Ireland

ECB is running out of options. Germany can't afford any more bailouts.  Euro is overvalued compared to the dollar.

With Spanish bond spreads over 30bps wider from their open this morning, EURUSD has just broken its 200-hour moving average trading back close to 1.2500 for the first time since the summit. While this is an 75% retracement of the EUphoria, broad equity markets are only modestly off their highs (we assume on rate cut hopes - which is likely helping driven EUR down a little) - and yet corporate and financial credit spreads are at two-day lows. Hope fades even in equity markets where once we dig into the individual indices that most are down modestly (though Spain and Italy are down around 1%). We also note that Bunds have outperformed Treasuries by 20bps from the initial risk-transfer spike on Friday morning - though TSYs are closed today as Bund yields dropped 10bps from open to close today. On a side-note, Spanish 5Y CDS briefly traded wider than Ireland 5Y CDS today for the first time in two years.

“The patience of the public has been exhausted”

Debate between Krugman and the CFR rages on in round 2 on whether currency devaluation created the Icelandic Miracle or Mirage.  

The Fed, by buying Treasuries is making insolvent banks even more insolvent. It is a short-term gain (liquidity) for a long-term disaster: banks need as much collateral as they can get their hands on right now. And with Treasuries rallying (raising the value of the banks' assets) any aggressive Fed program to take Treasuries out of the system would be a MAJOR step towards another solvency Crisis a la 2008.

Closing in unconvinced ROn mode. European equities taking their final lead from US peers. Peripherals pushing just the last basis points tighter. Note that these curves are finally steepening through renewed short end strength with both 2-3 YRS area down 20bp on the day. On the other hand, Core EGBs have not been driven into the wall, as one could have expected in full ROn modus. German 2 / 5 / 10s about unchanged from Friday.

Tug of war between wary optimists and tired pessimists? Glass half full or empty? Dusty diamonds, anyone?

Not a highly inspirational day to write about. Reduced volatility and very range-bound. Lack of real news flow. Action more in the financial people press, as it stands. And in EUR New Issues, as borrowers have come to learn that windows of opportunity, when seeing one, should be used. Knowing, too, that new issues will grind to an end probably as of the end of next week. Hence, EUR 7.5bn senior bank debt served in 2 days. Ce qui est pris n’est plus à prendre…

I don’t know, in my rather straight down the middle Kansas City mind I prefer a reality where one plus one is two and not where some European auditor, when asked about the sum of one plus one says, “What number would you like?” This was the way of it in “Alice in Wonderland” of course as the meaning of the word was determined by the speaker but this is not a wise path to be followed by an investor. Recently I wrote about Firewalls and the hocus pocus of their being touted as the cure-all for Europe. Europe missed the train on this one altogether as no amount of money, either pledged or funded, will do one thing to help the worsening financial crisis of the countries in Europe. You may think of the nations of Europe as horses in a corral. What is the value of a bigger and bigger fence that surrounds them if the horses are full of cancer? The fence, of whatever size, does nothing and I mean nothing to help the sickness of the horses. Europe is battling with windmills when they should be addressing the financial health of each country. “The horses are sick,” I say, “forget fiddling with the fence.”

Judging by the modest rallies in what was already hugely oversold risk asset markets in a perfectly timed illiquid 'holiday' mode, it would appear that, just as MEP Nigel Farage blasts his European Parliamentary leaders, "Breakthrough? Nobody believes you". The new bailout vehicle - the ESM - is doomed before it starts as he notes "the wheels are coming off" highlighting the legal challenges in Ireland and Germany, the Estonian Justice Minister saying it won't fit their constitution, but most fun of all, the erudite Englishman barks "the Fins and the Dutch seem to have broken the agreement that was made in the middle of the night". Perhaps the "little countries" don't have a say in Europe anymore as his frustration with Barosso and Van Rompuy in their self-congratulatory smugness is clear when he jibes that "The Euro-crisis appears to be insoluble" noting that their incessant public calls that the worst is over or finger-pointing and blaming others has made them "an international laughing stock". It appears, like us, Farage does not see this as a game-changer - concluding that vacations should be put on hold as "the markets will all but guarantee we'll all be back here in August".

Given Friday’s announcements and subsequent rally, the relative dearth of weekend snippets and analyses seems a little surprising.

While Belgian caterers are delighted that Europe's increasingly more unelected leaders quarrel endlessly over who gets to foot the bill to keep the market fooled for one more week that things are fixed, Europe is burning. The just released MarkIt PMI data showed that while Spanish bonds may be up 50 bps one day, down 75 bps the next, "the downturn in the Eurozone manufacturing sector extended to an eleventh successive month. Production and new orders suffered further severe contractions, leading to the steepest job losses since January 2010." And here is where Germany, which as noted earlier, is becoming isolated in its European bailout ambitions, should pay attention: "The rate of decline in Germany was the steepest for three years, and marked a fourth successive monthly decline in the region’s largest economy." This metric is only going to get worse, only in the future it will be coupled with increasingly more direct and contingent debt all around. And further confirming that there is no easy way out for Europe was the May Eurozone unemployment number which at 11.1% rose to a new record

Neoclassical Economics Is a Scam ...

We have covered the topic of the German TARGET2 imbalances previously, both from the perspective of what catalysts can lead the Bundesbank to suffering massive losses (the one most widely agreed upon being a collapse of the Eurozone, which explains why even discussions of that contingency are prohibited in Europe), from the perspective of its being an indirect current account deficit funding mechanism, and from the perspective of what is the maximum size TARGET2 imbalances, funded primarily by the Bundesbank, can grow to before eventually causing irreperable damage to the Bundesbank. Still, there appears to be ongoing mass confusion about the topic, with numerous economists proposing contradictory theories, all of which supposedly rely on traditional economic models. Today, to provide some additional and much needed color, we once again revisit the topic of TARGET2, and this time we look at arguably the most critical question: what happens when the TARGET2 imbalance bubble ultimately pops. And here is where the true cost to Germans becomes apparent, because there is no such thing as a "borrowing from the future" free lunch. Which is precisely what TARGET2 does, only instead of a direct cost, the post-TARGET2 world will result in the now traditional indirect cost of all monetary experiments gone awry: runaway inflation.

The EU summit to save the Euro (the nineteenth, or thereabouts) has, quite remarkably, agreed to do something to try and save the Euro. As UBS' Paul Donavan notes "As ever with a Euro summit there are unanswered questions. Grandiose statements are what heads of government specialise in – the details are left to later" - it is one of the reasons why Maastricht produced a monetary union that was flawed from the outset. Once “create a single currency” had been agreed, politicians lost interest. The statement from the summit itself was woefully inadequate, but below UBS lays out what additional questions need to be answered. Always keep in mind though, "Going into this summit we had a monetary union in Europe that clearly did not work. Coming out of this summit we have a monetary union that still does not work."

As always, the most pragmatic read thru of what are now day to day rescue efforts out of Europe, which in its own words has effectively given up on seeking a long-term remedy, comes from UBS' Art Cashin who as usual cuts right to the bone of the deluge of essentially hollow endless chatter out of Europe whose sole purpose is to once again baffle all the algos with binary bullshit.