Black Swan 2: This Is “The Next Critical Chapter In The Austrian Banking System Story”
When it comes to the sweeping of (trillions of) toxic assets until such time as the ECB starts purchasing not only government bonds but equities, bank loans and really anything else that in a normal world would have some “mark to market” value, Europe had a ready answer: bad banks. A tradition which started with Switzerland and the semi-bailout of UBS during the great financial crisis, “bad banks” have been proposed every time there are a few hundred billion in bad assets that need to be swept away or otherwise removed from the the public eye.
In fact, it was just a few hours ago that Spain’s economy minister praised the usefulness of bad banks, which have certainly seen their fair share of use in Spain over the past 5 years.
- GUINDOS: BAD BANKS USEFUL INSTRUMENT TO CLEAN UP BALANCE SHEETS.
Yes, useful. Until you have a massive blow up like in Austria when several years of avoiding reality exploded in everyone’s face when the Bad Bank meant to fix the mess left after the collapse of Hypo Alpe Adria itself became insolvent, after the horrendous state of its balance sheet could no longer be masked, and creditors were shocked to learn they would foot the bail out, or rather bail in costs thanks to massive debt writedowns.
And since there is never just one cockroach when it comes to hiding Europe’s biggest financial problem, namely trillions in non-performing loans, the question always is: which cockroach is next?
For now the answer, thanks to the ECB’s relentless intervention in all capital markets is hiding, but one proposal comes from Daiwa Capital Markets which suggests to take a long hard look at Austria’s Pfandbriefbank Oesterreich AG.
Here is what Daiwa’s Jakub Lichwa thinks:
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