MacroScope

Big news over the weekend was the world’s banks being given an extra four years to build up their cash piles, and given more flexibility about what assets they can throw into the pot. This is a serious loosening of the previously planned regime and could have a significant effect on banks’ willingness to lend and therefore the wider economy.

For over two years, banks have complained that they can’t oil the wheels of business investment and consumer spending while being forced to build up much larger capital reserves to ward off future financial crises. That contradiction has now been broken (a big win for the bank lobbyists) and the impact on economic recovery could be profound.

However, there are no guarantees. Banks, in Europe at least, have also insisted that lending has remained low because there isn’t the demand for credit from business and households. If that’s true, increased willingness to lend might not be snapped up.

The uncertain economic state of play means the European Central Bank and Bank of England are unlikely to act at policy meetings later this week.
Safe haven German Bund futures have opened moderately higher having dropped dramatically last week after Washington navigated its way round the fiscal cliff and U.S. data was markedly upbeat.

The global regulators, meeting in Basel, agreed on Sunday to phase in a rule new rule on minimum holdings of easily sellable assets, known as the liquidity coverage ratio, from 2015 over four years, and widen the range of assets banks can put in the buffer to include shares and retail mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), as well as lower rated company bonds.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and Germany’s Angela Merkel – the two most important people in the euro zone debt crisis response – take to the stage today, the former giving lengthy testimony in the European Parliament, the latter holding a news conference with foreign journalists.

With Greece sorted out for now, Spain and Italy fully funded for the year and markets simmering down, the crisis is in abeyance, in no small part thanks to these two. Draghi provided the game changer with the ECB’s bond-buying plan late in the summer but Merkel has shifted profoundly too during the course of the year – most crucially from considering a Greek euro exit might be a good thing “pour encourager les autres” to realizing it would be a disaster and acting to rule it out and also in backing Draghi’s bold move and ignoring a large measure of German disquiet.

Germany continues to go-slow on future steps, at least in part largely for domestic political reasons, but look where we are now – with an ECB prepared to act in a way that horrifies the Bundesbank, a permanent euro zone rescue fund, a banking union in progress and multiple bailouts agreed and help for Spain likely to come soon – and it’s remarkable to see how far Berlin has moved.

Credit where credit’s due, the EU has surprised on the upside over the last 24 hours or so, not only signing off on a revised Greek bailout plan to keep that show on the road and agreeing that the ECB will supervise 150 or more of the bloc’s biggest banks, but then pledging to set up a mechanism to wind down problem banks.

Now, there is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip as they say – not much more is going to be cemented until next autumn’s German elections are out of the way, the ECB only has direct oversight of 5 percent or so of euro zone banks (when we know from the financial crisis that smaller banks can be almost as lethal as the big boys) and there is no indication of how a bank resolution scheme would be funded (perhaps via a financial transaction tax although only 10 or so countries have so far committed to that). Also, direct recapitalization of banks by the ESM rescue fund, to take the burden of indebted states, is unlikely to happen before 2014.

Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be churlish. EU leaders are clearly using the window of calm created by the European Central Bank’s pledge to buy euro zone government bonds in whatever size is needed to shore up the currency area in order to press on with the permanent structures which will ensure the bloc’s future. So while Finnish Foreign Minister Alex Stubb’s assertion that the EU is in its best shape for years may be pushing it a little, his follow-up line that if you’d offered them this state of play at the start of the year they’d have snatched your hand off is hard to argue with.

The Greek bond buyback has fallen a little short, leaving Athens and its lenders to plug a 450 million euro hole. The euro zone and IMF had given Greece 10 billion euros to buy back enough debt at a sharp discount so that it could retire 20 billion euros worth of bonds and knock that amount off its debt pile. Without that, the deal to start bailout loans flowing to Athens again would fall through.

Due to the discount working out slightly more generously than expected, Greece fell slightly short but it’s impossible to believe the currency bloc will throw itself back into turmoil over a few hundred million euros. Athens will confirm the state of play this morning. One source said German “bad banks” had not tendered most of their holdings and could be tapped again. A solution will be found and probably in time for the EU leaders’ summit on Thursday and Friday. IMF chief Christine Lagarde came close to saying as much last night, welcoming the bond buyback and leaving the loose ends to the Europeans.

More preparatory work for the summit gets underway today with EU finance ministers meeting to try and bridge a gap over plans to regulate euro zone banks cross-border – part one of building a banking union. The European Central Bank is set to be the overarching regulator but Germany wants its scope severely constrained, while others want it to be able to intervene in any euro zone bank, at least in theory. This does not have the power of Greece or Italy to move markets but an inability to agree on the least contentious part of a banking union would not send a good signal.

Don’t start putting out the tinsel yet. Just when we thought we had a smooth glide path into Christmas the euro zone has bitten back.

Over the weekend, Italy’s Mario Monti called Silvio Berlusconi’s bluff and said he was pulling the government down which will mean early elections in February. The budget bill will be passed and then the country will be in a potentially precarious state of limbo as parliament is dissolved. Italian bond futures have opened more than a point lower, which denotes a reasonable measure of alarm, although the safe haven Bund future has only edged up so we’re far from panic mode.

The big question is whether a government results that will stick to Monti’s agenda and whether he himself will have a prominent role to play in the administration. There are constitutional difficulties to keeping Monti as prime minister since he has said he would not stand at the election, though he has also said he would be prepared to step in again if no stable government is formed. Most likely, presuming a government is elected that supports his reforms, is that he will play a key role but not take the top job.

After months of bickering and struggle, the euro zone and IMF have agreed on a scheme which will notionally cut Greece’s mountainous debt to a level they view as sustainable in the long-term. Athens has now launched a buyback of its debt at a sharp discount from private creditors which should wipe 20 billion euros of its debt pile – a key plank of the plan.

Is the problem solved? Absolutely not. But has Germany achieved its goal of delaying any disasters, or really tough decisions, until after its elections in the Autumn of 2013? Almost certainly. So we could (famous last words) be in for a period of relative calm on the euro zone crisis front.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister have begun quietly hinting that euro zone government and the European Central Bank may eventually have to take a writedown on the Greek bonds they hold to make Athens’ debt controllable. That won’t happen for at least two years but in the meantime, bailout money will flow and Greece will survive.

There are signs of headway from Athens where we have just snapped a government source saying the IMF accepts Greek debt is “viable” if it falls to 124 percent of GDP in 2020, rather than the 120 that it had previously decreed was the maximum sustainable level.. The source said fresh measures have been found to reduce debt to 130 percent of GDP by 2020, leaving another 10 billion euros to be covered.

At the latest failed meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Tuesday, we confirmed that the EU/IMF/ECB troika had calculated Greek debt would only fall to 144 percent of GDP in 2020 without further measures, meaning roughly 50 billion euros needed to be knocked of Greece’s debt pile. A report circulated at the meeting concluded (apologies for the number soup) that debt could only be cut to 120 percent of GDP in eight years if euro zone government agreed to take a writedown on their loans, which they will not do for now.

If the IMF will now accept 124 percent as a target that means 20 percentage points of GDP – about 40 billion euros – would have to be lopped off Greece’s debt pile. If they are now only 10 billion short, then measures amounting to 30 billion have been found. It’s hard to believe that could have come from the Greek side which has already slashed to the bone, so maybe some or all of the options we know are on the table — a Greek debt buyback at a sharp discount, lowering the interest rate and lengthening terms on the loans and the ECB foregoing profits on its Greek bondholdings – have been agreed to.

Big event overnight was the downgrading of France to Aa1 by Moody’s, bringing it in line with Standard & Poor’s which cut back in January. There are some funds (even in this age of AAA scarcity) which will only invest in top notch debt and take their cue to exit once two agencies have dropped that rating, but the immediate impact is unlikely to be dramatic. The euro has slipped on the news, French government bond futures have dropped about a quarter of a point and safe haven German Bund futures have edged up. “Although it’s not great, the market doesn’t seem too worried,” one trader said.

However, it does throw a spotlight on the gap between France’s economic health (lack of it) and the record low costs it can borrow at. We’ve written plenty of good stuff on this already and French finance minister Moscovici gave his response to us last night. Interestingly, it wasn’t an attack on the ratings agencies, which we’ve seen before from Europe in these circumstances. Instead, he said it was an alarm bell telling the government to pursue structural reforms and reaffirmed his commitment to meet budget deficit targets. He noted that France continued to enjoy record low yields after S&P cut early in the year. The only thing he really took issue with was Moody’s view of the large risks to France’s banks. It warned it could cut France’s rating further.

As the day progresses, thoughts will turn to Greece and this evening’s meeting of euro zone finance ministers. We’ve had a strong exclusive readout of what is likely – an endorsement in principle to unfreeze loans to Greece but a final go-ahead for December disbursement only after a few final reforms are enacted in Athens. Berlin has suggested bundling together the next few Greek bailout tranches in order to pay over 44 billion euros if a green light is given. Others want only the next tranche of 31 billion to be handed over at this stage. Either way, that will keep the show on the road but there is plenty more to be decided yet.

Some key positions were staked out on Greece over the weekend – ECB power-behind-the throne Joerg Asmussen became the first euro policymaker to say on the record that euro zone finance ministers meeting on Tuesday would be intent only on finding a deal to tide Greece over the next two years. But IMF chief Christine Lagarde told us in an interview that she would push for a permanent solution to Greece’s debts to avoid prolonged uncertainty and further damage to the Greek economy.
  
Sounds like those two positions could be mutually exclusive. However, it may be that something like a behind-the-scenes pledge from the German government that it will act decisively after next year’s election will keep the IMF on board.

Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker said at the weekend that intensive work was being done on a compromise with the IMF and progress was being made, after the euro zone sherpas put their heads together on Friday. And even hardline German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said a deal had to be struck on Tuesday and would be. Juncker and Lagarde clashed last week over his suggestion that Greece should be given an extra two years, to 2022, to get its debt/GDP ratio down to 120 percent, the level the IMF has decreed is the maximum sustainable. Lagarde looked surprised and firmly rejected the idea.

IMF officials have argued that some writedown for euro zone governments is necessary to make Greece solvent but Germany has repeatedly rejected the idea of taking a loss on holdings of Greek debt, saying it would be illegal. 
Among ideas under consideration to plug the funding gap are further reducing the interest rate and extending the maturity of euro zone loans to Greece, a possible interest payment holiday and bringing forward loan tranches due at the end of the programme, according to euro zone sources.

So said Winston Churchill of Russia. The Greek debt saga isn’t quite that unfathomable but the economic necessities continue to clash with the political realities.

Eurogroup Working Group – the expert finance officials from 17 euro zone nations who do the clever preparatory work before their finance ministers meet – will convene to today try and get the Greek debt process back on track after a ministerial meeting got nowhere on Monday and in fact ended up in an unusually public spat between its chair, Jean-Claude Juncker, and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

The Eurogroup plus Lagarde will meet again next Tuesday and there are big gaps to bridge although we intercepted the IMF chief in Manila this morning, insisting that a deal was possible, or at least that’s one way of reading her “it’s not over until the fat lady sings” quote.