Fresh Start

When news hit the tape in February of 2007 that TXU would be acquired by a consortium of PE firms including KKR, TPG and Goldman, for the mind-boggling price of $45 billion, to this day the biggest LBO in history, there were those who were morbidly excited about the future as money was flowing freely, bonuses would hit a record, and there was only upside, and then there were those who knew this was the can't miss top-tick indicator of the beginning of the end. The latters ones turned out to be right. And not only because a year later the entire financial system imploded and only a $25 trillion global coordinated bailout prevented the collapse of the western way of life as we know it, but because now six years later, in the worst kept secret of Wall Street of the past month, TXU, now known as Energy Futures Holdings, is on the verge of the ultimate humiliation for private equity investors: Chapter 11, and a complete wipe out of not only the equity but major impairment of the debt holders as well.

Politics aside, the bottom line is that the Rubicon has been crossed, and deposits have now been forcefully confiscated in what Europe promises to be a standalone case. What is certain, is that nobody will wait to find out how long it takes before Europe's class of increasingly more desperate and ill-meaning despots is found to be have lied once more (as it has about everything else since the start of the European crisis). And while the mainstream media will be focused primarily on Europe in the coming days, as BCG and we have warned, the topic of "wealth taxation" is now front and center, and it stars not only Europe, but the US as well.  The question then becomes: what does the funding structure of the US private depository institutions look like, and is there any possibility of Cyprus "wealth tax" recurring on the other side of the Atlantic. To answer this question, we present the summary layout of the consolidated US depository system, which according to the Fed's December 31, 2012 Flow of Funds report had a grand total of $15 trillion in assets, and a matched number of liabilities, of which 72%, or a total of $10.9 trillion was in the form of deposits. So, if the US was to go the Cyprus route, and begin impairing balance sheet liabilities to remark assets, there would be precious little space (with just $4.3 trillion in total other funding liabilities), before one would need to start eating into the deposit base, should Congress decide to implement a very "fair and just" financial asset tax in the US next.

If it seems like it hasn't been even a year since the latest Atlantic City casino, this one with the surreal ads showcasing Revel Atlantic City, opened up, it is because that is exactly the case. Ten months to be precise. And just as quickly as it came, just as quickly did it file for bankruptcy. Moments ago, the company issued a press release that it would engage in a debt-for-equity prepack (with Moelis, K&E and A&M all advising) Chapter 11 which will be completed over the summer. The biggest losers here are not so much the original owners of Revel Entertainment Group, Morgan Stanley which three years ago decided to walk away from its entire $932 million sunk investment in the bankrupt hotel (instead of spending another billion to complete it), but the people of New Jersey, who just lost another investment opportunity as some $260 million in the tax incentives that were supposed to help the project along will never reach their intended target. The continuation of the abandoned investment was the brainchild, and pride and glory of one Chris Christie who then said "the $2.4 billion Revel is one of the most spectacular resorts he's ever seen and expects it will motivate other Atlantic City casinos to revitalize their properties. "I think that one of the things that Revel will be is a catalyst for additional modernization and investment by the other casinos to say, listen, if we grow more people here coming to the region and we're offering something that looks nice further down the boardwalk, maybe people will want to look there as well." As it now stands, the Revel will only be a catalyst for further bankruptcies as industry after industry finds out what a tapped out consumer with no access to $1.8 trillion in excess reserves truly means.

Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, courtesy of one Gideon Gono - the brilliant man behind such grand monetary experiments as QE and its offshoots throughout the developed world - and numerous one hundred trillion dollar Zimbabwe dollar bills, may have come and gone, and the country may no longer have a functioning currency of its own, but it certainly has the aftermath of the most recent episode of modern-era monetary hyperinflation to contend with. And with the holidays here, AP provides a very bleak snapshot of what the country which currently has an 80% unemployment, has to look forward to. Zimbabweans are facing bleak holidays this year amid rising poverty, food and cash shortages and political uncertainty, with some describing it as the worst since the formation of the coalition government in the southern African nation.... Banks have closed, ATMs have run out of cash and transport services have been paralyzed." It gets worse: "Zimbabwe's unemployment is pegged at around 80 percent with many people in Harare, the capital, eking out a living by selling vegetables and fruits on street corners." And all of this is after the massive economic imbalances in Zimbabwe's economy should have been "fixed" (or so conventional economic theory would have one believe) courtesy of hyperinflation, which left any savers in tatters, destroyed the value of the old currency, benefited solely debtors  but also allowed a fresh start to a government, which could only remain in power due to a violent power grab by the democratically elected-turned-dictator Robert Mugabe.

The price of the euro as a “romantic icon”

What is the latest state of play that has the biggest support from all parties? It appears that the plan which is now back in play, is one which Greece had previously nixed, namely a partial Greek bond buyback of the private bonds at a discount to par: with numbers currently rumored anywhere between 25 cents and 50 cents on the euro. And even if Greece agrees with this proposal, there is a question of where Greece will get the money for this distressed debt buyback? After all Greece is completely broke, and any new cash would have to be in the form of loans, as not even the most nebulous interpretation of the Maastricht treaty would allow an equity investment, or to use the proper nomenclature, "a fiscal investment" into Greece. But the kicker is when one traces the use of funds. Because what is will happening is a payment not to Greece, obviously, but to its creditors: entities which for the most part are hedge funds, and which have bought up GGB2s in the mid teen levels as recently as 4 months ago (recall Dan Loeb's major position in Greek bonds).

Last week, when discussing the next steps for the company, and specifically the hope that mediation may resolve the epic animosity between management and workers, we stated that "What makes a mediation improbable is that the antagonism between the feuding sides has certainly hit a level of no return: "Several unions also objected to the company's plans, saying they made "a mockery" of laws protecting collective bargaining agreements in bankruptcy. The Teamsters, which represents 7,900 Hostess workers, said the company's plan would improperly cut the ability of remaining workers to use sick days and vacation." Sure enough, moments ago we learned that mediation has now failed and the liquidation may proceed. And since in America nobody understands that proper sequence of events involved in a bankruptcy liquidation, where the valuable parts always end up being acquired by someone, in this case the Twinkie brand and recipe, let the pointless Ebay bidding wars over twinkies continue. As for what really happens next, if indeed Bimbo is prohibited from acquiring the assets in the Stalking Horse auction due to anti-trust limitations, then the buyer will almost certainly be a "financial", i.e., another PE firm, whose coming means the end of any hopes and dreams of preserving union status at fresh start Hostess, or whatever the new firm will be named.

Tim Geithner's public "servant" tenure has not been without its blemishes: from his deplorable run as the (figure)head of the New York Fed (from 2003 until 2009), when the entire financial system literally imploded under his watch, to his epic failing up as Hank Paulson's replacement as treasury Secretary of the United States, despite his legendary inability to navigate the Minotaurian labyrinth that is the TurboTax income tax flowchart, the Dartmouth alum has had his share of run ins with adversity (and adversity won). Of course, Geithner's tenure in charge of the Treasury in the past 4 years has been somewhat mollified by the fact that here too here was merely a figurehead, and the true entity that runs the US printing presses is none other than the JPM and Goldman Sachs co-chaired Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (for more on the TBAC read here and especially here as pertains to the former LTCM trader and current head of JPM's CIO group), meaning that the US Treasury, just like the Fed, are merely branches of the one true power in US governance: Wall Street. Geithnerian figureheadedness aside, the one undeniable fact is that Tim Geithner's days as head of the Treasury are now numbered: he has made it quite clear that he will not accompany Obama (should the incumbent be reelected) into his second term. So what is a career "public servant" to do once the public no longer has any interest in retaining his services? Bloomberg's Deborah Solomon has some suggestions...

One of the zanier proposals floated in the past few weeks, yet sufficient to send Greek bonds soaring to post-restructuring highs on hopes of a take out, was the suggestion that Greece would repurchase its fresh-start bonds in the open market, which recently traded in the teens, and have since virtually doubled, at a price ~25 cents of par. Obviously since the price of the bonds had been much lower, even the mere possibility of what is termed in the industry as a distressed buyback, sent everyone scurrying to purchase the paper, as if it had any intrinsic economic value (it did not), instead of mere hopes that Greece would throw even more good money after bad (especially since the fresh start bonds have a meaningless cash coupon and nobody expects them to be repaid at maturity). There is also the detail that a distressed buyback is, for the rating agencies, equivalent to an Event of Default, but knowledge of that small fact would be demanding too much out of those who scrambled in the latest chase for yield. Anyway, with all that said, it now appears that the whole idea is over, with Greek Kathimerini reporting moments ago that Greece has scuttled the proposal for a bond buyback.

Back in January, Zero Hedge proposed a pair trade, which to date has returned well over 100% on a blended basis, namely the shorting of local law peripheral European bonds, while going long English law (or strong covenant) bonds (a relationship best arbed in Greece, when various foreign-law issues were tendered for at par to avoid a bankruptcy, even as the local law bond population saw a massive cram down a few months later as part of the second Greek "bailout"). In big part, this proposal stemmed from the work of Cleary Gottlieb's Lee Buccheit, who has been the quiet brain behind the real time restructuring of Europe's insolvent states. In fact, one can say that what is happening in Europe was predicted to a large extent in his "How to Restructure Greek Debt" and "Greek Debt; The Endgame Scenarios." Which is why we read his latest white paper: "The Eurozone Debt Crisis - The Options Now", because it presents, in clear, practical terms, just what the flowchart for Europe looks like, unimpeded by the ceaseless chatter and noise of clueless politicians and career bureaucrats who have never heard the term pro forma or fresh start. In brief, Buccheit, unlike all European politicians, is hardly optimistic.

If the Federal Reserve’s nightmare comes true and deflation occurs, something else happens that the banks fear and loathe: marginal borrowers default on all their debts. Rather than being easier to pay, the debts become more difficult to pay as money gains value. Marginal borrowers no longer get the “boost” of inflation, so they increasingly default on their loans. How is it bad for hopelessly over-indebted, overleveraged households to default on all their debt and get a fresh start? Exactly why is that bad? What is the over-indebted household losing other than a lifetime of debt-serfdom, stress and poverty? The banks have to absorb the losses, and since they are so highly leveraged, the losses drive the banks into insolvency. They are bankrupt and must close their doors. Note that 99.9% of the people benefit when bad banks absorb losses and close their doors. Only the bank managers, owners and bond holders lose, and everyone else gains as an unproductive, poorly managed bank no longer burdens the economy with its malinvestments and risky bets. The Federal Reserve’s policy of protecting the wealth and power of the banks while stealing from wage earners via inflation is a catastrophe for the nation and the 99.9% who are not financiers, politicians and lobbyists.

If you want to do something for the poor and middle class, encourage deflation.

Now that the "alternative energy" industry is in shambles following one after another solar company bankruptcy, as the realization that at current prices, alternative energy business models are still just too unsustainable, no matter how much public equity is pumped into them, more "traditional" companies have resumed circling the drain. First, it was Patriot Coal, which finally succumbed to reality a month ago. Now it is the turn of ATP Oil and Gas, which filed Chapter 11 in Texas last night. And sure enough, in a world in which nobody is to blame, and everything is someone else's fault, the CEO promptly made a case that he is blameless and it is all Obama's fault. According to Forbes: "The founder and chairman of [ATP Paul Bulmahn] wants the world to know that the Obama Administration—and its illegal ban on deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP disaster—is to blame for the implosion of his company. Not him. “It is all directly attributable to what the government did to us,” he rails. “This Administration has gone out of its way to create problems for my company, the company that I formed from scratch.”

Update via CNBC:

• CITADEL, KRR SAID NO LONGER TO BE LOOKING AT KNIGHT
• KNIGHT CAPITAL CLOSE TO FUNDING DEAL, CNBC'S KATE KELLY SAYS
• KNIGHT MAY GENERATE ABOUT $400 MLN FROM INVESTORS, KELLY SAYS
• GETCO, TD AMERITRADE LIKELY PART OF INVESTMENT GROUP: KELLY

Knight Capital is scrambling: it has a few hours to convince any potential suitors that it is worth some $300 million more alive than having its carcass picked off at a cost of $0.01 over its debt (which itself will likely be materially impaired) in a Chapter 11 Stalking Horse sale. If the Sunday before the Lehman, and MF Global, bankruptcy filings is any indication, the third time will not be the charm for the company whose 1400 employees may have no place to call work at 9am tomorrow. Sadly, in a world in which entire countries and continents have taken on the patina of Schrödingerian felinism, constantly shifting between alive and dead states depending on who is looking, we would take the under on the probability that the firm's lawyers will not be visiting 1 Bowling Green at some point in the next 16 hours.

• U.S. nuclear bomb facility shut after security breach (Reuters)
• EU Commission Welcomes Greek Reform Pledge, Wants Implementation (Reuters) -> less talkee, more tickee
• China Cuts Stock Trading Costs to Lift Confidence (China Daily) as France hikes transactions costs
• Holding Fire—for Now—but Laying Plans (WSJ)
• ECB-Politicians’ Anti-Crisis Bargain Starts to Emerge (Bloomberg)
• Dollar falls back as non-farm payrolls loom (FT)
• Ethics Plan to Raise Consumer Confidence (China Daily)
• Brazil backslides on protecting the Amazon (Reuters) - fair weather progressive idealism?
• Japan Foreign-Bond Debate May Boost BOJ Stimulus Odds (Bloomberg)
• Japan’s Lower House Passes Bill to Let Workers Stay on to 65 (Bloomberg)

In a landmark shift in its bank "impairment" stance, the WSJ reports that "in a sharp turnaround" the ECB has advocated the imposition of losses on senior bondholders at the most "damaged" Spanish savings banks, "though finance ministers have for now rejected the approach, according to people familiar with discussions." The WSJ continues: "The ECB's new position was made clear by its president, Mario Draghi, to a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers discussing a euro-zone rescue for Spain's struggling local lenders in Brussels the evening of July 9. It marks a contrast from the position the central bank adopted during the 2010 bailout of Irish banks--which, like Spain's, were victims of a property meltdown--when it prevailed in its insistence that senior bondholders in bailed-out banks shouldn't suffer losses." Needless to say, if indeed the fulcrum impairment security is no longer the Sub debt, but Senior debt, as the ECB suggests, it is only a matter of time before wholesale European bank liquidations commence as the ECB would only encourage this shift if it knew the level of asset impairment is far too great to be papered over by mere pooling of liabilities (think shared deposits, the creation of TBTF banks, and all those other gimmicks tried in 2010 when as a result of Caja failure we got such sterling example of financial viability as Bankia, which lasted all of 18 months). It also means the European crisis is likely about to take a big turn for the worse as suddenly bank failures become all too real. Why? Senior debt impairment means deposits are now at full risk of loss as even the main European bank admits there is no way banks will have enough assets to grow into their balance sheet.