MacroScope

Euro zone ying and yang

The ying. Sources told us last night that Spain may recapitalize stricken Bankia with government bonds in return for shares in the bank. That would presumably involve an up-front hit for Spain’s public finances (it is already striving to lop about 6 percentage points off its budget deficit in two years) which might be recouped at some point if the shares don’t disappear through the floor. The ECB’s view of this will be crucial since the plan seems to involve the bank depositing the new bonds with the ECB as collateral in return for cash. If it cries foul, where would that leave Madrid?

Spain’s main advantage up to now – that it had issued well over half the debt it needs to this year – may already have evaporated after the government revealed that the publicly stated figure for maturing debt of the autonomous regions of 8 billion euros for this year is in fact more like 36 billion. Catalonia said late last week that it needed central government help to refinance its debt.  If more bonds are required to cover some or all of Bankia’s 19 billion euros bailout, Spain’s funding challenge in the second half of the year starts to look very daunting indeed.

The yang. Latest Greek opinion polls, five of them, show the pro-bailout New Democracy have regained the lead ahead of June 17 elections although their advantage is a very slender one. If the party manages to hold first place, and secures the 50 parliamentary seat bonus that comes with it, then it looks like it would have the numbers to form a government with socialist PASOK which would keep the bailout programme on the road … for a while.

After a disastrous campaign first time around, maybe New Democracy has got its act together. Its leader, Antonis Samaras was out yesterday bluntly saying his anti-bailout SYRIZA opponents would leave Greece isolated for years and without food, drugs, fuel and power. Sobering stuff. Officials have already told us Greece will run out of money by July if outside money dries up.

Samaras is calling for Greece to be given four years rather than two to make the spending cuts demanded of it. PASOK’s Venizelos says it needs three. Could there be a deal to be done with  Brussels and the IMF there? Maybe, but there does seem to be a distinct lack of sympathy from Athens’ international lenders. Over the weekend, IMF chief Lagarde effectively accused Greeks of being tax dodgers and said she was more concerned about the plight of deprived children in Africa. That caused a storm on her Facebook page, causing her to soften her tone a little. Germany’s interior minister chipped in, ruling out pouring money into a Greek “bottomless pit” and a senior Deutsche Bank executive said it was a failed state.

On the Greek exit contingency planning front, British interior minister Theresa May said work was under way to restrict immigration in the event of a financial collapse although she was later slapped down by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg. And the Lloyd’s of London insurance market said it had reduced its exposure “as much as possible” to the euro zone in preparation for a collapse of the single currency.

German Bund futures have slipped as a result of the latest Greek polls but traders said Spain was weighing heavily on the other side of the ledger. European stocks are up 0.7 percent.

Not for the faint-hearted

With Spain’s banking system looking ever more parlous and the Damoclean Sword of Greek elections hanging over the financial markets, next week is not going to be for the faint-hearted.

Stock markets have endured another volatile week, rising early on before falling sharply just before the EU summit, then rising the day after – all this when very little changed on the euro zone landscape. Increasingly, the downward moves are sharper than the upward ones and there is little prospect of things settling before the June 17 Greek elections. It seems everyone is so nervous that if they are sitting on a day of gains, they cash them in double-quick.

Page one of the crisis management manual says get all the bad news out quickly. The handling of troubled Spanish lender Bankia has been an abject failure in that respect. First, the government said it would require about 9 billion euros to shore up, a few days on they are looking at 20 billion. One proposal doing the rounds is to create one nationalized bank out of a number of failed lenders. The big question, to borrow heavily from Louis XV, is: Apres Bankia la deluge?

It looks increasingly likely that Madrid will have to take a bailout for its banking system despite its protestations to the contrary. The money is there in euro zone rescue funds to cope but one of Spain’s only trump cards – that it had issued well over half the debt it needs to this year – may have disappeared after the government revealed that the publicly stated figure for the autonomous regions’ maturing debt – 8 billion euros for this year — is in fact more like 36 billion.

If Spain looked in real trouble (Greek contagion could play a part here) that might be the tipping point that persuades the euro zone to take more dramatic action. With German opposition to common euro zone bonds unbudgeable for now, a lot of the onus would fall on the ECB which, while deeply reticent to revive its bond-buying programme, could well be pushed into a third round of three-year money creation at some point. And if there was any sign of a bank run, plans for a deposit guarantee fund could have to be dusted off very quickly. Would that do the trick?

If Spain can be dealt with via existing bailout funds – if it comes to that – it may well be that, as it was last year, it would take Italy to come seriously into the firing line to push the ECB into overdrive. Italy will sell debt of varying denominations on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, giving plenty of scope for jitters. And there’s plenty else besides to keep longer-term investors on the sidelines.

Ireland holds its referendum on the new EU fiscal treaty on Thursday with the result expected the day after. Polls suggest it will pass. If it didn’t, the country would have a serious headache given it is under a bailout programme but would have rejected the debt rules the bloc is being asked to meet. While the treaty needs the approval of only 12 of the 17 euro zone countries to be ratified, an Irish rejection would be another scab for markets to pick away at.

Shifting euro zone sands

A telling moment. Before pretty much every showdown EU summit since the debt crisis exploded into life, the leaders of France and Germany have got together beforehand to agree a common strategy. It is a truism that the European motor only works efficiently when its two biggest powers are in accord.

This time, following the election of Francois Hollande as French president, there has been no such meeting. Instead he will talk with Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy in Paris before they head to the Brussels summit. There, Hollande will press for the currency bloc to start issuing joint euro zone bonds and will run into implacable German opposition that will squash the plan for now. But the plates are shifting and German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks somewhat isolated.

On euro bonds, Hollande can call on the support of Italy’s Mario Monti and the European Commission among others. Nonetheless, Angela holds the purse strings so while we will see some modest pro-growth measures agreed (and no doubt trumpeted), there will be no pump-priming that requires extra deficit spending, certainly no mutualising of debt and probably no hint that the likes of Greece and Spain will be given longer to make the cuts demanded of them (though that policy’s time could soon come, depending on how the June 17 Greek elections go).

Greek contagion aside, Spain remains the bloc’s biggest headache largely because of the weight of bad debts dragging its banking sector down. One idea is to allow the euro zone’s rescue funds to lend to banks direct, thereby removing the stigma of a government having to ask for aid. But Berlin is not keen on this one either.

Less controversial are plans to boost the capital of the European Investment Bank, use “project bonds” backed by the EU budget to invest in infrastructure and recalibrate some EU structural funds which has been used to help poorer EU members so that it is spent in other areas which might yield a quick growth dividend. None of that can hurt. But peashooters and elephants come to mind.

The golden rule of this crisis is that red lines have and will be crossed, most notably by Germany and the ECB, if the bloc is teetering right on the edge. The first ones to give this time may be on relaxing debt-cutting timeframes and allowing the bailout funds to help banks direct. Euro zone bonds remain a long way off (probably only when all member countries have got their deficits sustainably below 3 percent of GDP) and talk of a bloc-wide bank deposit guarantee fund isn’t anywhere near, though the pace of events could change that. Much hangs on how Greeks vote on June 17.

A demonstration of just how bent out of shape the euro zone is will be provided by today’s German 2-year debt auction. Yielding about 0.07 percent on the secondary market, that means Berlin has set a zero coupon for this sale and will pay no more to borrow this money over two years, yet investors are still expected to snap it up, such is the desperation for something secure. The debt agency says it is not planning to start offering negative coupons.

All eyes on Wednesday EU summit

After last week’s hefty losses, European stock gained yesterday and are up up again this morning, denoting some optimism about the Wednesday supper summit of EU leaders, which might well be unrealistic.

The European growth measures that we know are in the works – boosting the paid-in capital of the European Investment Bank and plans for ‘project bonds’ underwritten by the EU budget to finance infrastructure – might help a little but will fall a long way short of turning the euro zone economy around, so unless we get something more, on either the growth or the building defences fronts, there’s scope for investor disappointment.

Europe’s international partners continue to demand more dramatic crisis action. After the G8 summit, President Obama was out last night with four demands: - firewalls to protect countries from Greek contagion (are the ESM and IMF funds now viewed as insufficient?), - recapitalization of banks that need it (Spain to the fore here presumably), - A growth strategy to run alongside tight fiscal measures (easier said than done), - easy monetary policy to help the likes of Italy and Spain keep cutting debt (the ECB thinks its 1 percent rate is very loose and is unlikely to cut soon with inflation above target and will only flood the system with more liquidity in utter extremis)

Nothing new there but it keeps up the drumbeat of pressure ahead of the EU get-together. We know French President Francois Hollande, with the backing of others, will press the case for common euro zone bonds at the summit and also know that German opposition will not weaken one jot on that score. Spain’s Rajoy is pressing for more ECB involvement, presumably by reviving its bond-buying programme. Given internal opposition to that within the ECB that is probably the least likely measure to be reactivated, yet anyway.

Despite money flowing out of Greek banks, and at least the threat of it spreading more widely if Greece bombed out of the euro zone, there is no hint yet of any planning for any scheme to underwrite bank deposits across the bloc, probably because the ECB and Germany will not countenance underwriting it. The golden rule of this crisis is that red lines have and will be crossed when it reaches breaking point. We’re not there yet.

With so much focus on Greece and Spain, Portugal has been somewhat overlooked in recent weeks but it will quite likely need a second bailout at some stage and if Greece prompts a wave of contagion, it will be firmly and instantly in the firing line.

Merkel under pressure … but unbending

Some interesting events to  ponder over the weekend, though not many of them came from the G8 summit which, as is customary, was strong on rhetoric but bare of any specific policy measures to tackle the euro zone crisis. However, markets seems to have tired of their panicky last few sessions. German Bund futures have opened lower as investors took profits rather than seizing on any positive news. European stocks have edged up.

It does appear that with the ascension of France’s Francois Hollande, the G8 firmament turned into G7 (or maybe 5 since we didn’t hear much from Japan and Russia) versus 1 (Germany) but as things stand we’re still heading for a fairly anaemic “growth strategy” unless euro zone leaders coalesce behind the notion of giving Spain and Greece longer to make the cuts demanded of them. Spain has moved the goalposts further in the wrong direction, revising its 2011 deficit up to 8.9 percent from 8.5 and blaming the overspending regions. That means its already loosened target of 5.3 percent for this year is now even harder to achieve.

Hollande is talking up the case for common euro zone bonds but that will not wash with Berlin for a long time yet. Sources said Monti used the G8 forum to promote a pan-European bank deposit guarantee fund. Good idea but that too will only be conceivable if the European financial sector is on the point of toppling. And who will underwrite it? There is talk too of allowing the EFSF to lend direct to banks to ease the Spanish government’s reluctance to ask for help. That may have a slightly better chance of success but Berlin doesn’t like this idea either. Look no further than the German Chancellor’s take on the summit – it was all a great success, she said. Everyone agreed that we need both growth and fiscal consolidation.

Angela Merkel is one the one with her hand on the purse strings and she knows the markets will only allow so much fiscal loosening. However, the hefty 4.3 percent pay rise secured by Germany’s most powerful union, IG Metall could be a sign that Berlin is starting to loosen the edges of its anti-inflation culture in order to foster a bit of domestic demand. Any profound return to euro zone growth is going to require some internal imbalancing – and that means Germany buying more from its partners to allow them to export more.

No one can accuse Merkel of being disengaged. Despite denials from Berlin, it seems she may have suggested to the Greek president that a referendum on euro membership should be held in parallel with the June 17 elections, a pretty astonishing intervention in another country’s democratic process.

It is certainly true that the mainstream, pro-bailout Greek parties’ only chance of doing better this time is to turn the election into a “euro in or out” poll by explaining why abandoning the bailout will open the exit door. But they have a lot of work to do to regain credibility. Of a series of opinion polls over the weekend, two put the anti-bailout SYRIZA ahead and another gave pro-bailout New Democracy the lead. Since the party who comes in first gets an extra 50 parliamentary seats, the tightness of the race is going to have markets on tenterhooks for the next four weeks. We had a nicely timed interview with SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras which ran overnight. He meets French leftist Melenchon today and is talking about building relationships and forging negotiations so Greece can stay in the euro. However, he will not be meeting government officials in France and said the terms of Greece’s 130 billion euros bailout were now a “dead letter” and noted what he saw as the changing dynamics at the G8.

In the meantime, Greeks continue to withdraw their money from the banks, a trend which if it reaches critical mass, could force a European policy response even before the election. If that starts taking root elsewhere, the whole system will be creaking. Spanish banks’ bad loans have hit their highest in 18 years and, with so much tied into a bankrupt property market, no one is quite sure how much worse it is going to get. Late on Friday, clearing house LCH.Clearnet raised the cost of using Spanish bonds to raise funds.

Greek tragedy

Greece is stumbling inexorably towards fresh elections which polls suggest will give the anti-bailout far left a stronger grip on power. Last ditch talks aimed at creating a unity government will continue under the aegis of the president today but the leader of the radical leftist SYRIZA has said he will not turn up. Alexis Tsipras says he wants Greece to stay in the euro but will rip up the bailout agreement. Go figure. This morning the more moderate left party has said it won’t take part in a government lacking SYRIZA.

A big question is whether the mainstream parties can mount a convincing campaign second time around, playing on the glaring contradiction in SYRIZA’s position and essentially turning the vote into a referendum on euro membership, which the overwhelming majority of Greeks still support. Don’t count on that.

Two ECB policymakers –  Honohan and Coene – were out over the weekend talking about the possibility of a Greek euro exit: there goes another taboo. Policymakers must be running through the hard default and exit scenarios now. We need to be asking.

As we’ve said before, Greece has some leverage. The IMF, ECB and euro zone governments are holding a lot of Greek debt so have an incentive to keep the  show on the road or face heavy losses if there is a hard default. Of Greece’s 250 billion-plus euros of debt, nearly 200 billion is now held by those public bodies. It is also hard to see how Europe could avoid propping Greece up even if it did leave the currency club. The calculation for euro zone leaders is whether pouring good money after bad into Greece is more or less palatable than taking a big hit on their Greek debt holdings.

Greece will obviously loom large over this evening’s meeting of euro zone finance ministers in Brussels. But so will Spain. There is talk of Madrid getting some leeway on its deficit-cutting targets after the European Commission predicted on Friday they would be missed. But first it will have to present a more credible 3-4 year plan on how it will get there. So don’t expect anything definitive today. Spain is grappling with its bad bank debt problem but the 84 billion euros it has told banks to put aside still looks shy of what’s needed. Either government or euro zone money is likely to have to come to the rescue at some point. So far banks have responded with plans that do not require state aid, apart from Bankia which was essentially nationalized last week.

If Spain is cut some slack then why not Greece? (maybe because it has been bailed out twice). Venizelos, the finance minister who negotiated the second bailout, has suggested Athens gets three years instead of two to produce the cuts demanded in its loan programme. If that happened, Portugal and Ireland would presumably demand better terms for their bailouts but it’s not impossible – we’re clearly into policymaking directed at the lesser evil here.

A hefty defeat for Angela Merkel in a key state election on Sunday may not help her bend the rules to keep Greece going. But as regards a euro zone growth strategy — a hot topic this week with Francois Hollande rushing to Berlin for a debut visit — the fact the centre-left SPD, who have argued against austerity for austerity’s stake, cleaned up in North Rhine-Westphalia is interesting. Another prominent growth proponent, Mario Monti, said on Sunday that Italy’s social fabric is being torn by recession and tensions are growing among its citizens. It looks like there is a growing resolution that the end-June EU summit must come up with more profound growth measures than anything currently on offer. More time to meet deficit targets looks like the obvious option.

Risk of contagion if Greece exits euro: WestLB

Ana Nicolaci da Costa

May 11, 2012 13:14 EDT

What happens if Greece leaves the euro? No one can say for sure. But John Davies at WestLB, finds it difficult to envision a benign outcome.

Greece’s economy, at around $300 billion, is very small compared to the euro zone as a whole. The problem is if other countries follow suit – or are pressured in that direction by stubborn financial markets.

Such a scenario doesn’t bear thinking about because it is so horrible.

There is a good chance that the market would immediately trade Portugal towards pre-debt swap Greece levels. The next in line would certainly be Ireland and Spain.

Initially you have got to assume that spreads would become even more dislocated. As you are moving out and down the credit curve the ones with the weakest credit ratings will likely suffer worst, at least initially, because we are moving clearly into the world of the unknown and that’s precisely what the market doesn’t like.

The Greek elections have left a political vacuum that is raising speculation that the country may eventually exit the euro. Last Sunday, Greek voters punished mainstream parties that supported harsh austerity in exchange for international bailout cash. That left the Greek parliament with a jumble of minority parties that have been unable to form a government.

The leaders of Greece’s once-dominant conservative and socialist parties made a push on Friday to avert new elections and prevent a victory by a radical leftist who has promised to tear up its international bailout deal.

Inability to implement the reforms set out by international lenders amid this political void could compromise the country’s life-support bailout money and lead to a default. This could make the country’s membership of the euro increasingly unsustainable, even though those very reforms risked choking growth further in an economy suffering its fifth year of recession.

Even Germany, the key driver of growth in the euro zone, might eventually be threatened by worsening financial and economic conditions around it. And what of the bullish German Bund market which seems to know no bounds? Davies again:

More Greek elections?

Attempts to form a Greek coalition government appear to be running into the sand with no one prepared to dance with the two mainstream parties, New Democracy and PASOK, raising the probability of a fresh round of elections with all the uncertainty that will entail. The far-left Socialist Coalition will have a stab at forming an administration today but doesn’t really have the numbers to do it.

The only plan that looks like it offers a glimmer of hope is that put forward by PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos. He is after a “pro-European” coalition and has pledged to spread the cuts Greece has been ordered to make under its bailout programme over three years not two. If a burst of realpolitik every takes hold in Athens (and it’s worth noting that nearly all the parties say they want to stay in the euro), that could just be enough to get others on board. BUT, Venizelos would then have to go to Brussels to persuade the EU to go along with this relaxation of its targets and, on and off the record, officials lined up yesterday to say there was no prospect of that happening. And his PASOK was the party that was most badly humiliated at Sunday’s election so it’s hard to see how it has a mandate to rule the Greeks, a majority of whom voted firmly against austerity, even it is in a broad coalition.

So new elections next month are likely which leaves a very compressed timeframe and who knows what political landscape will result second time around. The EU/IMF/ECB troika is supposed to return in June and can’t negotiate on the next bailout tranche if there is no government. In any case, Athens is supposed to find 11 billion euros of extra cuts as part of the aid programme and none of the parties are in a position to do that as things stand.

One of the burning questions is whether Greece’s euro zone partners are in any mood to cut it some more slack — the atmospherics a few months ago when the second bailout deal dragged on and on suggested they certainly weren’t then. And even if they were, they would have to take into their calculations that any relaxation by Greece would presumably be demanded by Ireland and Portugal too, which could put markets back on alert.

However, the reaction yesterday — with stocks ending well up on the day — suggested that some markets have either bought into the theory that the contagion threat posed by Greece is significantly diminished (see yesterday’s note for reasons) or that they think that the euro zone will somehow muddle through again. Safe haven Bunds have ticked up at the open and European stocks look set to open flattish so not much to go on there.

Either way, the bigger picture is that Spain remains far more pivotal. The government’s move to clean up troubled Bankia could signal it is finally getting serious about tackling its financial sector, which is it’s main problem. Sources say the state will lend 7-10 billion euros. The less encouraging aspect is that the government appears to be saying that won’t land on its deficit because it will be loaned at commercial rates — the sort of accounting sleight of hand that has got investors’ hackles up in the past.

The end of austerity? Not likely

It was Bill Clinton who, after the 2000 U.S. election was thrown into turmoil by Florida’s hanging chads, said the American people had spoken but it was going to take a little time to work out what they had said. No such dilemma in Greece. A plague on both your houses was the message for the traditional ruling parties PASOK and New Democracy, a result that makes a stable government look a remote possibility and puts a very real question mark over its bailout programme.

Today, the largest party New Democracy will try to form a coalition. Given what they’ve said, the left-wing Left Coalition which leapfrogged PASOK into second place cannot be part of a government committed to the bailout terms so it looks like the two traditionally dominant parties — two seats short of an overall majority between them — must seek support from elsewhere or face fresh elections which could well give an even more fractured result. One thing worth noting is that even the resurgent anti-bailout parties mostly say they want to stay in the euro zone so maybe there’s soom room for negotiation.

The euro has dived to a three-month low, Bund futures have posted yet another record high and European shares are down so we’re right back in fear mode.

Two big questions flow from all that: 1. Could this vote, and socialist Francois Hollande’s victory in France, shift the growth/austerity debate? 2. Does Greece, even its possible euro exit, still have the power to spread damaging contagion to the rest of the euro zone?

On the growth front, the answer is only up to a point because Berlin and the European Central Bank — and the markets — won’t wear anything that will dilute debt-cutting programmes much, whatever the more friendly rhetoric suggests. Italian premier Mario Monti, a man desperate for growth, talked to Hollande, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s David Cameron among others after the elections last night, presumably to push that agenda and the argument is gaining force.

EU economics chief Olli Rehn chipped into the growth debate over the weekend, suggesting there is some leeway to temper debt-cutting drives in order to leave scope for growth. But again, details were elusive. Rehn also said those countries under the  microscope had to convince the markets and policymakers of their capacity to put their fiscal houses in order. This sounds rather like having your cake and eating it, or at least reaffirms what we’ve been saying — that there may be some limited fiscal wiggle room, but only as much as the markets will allow, which is not much.

So the growth strategy stills seems to rest on structural reforms (which will take years to bear fruit), plus reconfiguring some EU funds and a beefed up European Investment Bank. Those who really count — Merkel and Draghi at the top of the list — are talking up growth measures while insisting the austerity drive must not be dimmed. The markets would probably respond well to stimulus which did not fundamentally undermine debt reduction. But that’s some trick. And what’s on offer so far will not do the trick. Will something more profound be cooked up for the end-June EU summit?

Spotlight back on Spain

After a May Day holiday lull, the euro zone roars back into life with Spain facing a game of chicken with the bond market as it auctions three- and five-year bonds and the ECB holding its monthly policy meeting in Barcelona, which lends it a certain poignancy.

Spanish yields will rise sharply compared with the previous equivalent sale and the auction is the first since S&P’s two-notch downgrade of Spain’s credit rating last week. Spanish banks, flush with three-year cash despite their horrendous bad loans problem, continued to load up on Spanish government debt in March while international investors backed off. Whether they will continue to do so is a very open question.

Three- and five-year yields on the secondary market are more than a percentage point higher than when this maturity was last sold earlier in the year. But 2.5 billion euros is a modest amount to shift and Spain has already sold half its debt issuance target for the year in the first four months.

France will also hold a bond auction, three days before its presidential election run-off. Mario Draghi pulled a surprise rabbit out of his hat last week when he added his voice to calls for a European growth strategy. With no policy change in the offing from Barcelona anything he says about that will be closely scrutinized although it already seems that he and his colleagues don’t envisage the ECB doing much to help beyond keeping policy loose. What is being talked about is some extra lending power for the European Investment Bank and some reallocation of existing EU funds, along with much-heralded structural reforms. That may help a bit but it’s nothing like enough to turn the euro zone economy around. With monetary policy already ultra-loose, that would require serious fiscal stimulus.

Euro zone leaders, led by Merkel and Schaeuble, have made it quite clear they won’t tolerate any let-up in the austerity drive to cut debt. Nor are the markets likely to accept a big shift on that front.

It seems pretty clear that things would have to get a lot worse for the ECB to resume its bond-buying programme, let alone launch a third round of three-year money creation, even though it will witness the pain in Spain first hand.

In fact, its harder core members may be more focused on 6 percent-plus wage demands in Germany which the powerful unions are threatening to strike over. Having said that, the latest survey evidence suggests the euro zone economy is resolutely heading south with the pain particularly acute in Spain and Italy.