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Dear Biden administration: for an example of a real emergency that justifies draining a commodity reserve – and not just midterm elections which Democrats will lose in a historic rout – read on.

German energy giant and distressed nat gas utility Uniper, which is among the companies most exposed to Russian natural gas, has started using gas it was storing for the winter after Russia cut deliveries to Europe, increasing pressure on Berlin as the German energy giant needs to be rescued “in a few days.”

The country’s top buyer of Russian gas started withdrawing fuel from storage sites to supply its customers, the company said in a statement to Bloomberg on Friday. The drawdowns, which began on Monday, will also help the company to save some cash as it has been forced to pay up for gas in the spot market. Meanwhile, flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline remain shut for maintenance.

Harald Seegatz, deputy chairman of the supervisory board, said that Uniper needs urgent help, risking insolvency within days.

“We are currently reducing our own gas volumes in our storage facilities in order to supply our customers with gas and to secure Uniper’s liquidity,” the company said. And judging by the flatlining of German gas storage in inventory, Uniper is not alone in draining reserves.

According to Bloomberg, citing data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, Uniper’s storage sites in Germany are now about 58% full, down from about 60% reached on Sunday. Drawdowns were also made from the company’s storage in Austria, but overall storage levels in Germany’s Alpine neighbor are still showing marginal increases.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Covid-19 Dominoes Fall: The World Is Insolvent

March 16, 2020

The Covid-19 Dominoes Fall: The World Is Insolvent

Subtract their immense debts and they have negative net worth, and therefore the market value of their stock is zero.

To understand why the financial dominoes toppled by the Covid-19 pandemic lead to global insolvency, let’s start with a household example. The point of this exercise is to distinguish between the market value of assets and net worth, which is what’s left after debts are subtracted from the market value of assets.

Let’s say the household has done very well for itself and owns assets worth $1 million: a home, a family business, 401K retirement accounts and a portfolio of stocks and other investments.

The household also has $500,000 in debts: home mortgage, auto loans, student loans and credit card balances.

The household net worth is thus $1,000,000 minus $500,000 = $500,000.Let’s say a typical financial crisis and recession occur, and the household’s assets fall 30%. 30% of $1 million is $300,000, so the the market value of the household’s assets falls to $700,000.

Deduct the $500,000 in debts and the household’s net worth has fallen to $200,000. The point here is debts remain regardless of what happens to the market value of assets owned by the household.

Then the speculative asset bubbles re-inflate, and the household takes on more debt in the euphoric expansion of confidence to buy a larger house, expand the family business and enjoy life more.

Now the household assets are worth $2 million, but debt has risen to $1.5 million. Net worth remains at $500,000, since debt has risen along with asset values.

Alas, all bubbles pop, and the market value of the household assets decline by 30%, or $600,000. Now the household assets are worth $2,000,000 minus $600,000 or $1,400,000. The household net worth is now $1,400,000 minus $1,500,000 or negative $100,000. the household is insolvent.

On top of that, the net income of the family business plummets to near-zero in the recession, leaving insufficient income to pay all the debts the household has taken on.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Soaring Canadian Insolvencies Cripple Local Banks

March 2, 2019

Soaring Canadian Insolvencies Cripple Local Banks

Banks in Canada are starting to feel the pain of deteriorating credit quality, just weeks after we reported that insolvency filings had skyrocketed in almost all Canadian provinces.

Toronto-Dominion Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada both just posted ugly first quarter results that included higher provisions for loan losses as a key contributor to missing analyst expectations. TD Bank saw its provision for loan losses move to C$850 million, which was up 23% from the year prior. It also marked the highest level for such provisions in at least two years, mainly split between the bank’s U.S. and Canadian retail divisions (36% each), followed by the bank’s corporate division.

Toronto-Dominion’s Chief Financial Officer Riaz Ahmed told Bloomberg that bankruptcies were part of the issue in Canada:

“The fourth quarter and the first quarter of the year always tend to have elevated provisions because of the holiday spending season, so we tend to see that seasonality in cards and auto. In Canada, bankruptcies are up a little bitand we do see a little bit of rise in delinquency in our retail cards in the U.S. None of them would rise to the level of being of particular concern for us.”

CIBC also saw its provisions rise – more than doubling across the bank to C$338 million, which also marked the highest level in at least two years. Most came as a result of Canadian personal and small business banking, with the latter experiencing a a 41% jump in provisions to C$208 million.

CIBC Chief Risk Officer Laura Dottori-Attanasio was quick to make excuses on the bank’s call Thursday:

“A lot of the impairments that took place this quarter felt like unique events which I’d like to think won’t transpire again. We’re not seeing any systemic or any trends of concern in our book. We continue to have strong credit quality.”

Sure you do, Laura.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ECB Takes “Unprecedented” Step Of Putting Italy’s Banca Carige In Administration

January 2, 2019

ECB Takes “Unprecedented” Step Of Putting Italy’s Banca Carige In Administration

Investors who had hoped that the resolution of Italy’s budget showdown with the EU would mark an end to a volatile period for Italian bonds and stocks were disappointed Wednesday when fears about an Italian banking crisis reemerged after the ECB appointed a slate of temporary administrators to oversee troubled Italian lender Banca Carige after nearly its entire board resigned.

Earlier on Wednesday, Consob, Italy’s market watchdog, said it had suspended trading in shares of Banca Carige for the session following a request by the bank, according to Reuters.

European bank stocks dropped while bonds rallied as fears about softer-than-expected factory orders across the Continent were compounded by the developments in Italy (which proved an exception to the trend of weak PMIs).

With the bank teetering on the brink of insolvency, the ECB appointed three temporary administrators and a surveillance committee to “take charge” of the lender. The board quit after the bank missed a deadline to shore up its finances, or find a buyer or merger partner, after a fraud scandal, according to the Financial Times.

Fabio Innocenzi, Pietro Modiano and Raffaele Lener have been appointed as temporary administrators while Gianluca Brancadoro, Andrea Guaccero and Alessandro Zanotti have appointed as members of the surveillance committee.

The “unprecedented” move – as Bloomberg called it – follows a failed attempt to raise some 400 million euros last month after the Malacalza family, the billionaire shareholders who control nearly one-third of Carige, abstained from a vote on a turnaround plan, which sought to fill the capital hole left by the fraud scandal.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s official: the Federal Reserve is insolvent

December 27, 2018

It’s official: the Federal Reserve is insolvent

In the year 1157, the Republic of Venice was in the midst of war and in desperate need of funds.

It wasn’t the first time in history that a government needed to borrow money to fight a war. But the Venetians came up with an innovative idea:

Every citizen who loaned money to the government was to receive an official paper certificate guaranteeing that the state would make interest payments.

Those certificates could then be transferred to other people… and the government would make payments to whoever held the certificate at the time.

In this way, the loan that an investor made to the government essentially became an asset– one that he could sell to another investor in the future.

This was the first real government bond. And the idea ultimately created a robust market of investors who would buy and sell these securities.

When a government’s fortunes changed and its ability to make interest payments was in doubt, the price of the bond fell. When confidence was high, bond prices rose.

It’s not much different today. Governments still borrow money by issuing bonds, and those bonds trade in a robust marketplace where countless investors buy and sell on a daily basis.

Just like the price of Apple shares, the prices of government bonds rise and fall all the time.

One of the most important factors affecting bond prices is interest rates: when interest rates rise, bond prices fall. And when rates fall, bond prices rise.

And this law of bond prices and interest rates moving opposite to one another is as inviolable as the Laws of Gravity.

Back in the 12th century when Venice started issuing the first government bonds, interest rates were shockingly high by modern standards, fluctuating between 12% and 20%. In France and England rates would sometimes rise beyond even 80% during the Middle Ages.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Money Manager: ‘The Chaos Coming To The Markets Is Here’

February 21, 2018

Money Manager: ‘The Chaos Coming To The Markets Is Here’

Money manager Michael Pento says that profound chaos surrounding the economy is coming. The insolvency is becoming clear, and soon, we will no longer be able to sweep the problem under the rug.

Sitting down with USA Watchdog’s Greg Hunter, Pento discussed the chaos people predicting in the markets and says that it’s already here. Pento is the author of the book titled The Coming Bond Market Collapse, as well as a financial expert and he says the media is lying when they say the economy is doing well.

“There are so many things that can go wrong with rising interest rates. First of all, you have to understand that the permabulls that you hear on CNBC will tell you there is nothing wrong with rising interest rates. It is a symbol of growth. If you look at industrial production and retail sales for January, they were negative. So, rising rates are occurring, not because of growth, they are caused by insolvency concerns. That is the key metric here, and they are credit risks and insolvency concerns.”

“For the first time in 40 years, you are going to have bond prices and equity prices in free-fall. That happened in the 1970’s, but it’s going to be worse because in the 1970’s, you didn’t have an insolvency concern. . . The chaos coming to markets is here. It’s not going away, and it’s not going to be brushed under the rug. It’s not going to stay on the sidelines for another few years. The years from 2007 to 2017 were the years central banks were buying everything. There was no volatility, and stocks just went up. Those days have ended, and the volatility is only going to become much more profound.”

Hunter then asks Pento to explain who is insolvent. The answer isn’t calming in the least.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On Closer Inspection, Debt of Bankrupt Spanish Construction Firm Grows Four-Fold

February 18, 2018

On Closer Inspection, Debt of Bankrupt Spanish Construction Firm Grows Four-Fold

What happens if cases like this prove to be the rule rather than the exception?

Spain appears to have a brand-new Abengoa — the imploded energy giant whose fabulous accounting tricks pushed creditors into a black hole — on its hands: Isolux was until recently a fairly large privately owned infrastructure company with operations spanning the globe.

When the group declared bankruptcy last July, its cash flow in Spain was barely enough to cover a month’s operating costs. The group had a a total workforce of 3,884 and 119 infrastructure projects under development of which 39 were still operational and the remaining 90 had been halted.

The company tried to reduce its debt addiction through agreements with investment funds but they fell through. It also made two attempts to go public, in Brazil and Spain. Both failed.

The bankruptcy proceedings affected seven subsidiaries. At the time, the company stated that it owed €405 million to suppliers, that its total financial debt — including those companies not included under the Spanish Insolvency Act filing — was €1.3 billion, of which €557 million was associated with project financing, and that the total deficit on the group’s balance sheet was about €800 million.

Turns out, according to the bankruptcy receivers, the shortfall is actually €3.8 billion — four-and-a-half times the company’s original estimate — and the group’s total debt, at €5.7 billion, is over €4 billion more than the amount stated by the company 10 months ago.

This amount does not include the group’s dual or contingent liabilities. The receiver’s report concludes that the current situation will probably culminate in the liquidation of the entire group.

How did all this come to pass? According to the receiver’s report, the collapse of the real estate bubble in Spain and the drastic reduction in public work tenders during the crisis led Isolux to massively expand its international operations, as many large Spanish companies did in the aftermath of the housing bubble collapse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Municipal Debt Crisis Begins

January 9, 2018

The Municipal Debt Crisis Begins

I have previously reported that about 50% of German municipalities are insolvent. This is a global trend and we are witnessing it in the United States as well. The North Rhine-Westphalian Association of Cities has called for help from the future German federal government as the building crisis among financially weak municipalities continue to escalate. This includes the fourth largest by area in Germany with the capital situated in Düsseldorf. The main cities include Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, and Essen. They are pleading for a grand coalition between the CDU and SPD to save the municipal governments. With the end of the historic low-interest phase, interest rates are poised to rise dramatically in Europe and they begin to see that the appetite for new debt from the government is sharply declining.

Politicians have been hiding this municipal crisis in Germany until after the elections when it was assumed Merkel would win as always. Now the cat is coming out of the bag and we will begin to see the real impact of nearly 10-years of subsidizing governments by the ECB rather than actually stimulating the economy that never bounced. This is a fundamental background issue behind the rise in interest rates between 2018 and 2021.

Illinois on the Brink of Bankruptcy

April 4, 2016

Illinois on the Brink of Bankruptcy

The pension crisis is brewing and the one state that appears to be heading toward a complete bankruptcy is Illinois. Clients should not own ANY debt from Illinois, be it city, municipal, or state. Just get out before the curtain falls. The Illinois Constitution plainly states that pension benefits, once granted, “shall not be diminished or impaired.” Thus, taxpayers are absolutely screwed and this is not a place you want to own property. Governments cannot negotiate to reduce pensions so state workers will be pitted against taxpayers. The Supreme Court has struck down any attempt to reduce liabilities based upon this clause in the Illinois Constitution.

Big Banks Caught Using Credit Default Swaps To Destroy Nations

December 16, 2015

Big Banks Caught Using Credit Default Swaps To Destroy Nations

At the beginning of 2010, readers were presented with what was (at the time) merely a theory. The Big Bank crime syndicate was engaged in the serial manipulation of credit default swaps, in order to (among other things) destroy the economies of entire nations. It’s one of the reasons these “financial weapons of mass destruction” ( Warren Buffett ) were illegal in the U.S. for roughly 100 years, banned under anti-gambling statutes.

The theory was supported by a combination of compelling empirical evidence and logical deduction (i.e. “circumstantial evidence”) – roughly the same evidentiary basis by which we obtain most of our criminal convictions in our courts of law. The difference here is that with our governments having abandoned the Rule of Law, there was no one ready or willing to adjudicate over such evidence.

Before moving to the new evidence of an open conspiracy by the Big Banks to manipulate this market, it is necessary to review this older evidence. The chronology begins after the Crash of ’08, and takes the form of a comparison of two nations and their economies: Greece and the U.S.

Both nations were clearly hopelessly insolvent. Both nations’ insolvency came largely through absurd levels of military over-spending. The main difference is that one nation – the U.S. – was even more insolvent than the other. It simply pretended (and still pretends) to be “solvent” through enormous and absurdly transparent accounting fraud, which would be instantly prosecuted if attempted by any U.S. corporation (other than a Big Bank ).

Yet despite these two similar economies, there was nothing similar about their interest rates. The benchmark U.S. interest rate was permanently frozen at an ultra-fraudulent 0%. This meant paying no interest on loans to the U.S. government, despite the enormous risk of lending money to history’s most-indebted nation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Great Greek Bank Robbery

December 16, 2015

The Great Greek Bank Robbery

ATHENS – Since 2008, bank bailouts have entailed a significant transfer of private losses to taxpayers in Europe and the United States. The latest Greek bank bailout constitutes a cautionary tale about how politics – in this case, Europe’s – is geared toward maximizing public losses for questionable private benefits.

In 2012, the insolvent Greek state borrowed €41 billion ($45 billion, or 22% of Greece’s shrinking national income) from European taxpayers to recapitalize the country’s insolvent commercial banks. For an economy in the clutches of unsustainable debt, and the associated debt-deflation spiral, the new loan and the stringent austerity on which it was conditioned were a ball and chain. At least, Greeks were promised, this bailout would secure the country’s banks once and for all.

In 2013, once that tranche of funds had been transferred by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the eurozone’s bailout fund, to its Greek franchise, the Hellenic Financial Stability Facility, the HFSF pumped approximately €40 billion into the four “systemic” banks in exchange for non-voting shares.

A few months later, in the autumn of 2013, a second recapitalization was orchestrated, with a new share issue. To make the new shares attractive to private investors, Greece’s “troika” of official creditors (the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and the European Commission) approved offering them at a remarkable 80% discount on the prices that the HFSF, on behalf of European taxpayers, had paid a few months earlier. Crucially, the HFSF was prevented from participating, imposing upon taxpayers a massive dilution of their equity stake.

Sensing potential gains at taxpayers’ expense, foreign hedge funds rushed in to take advantage. As if to prove that it understood the impropriety involved, the Troika compelled Greece’s government to immunize the HFSF board members from criminal prosecution for not participating in the new share offer and for the resulting disappearance of half of the taxpayers’ €41 billion capital injection.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Spain Braces for its Biggest Corporate Insolvency… Ever!

November 27, 2015

Spain Braces for its Biggest Corporate Insolvency… Ever!

Blood on the Bourse

Spain is about to experience its biggest corporate insolvency ever. Unlike Bankia and all of Spain’s other bankrupt savings banks, Abengoa, a Seville-based multinational specialized in renewable energy and “environmental services,” is unlikely to receive a taxpayer-funded bailout – at least not just yet, not with general elections looming in less than a month’s time.

Following yesterday’s announcement that the company was seeking preliminary protection from creditors, Abengoa’s bonds and shares went into freefall. It was a financial bloodbath. According to S&P Capital IQ LCD, its euro-denominated 8.5% notes due 2016 plunged 38.5 points to 25.5 cents on the euro, after having been up at 93 cents on the euro only two weeks ago.

The U.S. dollar-denominated paper also suffered huge price declines in block trades. The engineering “Finance” unit’s 8.875% notes due 2017 plummeted 42.5 points, to 16.5 cents on the dollar, while the pari passu7.75% notes due 2020 plunged from 45 before the announcement to 15 cents on the dollar.

On Spain’s benchmark stock index, the IBEX 35, Abengoa’s B shares – valued just over a year ago at €4 – plunged as much as 69% to €0.28 before staging a brief dead-cat bounce. At the time of writing today, the B shares have fallen a further 25%.

With total debt of nearly $9 billion and growing, Abengoa yesterday filed under article 5 bis of the Spanish insolvency law. As WOLF STREET reported a few months ago, the company was undone by its mad rush for growth at any cost as well as its unconstrained embrace of the dark arts of financialization.

Even if Abengoa was to find a last-minute guardian-angel investor to take up some of the slack, the chances of it being able to find enough cash to service its debt pile are rice-paper thin. The company’s losses, slumping shares, and difficulty accessing financing could generate “significant doubts” over its ability to keep operating, warned its chief auditor, Deloitte.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Go Broke

October 24, 2015

Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Go Broke

On Friday, in “Is Mario Draghi About To Go Full-Kuroda? RBS Says ECB Could Buy Stocks,” we took a closer look at what the ECB’s options are when it comes to implementing further easing measures come December.

As a reminder, Mario Draghi telegraphed either another depo rate cut, an expansion of PSPP, or both at Thursday’s ECB presser and now the market is keen to analyze the situation and determine not only what Goldman’s man in Europe is most likely to announce, but what the implications of his announcement are likely to be.

To be sure, further cuts to the depo rate will simply trigger a chain reaction whereby the Riksbank and the SNB will be forced to respond in kind, lest they should lose ground in the global currency war on the way to seeing their inflation targets threatened. This raises the spectre that NIRP may soon come to household deposits, something which, despite the proliferation of negative rates, hasn’t yet occurred.

As for the expansion of PSPP, we looked at a variety of options courtesy of RBS’ Alberto Gallo who notes that Draghi could end up buying corporate bonds, munis, equities, and even individual bank loans before it’s over. Here’s how we summed it up yesterday:

In the end, all that will happen is the EMU’s neighbors will be forced further into NIRP and the ECB will end up with a nightmarish balance sheet full of stocks, corporate credit, munis, and God only knows what kind of loans purchased from banks, and all of which will have been bought at or near the top. That sets up the possibility that central banks could end up being forced to operate from a negative equity position. In other words: it sets up the possibility that they’ll technically go broke.

There’s been no shortage of coverage over the past several years regarding the idea that central banks can effectively go bankrupt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe’s Banks – Insolvent Zombies

September 9, 2015

Europe’s Banks – Insolvent Zombies

The Walking Dead

Now that Europe’s fractionally reserved banking system has been regulated into complete inertia, it is a good time to assess the current bottom line, so to speak. We should mention here that there are essentially two ways of dealing with the banking system. One is to introduce an unhampered free market banking system based on strong property rights and nothing else. Such a system would work best if it were based on sound money, i.e., a market-chosen medium of exchange. The regulations governing such a system would fit on a napkin.

zombie bank2

Image credit: Warner Bros, processing fmh

The Euro-Stoxx bank index, weekly, over the past 10 years. Recently the index has been unable to overcome resistance in the 160-162 area. The bust and the reaction of the authorities to the bust has made zombies out of Europe’s big banks – click to enlarge.

The other way is to construct what we have now: a banking cartel administered and backstopped by a central bank, based on fiat money the supply of which can be expanded at will and involving continual violations of property rights. Fractional reserve banking represents a violation of property rights, because it is based on the assumption that two or more persons can have a legally valid claim on the same originally deposited sum of money (for an extensive backgrounder on this, see our series on FR banking – part 1, part 2 and part 3). This legal fiction is very convenient for the banks and the State, but it sooner or later renders the banking system inherently insolvent (a de facto, but not a de iure insolvency).

Given this system’s inherent insolvency, the regulations governing it obviously won’t fit on a napkin. Instead they fill several volumes the size of telephone directories and keep growing like weeds.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greek Bank Stocks Crash Again Amid Fresh Signs Of Economic Disintegration

August 4, 2015

Greek Bank Stocks Crash Again Amid Fresh Signs Of Economic Disintegration

After trading limit-down on Monday when Greek stocks opened for trading for the first time since PM Alexis Tsipras called a referendum that would later prove to be a complete waste of time, shares of Greek banks once again flirted with the daily 30% loss limit on Tuesday as there were simply no bids for a set of institutions that everyone knows is insolvent.

The banks, which are only operational because the ECB has decided to keep the ELA liquidity drip on at least until the central bank sees whether or not Greece will be able to make a €3.2 billion bond payment on August 20, are in desperate need of recapitalization, and according to Brussels’ estimates, will need somewhere on the order of €25 billion to stabilize the system.

Of course that total effectively grows by the day, as the collapsing Greek economy (and we mean “collapsing” in the most literal sense of the word after yesterday’s astonishingly bad PMI print) takes its toll, driving up NPLs in a vicious circle wherein capital controls meant to stem the deposit outflow cripple the economy which in turn serves to further cripple the banks.

Speaking of this self-feeding loop, here’s Kathimerini with more on how the banking sector deep freeze has reverberated through the broader economy:

The state’s losses from indirect taxes alone in the first couple of weeks of capital controls and the shuttering of banks is more than half a billion euros, according to a study published on Monday by the Hellenic Confederation of Professionals, Craftsmen and Merchants (GSEVEE).

The drop in consumption in the first two weeks after June 28 amounted to 50 percent, or 3.8 billion euros, with corporate turnover falling 48 percent on average. This meant the state coffers missed out on 570 million euros in taxes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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