Moral Hazard

Who Are the Biggest Manipulators of All?

Neoclassical Economics Is a Scam ...

In an excellent summary of the world's interconnected nature, reliance on everyone else to solve their problems, and Europe's epicentric catastrophe, Nouriel Roubini joined Bloomberg TV's Tom Keene for some serious truthiness and doomsaying. From the 'slowdown/recession becoming a depression' to 1930s CreditAnstalt comparisons and Germany's lack of trust that a few years of abstinence will regain peripheral Europe's virginity, the original Dr. Doom along with Ian 'G-Zero' Bremmer offer much food for thought as to the various scenarios as investors anxiously await an expected central bank response to the 19th failed summit and how "we will be lucky if we end up like Japan" as he concludes: "It’s getting worse, there’s already a sovereign debt crisis, a banking crisis, a balance of payment crisis, an economic crisis and all of those things together are getting worse."

The European Union will hold yet another do-or-die summit this week. On this occasion, “growth” is the plat du jour; the allegedly missing recipe in the “plan” to save the euro. In addition, some suggest that this time is also “different” because Greece, France, Italy and Spain may now be ready to corner Germany to relax its sacrosanct fixation with austerity. This summit truly promises to be quite a gathering of beggars at a feast, no less.

If you aren’t part of the solution, which is real relief for victims of fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, then you are part of the problem.

We have long been concerned at the implicit and explicit subordination of both financial and sovereign bondholders in Europe by the actions of their overlords political elite in pursuit of short-term liquidity fixes to insolvency issues. As talk of the ESM coming to life in the short-term and a 'Redemption Pact' in the intermediate term - which as Goldman describes involves mutualizing a portion of each country's debt (resulting in a partial upgrade of the existing pool of Eurozone sovereign bonds) in a European Redemption Fund (ERF) and, in the process, extending debt maturities (kicking that can) onto the public sector's balance sheet. As with all these mutualization schemes, the ERF ineluctably raises the twin problems of  'moral hazard' and 'subordination', which need to be mitigated. Goldman discusses these two sides of the same coin as it notes subordination is explicit when the ESM intervenes (and also with the ECB's SMP) but a little less obvious in the ERF (though still as painful) which is, we note, perhaps more appealing to keep the masses unaware.

Greece is on its way to becoming a "new, critical fragile state," and the ECB and EU will have to keep it on life support for years after it exits the common currency.

The crony capitalist show must go on: those bribed by Jamie Dimon are about to ask question of the same person. That this theatrical hearing will be a farce is by now well known by absolutely everyone, as confirmed by the rumor that late last night someone ordered 22 copies of "Credit Default Swaps for Bought and Paid For Senatorial Muppet Idiots" from Amazon.com. In the off chance Dimon slips and does say something of significance, here is your chance to follow the next 2 hours live. Everyone else will be.

A land grab shrouded in a banking takeover, wrapped in a financial crisis "rescue." As always, insiders get first dibs.  (And, yes, there is an MF Global connection.)

As Many Have Predicted for Years

So far we have yet to read even one analyst commentary on the Spanish bailout that sees it as favorable on the margin. The following note from SocGen's Ciaran O'Hagan is no exception: "Will this be good enough to immunise Spain over the Greek elections and fend off more rating downgrades, on the back of greater subordination and moral hazard? Probably not."

Over the past 24 hours, Zero Hedge covered the various key provisions, and open questions, of the Spanish bank bailout. There is, however, much more when one digs into the details. Below, courtesy of Deutsche Bank's Gilles Moec is a far more nuanced analysis of what just happened, as well as a model looking at the future of the pro forma Spanish debt load with the now-priming ESM debt, which may very well hit 100% quite soon as we predicted earlier. Furthermore, since the following comprehensive walk-thru appeared in the DB literature on Friday, before the formal announcement, it is quite clear that none other than Deutsche Bank, whose "walk-thru" has been adhered to by the Spanish government and Europe to the dot, was instrumental in defining a "rescue" of Spain's banks, which had it contaged, would have impacted the biggest banking edifice in Europe by orders of magnitude: Deutsche Bank itself.

Nobody on the Buy Side wants to sue JPM, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley et al for securities fraud on the more problematic deals of the past decade.

At the high level, our global economic plight is quite simple to understand says noted Australian deflationist Steve Keen.  Banks began lending money at a faster rate than the global economy grew, and we're now at the turning point where we simply have run out of new borrowers for the ever-growing debt the system has become addicted to. Once borrowers start eschewing rather than seeking debt, asset prices begin to fall -- which in turn makes these same people want to liquidate their holdings, which puts further downward pressure on asset prices.

Well that didn't take long. The ink on the #Spailout is not dry yet (well technically there is no ink, because none of the actual details of the Spanish banking system rescue are even remotely known, and likely won't be because when it comes to answering where the money comes from there simply is no answer) and we already have an answer to one of our questions. Recall that mere hours ago we asked: "We also wonder how will Ireland feel knowing that it has to suffer under backbreaking austerity in exchange for Troika generosity, while Spain gets away scott free." We now know. From the AFP: "Ireland wants to renegotiate its rescue plan to benefit from the same treatment as Spain, which looks set to win a bailout for its banks without any broader economic reforms in return, European sources said on Saturday." And with Ireland on the renegotiation train, next comes Greece. Only with Greece the wheels for a bailout overhaul are already in motion and are called a "vote of Syriza on June 17." And remember how everyone was threatening the Greeks with the 10th circle of hell if they dare to renegotiate the memorandum? Well, Spain just showed that a condition-free bailout is an option. Which means Syriza will get all the votes it needs and then some with promises of a consequence free bailout renegotiation. In other words Syriza's Tsipras should send a bottle of the finest champagne to de Guindos - he just won him the election.