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The preposterous Gong Show in Brussels over the weekend was the financial “Ben Tre” moment for the Euro and ECB. That is, it was the moment when the Germans—–imitating the American military on that ghastly morning in February 1968——set fire to the Eurozone in order to save it.
Some day history will judge good riddance……..but that get’s ahead of the story.
According to an American soldier’s first hand recollection of the Vietnam event, it was a Major Booris who infamously told reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it”.
After the massacre of Greek democracy in the wee hours Monday morning, Angela Merkel said the same thing—even if her language was a tad less graphic:
It reflects the basic principles which we’ve followed in rescuing the euro. It now hinges on step-by-step implementation of what we agreed tonight.”
Now no one in their right mind could think that lending another $96 billion to an utterly bankrupt country makes any sense whatsoever. After all, the Greek economy has shrunk by 30% since 2008 and is wreathing under what is objectively a $400 billion public debt already in place today.
That figure follows from the fact that on top of Greece’s acknowledged $360 billion of general government debt there’s at least another $25 billion loan embedded in the ELA advances to the Greek banking system. The latter is deeply insolvent, meaning that some considerable portion of the $100 billion ELA currently outstanding is not an advance against good collateral in any plausible banking sense of the word, but merely a backdoor fiscal transfer from the ECB to keep Greece’s financial shipwreck afloat.
Likewise, as I demonstrated Friday, given the even deeper deep hole into which the Greek economy has tumbled during the last six months, the fiscal targets extracted from Greece under this weekend’s demarche are utterly ridiculous.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
While all Eyes are on Greece, Italy’s Banks are Drowning in Bad Debt
The real danger to the euro area probably doesn’t emanate from Greece, but from two of its heavyweights, namely France and Italy. A small note in the European press reminds us that all is not well in at least one of these countries, least of all with its banks (currently this is only a “page 16 story”, but it has great potential to eventually move to the front page).
Regional distribution of non-performing loans in Italy
The note reads as follows:
“Rome – because of the recession of recent years and corporate bankruptcies, the total of bad loans has continued to rise in Italy. According to Italy’s banking association ABI, non-performing loans amounted to 193.7 billion euro in May, 25.1 billion more than in the same month in 2014. This is the highest level since 1996.
Non-performing loans represent 10.1 percent of all loans granted by Italian banks, ABI said on Tuesday. Especially small and medium enterprises continue to be under pressure due to bad loans, so will take a long time before banks will see the bad loan situation ease, the ABI report stated. Italian companies are currently struggling with the effects of the longest economic crisis since World War II and are therefore often no longer able to service their loans.”
(emphasis added)
If our calculator can be trusted, this means that bad loans in Italy’s banking system have increased by roughly 14.9% over just the past year – by no means a peak crisis year, although Italy’s listing economy continued to contract slightly.
As the following chart shows (unfortunately we were only able to obtain this slightly dated version), Italian NPLs stood at € 165 bn. in Q1 2014. However, to this one must actually add all sorts of loans that are otherwise delinquent/dubious or sub-standard, but haven’t yet reached “full” NPL status. These are summarized together with NPLs under the term impaired loans below.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“When Money Dies” is the title of a 1975 book by Adam Fergusson, in which he describes the downfall of the Reichsmark in Weimar Germany. A fascinating look at that period of history, one can glean quite a few useful pieces of advice on how to survive a currency crisis. But “when money dies” could also describe the current currency crisis in Greece, in which many Greeks seem to have taken those lessons from Fergusson’s account of the Weimar hyperinflation to heart.
Even though the Greek currency crisis isn’t a traditional hyperinflationary crisis, many Greeks are trying to get their hands on, and then spend, cash. One of the fears is that bank depositors will be forced to take losses on their accounts, the so-called “haircut”. This happened in Cyprus to some larger depositors, but the fear in Greece is that people with even just a few thousand euros in their accounts might be forced to take losses of 30-50% or more. Just imagine that you have $10,000 in your bank account and overnight the government says, “Sorry, your account balance is now $5,000.” Overnight, the purchasing power of your bank account has been cut in half.
So even though the government isn’t printing more money (yet!), the fear of a 50% devaluation of the purchasing power of bank accounts is causing Greeks to line up at ATMs to withdraw money. And because there is the additional fear that Greece may exit the euro, with unknown consequences, many people seek to convert their euros into tangible goods. Shoes, handbags, refrigerators, gold, jewelry, anything that can maintain value and be resold or bartered is fair game for those desperate not to lose all of their hard-earned savings.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greece’s union of civil servants, Adedly, called for a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, and for a series of demonstrations, the first one tonight at Syntagma Square, just below the Parliament, and another one on Wednesday evening, when Parliament is expected to vote on the new, even tougher, and immensely hated bailout package.
The union for local government employees, Poe-Ota, also called for a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, the AFP reported. Two other demonstrations against austerity and the “euro” are planned for Monday night, one organized via social networks, the other by Antarsya, an anti-euro party that didn’t make it into Parliament.
It would be the first strike against the leftwing Syriza coalition since it came to power six months ago. An ironic plot twist in this tragedy.
Syriza was the big force in the demonstrations against the two prior bailout packages, totaling €240 billion from taxpayers in other countries, conditioned on economic reforms pushed through Parliament by the conservative governments at the time. Now Syriza is looking at having to pass even tougher measures, including an increase in the Value Added Tax and pension reform, in return for only €86 billion in new money from taxpayers in other countries.
Syriza’s junior coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, is already getting cold feet.
“The agreement speaks of €50 billion worth of guarantees concerning public property, of changes to the law including the confiscation of homes… We cannot agree to that,”explained Panos Kammenos, the party’s leader, adding that the party would nevertheless remain in the coalition. With “confiscation of homes” he probably meant foreclosing on homes with defaulted mortgages.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is already struggling with strong dissent within Syriza. But ironically, the pro-euro opposition parties, those maligned creatures that ran the show before, may support him in getting these despised measures passed.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
For those who missed today’s festivities in Brussels, here is the 30,000 foot summary: Europe has given Greece a “choice”: hand over sovereignty to Germany Europe or undergo a 5 year Grexit “time out”, which is a polite euphemism for get the hell out.
As noted earlier, here are the 12 conditions laid out as a result of the latest Eurogroup meeting, which are far more draconian than anything presented to Greece yet and which effectively require that Greece cede sovereignty to Europe, this time even without the implementation of a technocratic government.
One alternative, generously presented to Greece, is for the country to put some €50 billion of assets – the best ones – in escrow to creditors. A more polite was of putting would be a Greek secured loan. This is how the Luxembourg FinMin Pierre Gramegna laid it out:
“A few new ideas were added to the table, especially one which is very important for some member states, which is that Greece would put a portion of its assets into a company that would be more independent from Greece.”
“More independent” from Greece and “more dependent” to Berlin.
Greece would place about €50 billion of state assets into an independent company. Those assets could serve as collateral against aid loans, Gramegna says. “It would act as a kind of guarantee. There is great hesitation from the Greek side and now the heads of state and government have to choose.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The one undeniable truth about the debt drama in Greece is that each of the conventional narratives—financial, political and historical—has some claim of legitimacy.
For example, spendthrift Greeks shunned fiscal discipline: here’s an account from 2011 that lays out the gory details: The Big Fat Greek Gravy Train: A special investigation into the EU-funded culture of greed, tax evasion and scandalous waste.
Or how about: Greek reformers want to fix the core structural problems but are being stymied by tyrannical European Union/Troika leaders: The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets.
Rather than get entangled in the arguments over which of the conventional narratives is the core narrative—a hopeless misadventure, given that each narrative has some validity—let’s start with the facts that are supported by data or public records.
The Greek Economy Is Small and Imbalanced
Here are the basics of Greece’s economy, via the CIA’s World Factbook:
Greece’s population is 10.8 million and its GDP (gross domestic product) is about $200 billion (This sourcestates the GDP is 182 billion euros or about $200 billion). Note that the euro fell sharply from $1.40 in 2014 to $1.10 currently, so any Eurozone GDP data stated in dollars has to be downsized accordingly. Many sources state Greek GDP was $240 billion in 2013; adjusted for the 20% decline in the euro, this is about $200 billion at today’s exchange rate.
Los Angeles County, with slightly more than 10 million residents, has a GDP of $554 billion, more than double that of Greece.
The European Union has over 500 million residents. Greece’s population represents 2.2% of the EU populace.
External debt (public and private debt owed to lenders outside Greece):
$568.7 billion (30 September 2013 est.)
National debt:
339 billion euros, $375 billion
Central Government Budget:
revenues: $119.5 billion
expenditures: $127.9 billion (2014 est.)
Budget surplus (+) or deficit (-):
-3.4% of GDP (2014 est.)
Public debt:
174.5% of GDP (2014 est.)
Labor force:
3.91 million (2013 est.)
GDP – per capita (Purchasing Power Parity):
$25,800 (2014 est.)
Unemployment rate:
26.8% (2014 est.)
Exports:
$35.8 billion (2014 est.)
Imports:
$62.8 billion (2014 est.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Last week the Greek government imposed capital controls to prevent cash from escaping from the Greek banking system, which is on the brink of collapse. These repressive financial measures, which were invented by “Hitler’s banker” Hjalmar Schacht in the 1930s, include the closing of banks, limiting cash withdrawals from ATMs to 60 euros ($67) per day, and the banning of all money transfers via credit and debit cards to accounts held in foreign countries. Despite these Draconian controls, Greek banks continue to hemorrhage cash and, after yesterday’s referendum, it is probable that the daily limit on withdrawals from ATMs will be tightened. Worse yet, the reeling Greek public suffered another shock yesterday when Deputy Finance Minister Nadia Valavani revealed to Greek television that the government and banks had already agreed that people would also not be allowed to withdraw cash from safe deposit boxes for as long as the controls were in place. This may be part of a fallback plan if theECB ends its bailout of the Greek banks. The government with the banks’ connivance would seize the cash euros stored in these boxes and compensate their lessees by crediting an equal sum of euros to their increasingly inaccessible checking deposits. The cash would then be fed into ATMs to postpone the day of reckoning for Greece’s zombie fractional-reserve banks.
In the meantime, the market has been working to provide a private, nonbank alternative for Greeks to safely store cash. In Dublin, Ireland enterprising diamond dealer Seamus Fahy, who owns Merrion Vaults, is offering a 15% discount for Greeks who are able to evade the fascist capital controls and smuggle their cash out of the country.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Brussels has been dead wrong. The stupid idea that the euro will bring stability and peace, as it was sold from the outset, has migrated to European domination as if this were “Game of Thrones”. Those in power have misread history, almost at every possible level. The assumption that the D-marks’ strength was a good thing that would transfer to the euro has failed because they failed to comprehend the backdrop to the D-mark.
Germany moved opposite of the USA toward extreme austerity and conservative economics because of its experience with hyperinflation. The USA moved toward stimulation because of the austerity policies that created the Great Depression, which led to a shortage of money, and many cities had to issue their own currency just to function. The federal government thought, like Brussels today, that they had to up the confidence in the bond market and that called for raising taxes and cutting spending at the expense of the people. The same thinking process has played out numerous times throughout history. Our problem is that no one ever asks – Hey, did someone try this before? Did it work? This is why history repeats – we do ZERO research when it comes to economics. It is all hype and self-interest.
Greece should immediately begin to print drachma. By no means has the introduction of a new currency been a walk in the park. There is always a learning curve, as in the case of East Germany’s adoption of the Deutsche mark, the Czech-Slovak divorce of 1993, and the creation of the euro itself . However, the bulk of transactions today are electronic, meaning we are dealing with an accounting issue more than anything. The euro existed electronically BEFORE it became printed money; Greece should do the same right now.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Long after Greece has left the Eurozone and Germany is using the Deutsche Mark as its currency, the people of the two nations, antagonized to a level unseen since World War II, will be accusing each other of benefiting more from the brief but tumultuous period of the common currency.
In reality, nobody had put a gun to Greece’s head and told it to lever up, enriching local oligarchs and corrupt politicians, taking advantage of credit that was artificially cheap only due to the common currency and an implicit monetary, if not fiscal, union.
Germany, whose exports account for nearly 50% of GDP, on the other hand experienced an unprecedented exporting golden age, made possible only due to an artificial currency, the Euro, that was by definition created to be weaker than the Deutsche Mark and benefitted from any bout of weakness in Europe’s periphery, such as the past 5 years.
The truth is, when things were good nobody second-guessed any decisions for a second, and since the rising economic tide lifted all boats, nobody cared.
And then the tide rolled out, displaced by trillions in bad loans and gargantuan mountains of sovereign and financial debt, which ultimately would lead to the first, then second, then third and then an all-out cascade of sovereign defaults.
Sadly, the losers – regardless of the propaganda and jingoist rhetoric – are the ordinary, common, taxpaying people of Germany and Greece (and every other European nation), who enjoyed a few brief years of artificial prosperity, which in retrospect was entirely due to debt, masked well by the “currency swaps” and other financial engineering concocted by banks such as Goldman Sachs, in clear violation of the Maastricht treaty which is now a long-forgotten memory of the founding ideals behind the Eurozone.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Now that Yanis Varoufakis has resigned, in the kind of unique fashion and timing that shows us who the real men are, it’s time to clear the other side of the table as well. The new finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, should not have to face the same faces that led to Europe’s painful defeat in yesterday’s Greek referendum.
That would be an utter disgrace, and the EU would not survive it. So we now call for Juncker, Lagarde, Schäuble, Dijsselbloem, Draghi, Merkel and Schulz to move over.
It’s time for the Troika to seek out some real men too. It cannot be that the winner leaves and all the losers get to stay.
The attempts to suppress the IMF debt sustainability analysis were a shameful attempt to mislead the people of Greece, and of Europe as a whole. And don’t forget the US: Lagarde operates out of Washington.
It cannot be that after this mockery of democracy, these same people can just remain where they are.
It’s time for Europe to show the same democratic heart that Varoufakis has shown this morning. And if that doesn’t happen, all Europeans should make sure to leave the European Union as quickly as they can.
Because that would prove once and for all that the EU is no more than a cheap facade, a thin veil behind which something pretty awful tries to hide its ugly face.
Here is Yanis’ explanation behind his resignation:
Minister No More! (Yanis Varoufakis)
The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage. Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25th June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is, therefore, essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid NO vote be invested immediately into a YES to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy, and real reforms.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
An exercise in futility has just ended in Greece, with its population voting down an offer that has expired almost a week ago already. Given the futility of the referendum, its outcome was actually irrelevant from a formal perspective – once the verdict was in, Greece and its creditors would be exactly back where they were half a year ago already: at square one.
In one sense the referendum’s outcome was of course not futile: It has solidified the current Greek political leadership’s grip on power. It merely hasn’t brought it any closer to a solution. Greek voters want Greece to retain the euro, but they cannot vote on how much money governments (or rather, taxpayers) of other countries should hand to Greece or under what conditions. They can also not vote on whether the ECB should resume lending to technically insolvent banks.
Futile exercise
Cartoon by Ilias Makri
There are of course powerful reasons why the EU is indeed interested in implementing another can-kicking agreement. For instance, as Carl Weinberg has pointed out in Barron’s, a Greek default is a very costly affair, as what were hitherto contingent liabilities will have to be reflected in government budgets:
“Greece is on the verge of defaulting on 490 billion euros ($540 billion) in loans, bond obligations, central-bank liquidity assistance, and interbank balances. Who will bear those losses? Greece’s creditors, which are all public entities across the euro zone, and that are on the hook for some €335 billion in loan guarantees. How will those losses be covered? Bonds will have to be sold that will roughly equal the increase in annual debt purchases by the European Central Bank announced last January.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Some quick pre-market observations from Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow
Just Don’t Nip Out for a Haircut
The Greek citizenry voted and the handicappers got it very wrong. The result of the vote was called much earlier than anyone expected. It wasn’t close.
Much was made last week of the abrogating of responsibility by PM Tsipras by allowing the referendum. How can mere citizens be trusted with understanding such difficult issues? Issues that the technocratic experts got nowhere with. No one expected the result. No one was set up for the result. Chaos will ensue. But here we are, admittedly early the next morning and the markets are remarkably calm
Merkel and Hollande will meet. The ECB will meet. The Greek cabinet will meet. Cool heads will prevail. The unpopular Varoufakis is not gloating, he is resigning. The base case remains that a deal will happen because it must happen. The Greek people may have gotten us closer to a deal than all of the summits ever could
EUR/USD has held inside last Monday’s range. Two Mondays in a row, the pair has traded below 1.1000 and quickly rejected those lower prices. The 100-DMA (1.1057) is looking more like a pivot than a line in the sand. USD/JPY has bent, but not broken; 122.00 continues to be an important level and is holding. Watch the JPY as a measure of safe-haven demand
I remain a USD bull and still think EUR/USD will go lower, but its resilience in light of all the news is impressive.
Bund futures are higher, but holding well below the 55-DMA (153.61). U.S. 10-yr futures are holding below the important 127-00 level. Watch 126-16 as interesting support. Below there we are back into familiar territory
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Wolf here: the IMF’s job is to bail out holders of sovereign bonds issued in a currency the issuer doesn’t control and can’t devalue (Mexico issuing bonds in dollars, Greece issuing bonds in euros). These bondholders are mostly banks. In a debt crisis, the IMF bails out these banks by buying their troubled bonds and then tightens the belts around the little guys so that the country can service the debt it now owes the IMF.
What happened in Greece? The banks that used to hold Greek debt have sold most of it to the European institutions, and some of it to the IMF; they have been bailed out years ago. The IMF has done its insidious job. Now mostly taxpayers are on the hook. But the IMF doesn’t give a crap about taxpayers.
By Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET.
As Europe teeters on a precipice of its own making, some people are beginning to wonder whether the IMF might have somehow discovered it has a conscience. Strange as it may sound, rumors of the IMF’s do-gooding began spreading on Friday after the Fund published a damning report on the sustainability of Greece’s finances and the Troika’s woeful mismanagement of the country’s debt crisis.
Granted, the report was deeply critical of Syriza’s negotiation strategies and governance of Greece. But the report’s real victims were the IMF’s two Troika partners, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission, both of whom had fought to prevent its publication.
The latest developments confirm what I argued four months ago in “Is the IMF About to Make Greece an Offer It Can’t Refuse?”: namely that the IMF could well prove to be an unlikely, albeit temporary, ally for Syriza. Now, by publishing its Debt Sustainability Analysis at the best/worst possible time, the Fund has massively improved Syriza’s chances of achieving a no-vote on Sunday.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If the Greeks were to vote ‘No’ what would happen next? Well no one can say. But here is a quick thought on what I hope the Greek government might have been exploring if they are excluded from the euro. It’s just food for thought nothing more.
They have to be prepared to have a currency that does not depend on Europe supplying Euros. So they will need another currency – hopefully their own. I think we can be sure no western company has been printing them. There are few such companies and there is, I think, no possibility that they would be able to keep secret a contract from Greece. But both Russia and China can print notes. So would it not have been prudent to ask Putin to print up plane loads of Drachma and be prepared to fly them in?
Who would back this currency? Greece is not Great Britain with a long established reasonably trusted currency backed by a big slice of global financial trade. So I do not think they could launch an orphan currency which the drachma would be if it did not have some relation to a major clearing or reserve currency.
For all Obama has, apparently, lobbied the EU to be more conciliatory towards Greece I am not sure he would leap at the chance to help Greece with its debt. He might of course. A chance to reenforce US power in that part of the world. But he already has power there so I doubt he would be willing to ‘pay’ much. Russia and China, however would gain much more by having Greece as a beach head in to the EU and, more importantly, into Nato.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis report on Greece that came out this week has caused a big stir. We now know that the Fund’s analysts confirm what Syriza has been saying ever since they came to power 5 months ago: Greece needs debt relief, lots of it, and fast.
We also know that Europe tried to silence the report. But what’s most interesting is that this has been going on for months, as per Reuters. Ergo, the IMF has known about the -preliminary- analysis for months, and kept silent, while at the same time ‘negotiating’ with Greece on austerity and bailouts.
And if you dig a bit deeper still, there’s no avoiding the fact that the IMF hasn’t merely known this for months, it’s known it for years. The Greek Parliamentary Debt Committee reported three weeks ago that it has in its possession an IMF document from 2010(!) that confirms the Fund knew even at that point in time.
That is to say, it already knew back then that the bailout executed in 2010 would push Greece even further into debt. Which is the exact opposite of what the bailout was supposed to do.
The 2010 bailout was the one that allowed private French, Dutch and German banks to transfer their liabilities to the Greek public sector, and indirectly to the entire eurozone‘s public sector. There was no debt restructuring in that deal.
Reuters yesterday reported that “Publication of the draft Debt Sustainability Analysis laid bare a dispute between Brussels and [the IMF] that has been simmering behind closed doors for months..
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
