombie apocalypse (if one believes Tim Geithner)]. Sure enough, here is Credit Suisse with its three scenarios. This is notable as it presents the binary outcomes for the stock markets as a result of what develops in Congress. The scenarios are: i) debt ceiling extension (market up 3%); ii) debt ceiling not extended (market down 15%); iii) default (market plummets by at least 30%). Of course, if there is really is a default it is game over for equity markets but that is a moot point. Either way, any report that has zero mention of the word gold when contemplating the impact of a US default goes straight into the garbage. Such as this one.

ISDA is getting nervous, or rather the same contingent of clueless "asset managers" who listen to ISDA as religiously as they listen to the rating agencies, is getting nervous. The boilerplate: "The following are responses to the most frequently-asked questions that ISDA has received in connection with a potential CDS Credit Event on US sovereign debt. The following does not constitute legal advice, and is subject in all respects to any determination that the ISDA Americas Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee may make in relation to CDS referencing the United States.  ISDA makes no comment on the likelihood of the events described in this Q&A." True - for the likelihood of any event happening, your best bet is to ask Turbo Tax Tim, and then multiply the answer by -1.

Gold is marginally higher against most currencies today and is trading at USD 1,614.40, EUR 1,130.50, GBP 990.08 and CHF 1,294.50 per ounce. Gold is flat against the dollar but remains just less than 1% from the record nominal high reached yesterday ($1,628.05/oz).  The euro is under pressure again today and gold is 0.7% higher against the euro and is just less than 1.5% away from the record euro high of EUR 1,144.80/oz reached last Monday. Investors were made nervous by comments from chemicals major BASF, which said it saw global economic growth slowing as it posted weaker-than-expected earnings, sending its stock down 4.9%. Siemens AG, Europe's largest engineering conglomerate, warned that global economic risks were increasing and posted below forecast results. Its shares fell 1.3%. The Dow to Gold Ratio has again turned down suggesting gold may continue to outperform U.S. stocks and the DJIA, in particular, in the coming weeks. The long term target of below 2:1 remains viable.

As Bloomberg reports, the spread between the July 28 and the August 4 T-Bills, two instruments that mature within a week of each other, and which differ by absolutely nothing else, has just surged to the widest ever, as investors are happy to roll away from long maturity instruments (even if longer maturity in this case means one week down the road) and dump securities that mature after the debt ceiling deadline for fear they will not get repaid. As for what is happening with the August 25 Bill, see second chart below. Yes: the market is starting to price in the unmentionable.

When we looked at the notional change in net outstanding CDS on the top 25 reference entities tracked by DTCC last week, we first made the discovery that the US has for the first time surpassed Greece in number of net speculative default bets outstanding. It was, also, the most rerisked name in total monthly notional, outpacing China and Japan in second and third place. Following tonight's weekly update from DTCC we get an even starker picture of where America lies on the risk spectrum: just to the left of UniCredit and Italy (left being bad). As the chart below indicates, the monthly percentage change in the number of net CDS contracts outstanding on the US increased by a whopping 10%, beating such insolvent entities as Italy's top bank and Italy itself (with mega black swan China, and 200% debt/GDP Japan coming in 4th and 5th place). And completing the bad news for the US from the perspective of a CDS trader, is that for the first time ever, US 1/5 year CDS inverted. Why? Because with American recovery rates well in the 80s based on trading prices of the cheapest to deliver bonds, unlike other sovereigns such as Greece which may need recovery calcs in the 20s or 30s, this is virtually equivalent to trading points up front and convexity is massive. It also means that with the 52 week Bill pricing at 0.2% earlier today, anyone who wishes to transact in a 1 year basis trade, can make a lot of money by putting on the negative basis courtesy of the blow out in 1 Year CDS compared to cash... assuming the US does not default of course. But in that case one will be bigger problems than paying their counterparty the require variation margin.

Round Two of the Crisis, the Sovereign Debt Round, began over Thanksgiving of 2009 when Dubai had a “virtual default,” asking for a six-month extension on $60 billion worth of its debt. The issue then spread to Greece over Christmas 2009. It will not end there. It's coming to the US's shores soon.

ISDA is rapidly deteriorating to rating agency status when it comes to credibility. After it made it all too clear in the past few weeks that no matter what happens it would never "determine" Greece (or any other European insolvent country) to have breached a CDS trigger (as that would apparently destroy the world), the same trade association (logically enough comprised of the same firms that make up the heart of the status quo) has joined the rating agencies, and as of last night the CME, in making it all too clear that a debt ceiling plan (preferably Reid's because it achieves absolutely nothing) has to pass, or else, after it earlier announced that the US has precisely 3 days to cure any missed debt payment before US CDS are triggered. Obviously this can not be allowed to happen, so expect this latest development to be used by the president in his nighlty scaremongering session.

You know, it's downright frightening how clearly this was able to be anticipated well over a year ago, yet it appears as if the EU politicking behind the bailout bonanza STILL leads down the road to perdition.

Default will be painful, but it is all but inevitable for a country as heavily indebted as the U.S. Just as pumping money into the system to combat a recession only ensures an unsustainable economic boom and a future recession worse than the first, so too does continuously raising the debt ceiling only forestall the day of reckoning and ensure that, when it comes, it will be cataclysmic. We have a choice: default now and take our medicine, or put it off as long as possible, when the effects will be much worse.

Earlier today, Fitch announced it would be the first rating agency to declare Greece has defaulted, albeit on an interim basis. According to Reuters, Fitch Ratings will declare Greece in restricted default on its debt due to the steps taken in a new euro zone rescue package but will likely assign new ratings of a low speculative grade once a bond exchange is completed, the agency said on Friday. The agency said that the reduction in interest rates Greece is paying on its debts and extension of maturities gave it a chance of regaining solvency and would support its rating. "Fitch will assign new post-default ratings to Greece and to the new debt instruments once the default event is cured with the issue of new securities to participating bondholders," the agency said. "The new ratings will likely be low speculative-grade." Elsewhere, confirming that now that Greece is an explicit ward of the EFSF, read Germany and France its rating do not matter, Greek CDS tumbled the most ever, tightening by 500 bps to 1,500 in hours. However, since Greece now exists in a state of limbo when it comes to capital markets and since without the explicit support of the EFSF the country would be insolvent, there is little sense to look at its "risk" through the lens of fixed income any more. Lastly, as the following selection of analyst commentary indicates, there is nothing about this "solution" that is actually beneficial in the long run.

“I have little doubt that most of the silver that is on the SLV’s web site with a bar number is there somewhere. But what I am really concerned about is if it is hypothecated or not, meaning is there more than one owner on that same bar. And I can almost guarantee that there are multiple owners for almost every bar that they report. It does not mean that that bar does not exist. It takes ten contracts to be a market maker. So I have got ten contracts, I have got fifty thousand ounces, and I ship it to my buddy who is a hedge fund manager over in Idaho. That is my silver. I have just sent it over to him on a lease. I have leased it to him. Now he has taken that silver and he has swapped it with somebody at the SLV, so they have got bars there. And he swapped for those and now those are on the exchange showing as part of the deal. So you can have a lease and a swap, so you could have two or three claims on those same bars. And that happens over and over again." So cautions David Morgan, publisher of The Morgan Report on precious metals and proprietor of Silver-Investor.com. More so than perhaps any other, the silver market has been loudly and visibly accused of rampant price manipulation. And more recently, suspicion is growing that the exchanges and ETFs dedicated to trading the metal do not hold sufficient volume of it to meet their obligations. Is the silver market free and fair? Chris delves deeply into these important questions with one of the best-known silver experts.

With increasing chatter that no matter what Congress agrees on, if anything, vis-a-vis the debt ceiling, the preemptive spin has begun, with the first salvo coming out of UBS' George Bory who has released a note "The difference between downgrade and default" which paints a very placid picture of the consequences of the US losing it AAA rating. Coming from a credit strategist, Bory naturally looks at the tightly confined consequences of such an event within the rates space exclusively without any mention of other cross-linked securities. In UBS' view, we would expect i) 10-yr yields rise 20-25bps, ii) a steeper yield curve, especially long end, iii) Treasuries underperform bunds and other highly rated sovereign debt iv) Vol term structure inverts further, v) Corporate spreads tighten, especially at long end, vi) Bank credit quality re-rated lower. Altogether not too bad. The problem is that there are a few trillion in money market related rating triggers which would grind to a halt the repurchase of paper of a sovereign that no longer has the AAA mark, resulting in our opinion in a dramatic crunch in short-term liquidity, and set the stage for a Lehman-like monetary system paralysis. But that is a topic for another day. Since today reality is to be ignored (see "transitory default"), here is why according to UBS America can simply call Moody's and S&P's bluff.

As more news comes across the tape, we now learn that somehow Greece is expected to experience a default but not just any default: a "transitory" default. From Bloomberg: European officials are trying to orchestrate a second Greek bailout so that a default would only last for a few days, said two officials familiar with the discussions.

When observing the latest "hope" based rally in the EUR last night we said that we "can't help but be extremely skeptical that this short-lived bounce will promptly reverse." Sure enough, 8 hours and 110 pips lower, this appears to have been the case driven primarily by remarks by Eurogroup president Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch FinMin Jan Kees de Jager, both of whom said that a selective Greek default "cannot be excluded." Specifically, Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said on Thursday he had seen willingness at the European Central Bank (ECB) to discuss the possibility of a selective default on Greek debt. "The ECB is continuously involved in talks about private sector involvement... We have recently seen some room at the ECB to discuss this topic. This is something different than a credit event. I am talking about a selective default," De Jager told the Dutch parliament. Juncker said essentially the same thing earlier, which precipitated the EUR tumble, as this shows that with the summit starting (11 am GMT), once again nobody in Europe has any idea what they are doing. Furthermore, horrible PMI data out of Europe (following last night's Chinese contraction) overnight certainly did not help. And lastly, a Spanish auction of 10 and 15 Year bonds for which the country had to pay record prices even as the Bid To Cover barely moved (and in the case of the 10 Year declined) also took away from any risk on sentiment.

That giant whooshing, and humming, sound you hear are all the printers at the basement of Marriner Eccles getting refills and start the warm up process. Because according to the Fed Charles Plosser the Federal Reserve is actively preparing for the possibility that the United States could default. Which can only mean one thing: an immediate paradrop of millions of $100 bricks to every man woman and child in the US since as we all know by know Tim Geithner has repeatedly confirmed the Treasury has absolutely no default plans. None.