Creditors

We have been warning about the 'global war on pensioners' for a while (most recently here, here, and here) but the soul-destroying images of Greek pensioners' hopes being crushed bring that central-bank-driven repression front-and-center...

There is nothing incrementally new or different to what we revealed earlier in the leaked Greek proposal (i.e., no actionable pension cuts, no debt "reprofiling") and as Bloomberg makes it all too clear in flashing red headlines:

GREEK GOVT PROPOSAL SIMILAR TO EU COMMISSION'S JUNE 26 PROPOSAL

... or the one which 61% of the Greek people said no to.

The time of deflationary confiscation is coming closer for the remaining Greek bank depositors. Those who kept their cash in safe deposit boxes at banks are out of luck too: the government has decreed they may not take it out. This is something one needs to keep in mind – if one wants to keep cash outside the banking system, one cannot leave it in a bank safe deposit box either. The government will confiscate it when push comes to shove and the banks need to be rescued.

When the going gets tough, the taxed get going and that is what Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz thinks should happen. In a Time op-ed, Stiglitz warns (likely correctly) that if Greece continues with austerity, it would be depression without end; and so his solution is simple... "The U.S. was generous with Germany as we defeated it. Now, it is time for the U.S. to be generous with our friends in Greece in their time of need, as they have been crushed for the second time in a century by Germany, this time with the support of the troika." Strawman much?

The Austrian School of economics has a concept called a “crack-up boom” in which a critical mass of people conclude that their government is actively trying to devalue its currency. Consumers respond by front-running the government, spending their paychecks immediately in order to convert their soon-to-be-less-valuable money into real things. Merchants, not happy about the sudden influx of suspect currency (and sensing the panic of their customers) hold out for ever-higher prices, causing inflation to spike. But it’s a special kind of inflation, driven not by a sudden increase in the money supply but by collapsing confidence among holders of the currency. In a very short time, so goes the theory, the supply of stuff available for purchase dries up, prices hyperinflate, and the economy collapses. Welcome, in other words, to Greece...

Greece's outspoken Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis laid out the details for the country's pipeline project with Russia on Thursday and went out of his way to let PM Alexis Tsipras know that the referendum "no" vote is "not going to become a humiliating 'yes'".

The Shanghai Composite Index had dropped as much as 3.8% to a 4 month low before the news that the cops were going to arrest anyone who was caught "maliciously shorting stocks", when everything suddenly took off, and the SHCOMP closed  a "Dramamine required" 5.8% higher, the biggest daily increase since March 2009! Stocks around the globe followed, with US equity futures wiping out much of yesterday's losses and up 1% at last check.

In an odd escalation over the Grexit fiasco, where Greece is now expected to provide yet another detailed reform proposal today by midnight at the very latest, it was the one man whose decision will make or break the Eurozone when (if) he decides to impose even more ELA collateral haircuts (or yank ELA entirely) forcing Greece to Grexit by imposing its own currency (since there is no legal mechanism to kick a nation out of the new Berlin Wall) that made some surprisingly candid comments on the fate of the Greek negotiations. According to Reuters, ECB president Mario Draghi voiced "unprecedented doubts about the chances of rescuing Greece from bankruptcy as Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was due to put forward last-ditch reform proposals on Thursday."

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• Why Beijing’s Efforts Have Failed to Tame China’s Stock Market (WSJ)
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• China bounce ends five-day losing streak for stocks (Reuters)
• Fear Grows in Greece as Decisive Hour Nears (WSJ)
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• Greece Shuts Markets Through July 13 as Officials Debate Bailout (BBG)
• Germany calls for European defence sector consolidation (Reuters)

1. Greece is already in default to the IMF
2. Greece and the rest of the Eurozone are further apart than ever
3. Capital controls are notoriously hard to unwind
4. The “no” vote protects the Eurozone’s politicians from looking like they pushed Greece out

Since The FOMC's supposedly dovish June meeting, bonds have outperformed stocks rather notably and crude has crashed. The crucial aspect for the Minutes is the balance they struck between market turmoil overseas (dovish) and the domestic economic and housing recovery (hawkish) as to how that fits with an expectation for a 'gradual' post-September lift-off...

• *FOMC SAW CONDITIONS STILL APPROACHING THOSE WARRANTING LIFTOFF (dovish)
  
• *ONE MEMBER READY TO RAISE RATES IN JUNE BUT WILLING TO WAIT (dovish)
• *MANY FED OFFICIALS EXPRESSED CONCERN ABOUT GREECE AT JUNE FOMC (hawkish)
  
• *SEVERAL OFFICIALS VOICED UNCERTAINTY ABOUT CHINESE GROWTH PACE (hawkish)

With macro data having beaten expectations since then, the last best hope for stocks is that global turmoil picks up (as it has in Greece) to keep The Fed on hold (as they remain cornered to regain some ammo before the next 'event' happens). As SF Fed's Williams notes today the "safer course" for raising rates would be to start sooner and proceed gradually.

The rescue of AIG should not serve as a source of comfort to investors.

Facing a new “deadline” to submit a viable proposal to EU creditors and keep Greece in the eurozone, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras faced friends and enemies at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, where there was no shortage of fireworks from both sides of the Grexit debate. 

Greece formally requested a three-year bailout from the eurozone’s rescue fund Wednesday and pledged to start implementing some of the overhauls demanded by creditors by early next week. Crucially for Greece’s creditors, the letter says the government would start implementing some measures, including on taxation and pensions, by the beginning of next week, though it doesn’t go into details. The letter is a first step toward fulfilling a demand by international creditors, who have given Athens until Sunday to come up with tougher measures they would impose in return for desperately needed financing that could keep the country from bankruptcy and even worse economic turmoil. 

Call it "game theory" gone horribly "chaos theory."

The Greek prime minister who decisively and unexpectedly pushed for a referendum on the last weekend of June, "never expected to win Sunday's referendum on EMU bail-out terms, let alone to preside over a blazing national revolt against foreign control." He got just that, and in a landslide vote at that even though "he called the snap vote with the expectation - and intention - of losing it."