Ireland

Indeed, one has to wonder… just how does a €100 billion bailout solve Spain’s banking woes when its Prime Minister was suggesting the real damage is more to the tune of €500 billion in a text message to his Finance Minister??? Indeed, if Rajoy’s text is even remotely truthful, then we can assume that Spain’s real capitalization needs are multiples of the €100 billion bailout… something that the EU media is picking up on already. As one example, JP Morgan believes that when all is said and done Spanish banks could be looking at €350 BILLION in capital needs.

All you can read.

Perhaps all of this has gone on for so long, or perhaps because we keep hearing the cries of “Wolf” each week for the last several years, that the markets are impervious to any new cries for help. An odd kind of complacency seems to have set in where nothing matters too much and everything will just be fine. Yesterday’s equity market rally based upon the central banks providing liquidity is just what any serious observer would expect and yet the stock markets rallied as if this was something out of the ordinary which clearly demonstrates either the market’s lack of understanding of real world events or it represents the hype of some hedge fund that was tossed around in the media like it was a new product at Apple. In any event, don’t wake up on Monday morning and think that Greece will have left the Eurozone and returned to the Drachma. That is not how things will play out. In the final analysis it probably all comes down to what price the Germans are willing to pay for dominating Europe.

There are five problems that need to be resolved within the European crisis and Credit Suisse provides a scorecard for the progress towards these 'risk factors'. The key issues are: growth, peripheral current account balances, solvency of the insolvent, ring-fencing the insolvent, and mutualization of government debt; but what is more worrisome is that while they have raised the average score to 2.0 out of 5 (from 0.6 out of 5 in Nov' 2011), it has not budged now in four months. The lack of growth, fiscal tightening, continuing insolvency concerns and excess leverage in the private sector, and de minimus deleveraging in Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland leaves the vicious circle of progress on the European scorecard much harder from here.

For all the news out of Spain: tumbling sovereign bonds, bailed out banking sector, there really is just one driver of everything: the same one many have been warning about for years: the artificially inflated valuation of the Spanish housing sector. Because the only reason why banks are suddenly finding that their assets are worth much less than previously expected, is because it is now impossible for local banks to keep the real-estate "assets" on their books at marks-to-model (read par) as the bulk of them have long since become impaired, delinquent or outright defaulted.... Which is the worst news for holders of Spanish bonds, now that the entire banking sector is effectively pari passu with the sovereign debt courtesy of priming ESM debt: recall that every incremental dollar, or in this case, euro, of bank capital deficiency will be one more priming bailout euro behind. Effectively there is now an inverse relationship between the Spanish housing sector and the country's sovereign bonds. And for those who are still naively are clutching to Spanish bonds, even as they tumble to all time lows (that's the local law, as opposed to the legal arbitrage trade we have been promoting and which today is making even more money), we have some bad news: that perpetual of optimists, S&P, just said that the Spanish housing sector has, wait for it, another 25% to drop!

This means a comparable drop in store for Spanish bonds and all the related securities in Europe, which courtesy of the bailout are all now daisy-chained.

Tony Robbins warned about the risk of dollar devaluation and spoke about the opportunities in gold

Mark Grant has been on Wall Street for thirty-eight years now. You may claim brains and brilliance and the best investment committee this side of Alpha Centauri but he can smell the napalm in the morning and his nostrils are jumping as if infused by pepper gas. It was in the spring of 2010 that he concluded that Spain was going to get put in “time out” and put it in black and white. Yesterday as Moodys downgraded Spain by three notches to just above junk and likely today the Spanish banks will feel the pain and as the yield on the Spanish ten year is just under 7.00% the heat is on and the stove has been turned up to high. The Italian 10 year yield is 6.25% now and financial markets operate as a matter of faith and it is obvious that the parishioners are leaving the church. There should be no surprise that Greece and Spain and Portugal and Ireland keep asking for money and it should not shock anyone that many clever schemes have been postulated to try to get Germany’s money and it should also not surprise anyone that Germany mouths all kinds of nice and polite phrases to object but in the end Germany will keep rejecting any plot that will lessen their lifestyle.

For your definitive documented "X is not Y" atlasing needs.

All you need to know.

As Predicted Last Year, The French and the Greeks Are In A Race For The Biggest Bank Run! Each stock showcased has led the drop as well...

The most effective response for Spain would be to de-link sovereigns and their banks, following recent steady accumulation of sovereign debt by peripheral banks, in our view. Reducing the link between Spanish banks and the sovereign remains one of the key aspects for relieving pressure on Spain, whether this be by removing sovereign debt from balance sheets or ensuring sufficient capitalization to absorb losses. Unemployment out this morning at 24.4% shows the fragile state the economy is in, which is likely to keep pressure on Spanish yields. Against this backdrop the effect on the asset side of balance sheets is concerning, with expected weakness in non-core government bond prices coupled with a weak economy decreasing individuals' and corporates' ability to repay

It was only a matter of time before the stoic Germans, long abused as the piggy bank pinatas of Europe's monetary experiment, said something. And after last week's confused Spanish campaign demanding that Merkel stop (what exactly - bailing out the Spanish banks? Funding Spanish current account deficits?), Germany has found its retort. As of a few hours ago, the German empire has decided to strike back using the #StoppESM hashtag on twitter. Are we about to have our first European twitter war? And while we know what the hashtag for Greece wil be (#StopTaxes), and Ireland (#StopSobriety), we have yet to figure out the appropriate terms for all the other insolvent European countries. There are many.

Gold rose $11.40 or 0.71% yesterday in New York and closed at $1,611.60/oz.  Gold started out trading sideways in Asia and then edged up in early European trading.  

After Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, we just got domino #5. They are falling real fast now:

CYPRUS LIKELY TO HAVE TO SUPPORT ONE OF ITS BANKS, SHIARLY SAYS
CYPRUS GOVERNMENT IN CLOSE CONTACT WITH EU ON BANKS: SHIARLY
CYPRUS'S BANKING SYSTEM AT CRITICAL TURN, SHIARLY SAYS
CYPRUS PREFERS PRIVATE SOLUTION TO EU BAILOUT FOR BANKS:SHIARLY

And now just the fulcrum domino is left. The boot-shaped one.

All you can read.