Saturday 10 March 2012

Greece default

Moody's: Greece has defaulted


RT, 10 March, 2012


Moody's Investors Service considers Greece to have defaulted per its default definitions. The announcement comes despite Athens reaching a deal with private creditors for a bond exchange that will shave €107 billion from its €350 billion debt.

The agency pointed out that even though 85.8 per cent of the holders of Greek-law bonds had signed to the deal, the exercise of collective action clauses that Athens is applying to its bonds will force the remaining bondholders to participate.

Eventually, the overall cost to bondholders, based on the present net value of the debt, will be at least 70 per cent of the investment, Moody's explained.

"According to Moody's definitions, this exchange represents a 'distressed exchange,' and therefore a debt default," the US rating firm said. "This is because (i) the exchange amounts to a diminished financial obligation relative to the original obligation, and (ii) the exchange has the effect of allowing Greece to avoid payment default in the future."

Ahead of the debt deal, Moody's had already slashed Greece's credit grade to its lowest level, "C," and so there was no impact on the rating.

Moody's pointed out it had already downgraded Greece's sovereign rating to C from Ca on March 2, further to the announcement of the debt exchange proposals. It also said it will re-evaluate the rating to see how the debt write-down and the second bailout package would affect the country’s financial sector.

On Friday, Athens announced that it had carved out a crucial bond swap deal with private investors designed to write off more than €100 million of Greek debt. The bondholders agreed to take huge losses, giving up some 74 per cent of the value of their investment.

The agreement with private investors was a crucial part of a new bailout from the EU and the IMF aimed at averting a catastrophic default which could plunge the entire eurozone into a deep crisis potentially harming the global economy.

Greece is experiencing its worst economic crisis since World War II and has been on the brink of a default with debt equal to 160 per cent of its GDP.



Greece Has Defaulted: Here Is Where We Stand

10 Match, 2012

After reading this, everyone should have a fairly good grasp of what happened not only today, but ever since the great (and quite endless) European financial crisis took center stage, and what to look forward to next...

From Chindit13

In a nutshell---okay, a coconut shell---this seems to be where we are:

1)  Greece was able to write off 100 billion euros worth of debt in exchange for a 130 billion rescue package of new debt, of which Greece itself will receive 19%, or about 25 billion, so that it can continue to operate as an ongoing concern.  Somehow Greece is in a better position than before, with more debt and less sovereignty and still---by virtue of sharing a common currency---trying to compete toe-to-toe with the likes of Germany and the Netherlands, kind of like being the Yemeni National Basketball team in an Olympic bracket that includes the US, Spain and Germany.  At least a "within the euro" default prevented bank runs in Portugal, Spain, Italy et al.

2)  As a result of the bond haircuts, Greece has many pension plans that can no longer even pretend to be viable, at least according to the original contracted scheme, but pensionholders still working can take heart in the fact that their current wages will be cut, too.

3)  CDS buyers will have to sweat bullets, jump through hoops, and be forced to endure every cliche known to man, but they might end up getting something for all their trouble, provided their counterparty is solvent and that counterparty itself is not heavily exposed to an insolvent party or a NTBTF institution, otherwise known as a Lehman Brothers.  Expect the legal profession to be the prime beneficiary of this "event", as any new CDS contract will be at least a hundred pages of boilerplate longer in the future.

4)  Good luck to any less than AAA rated sovereign who wants to issue debt from now on out.  That contracts can now be unilaterally abrogated, as Greece' bonds were with the retro-CACs, bodes ill for attractive pricing from here on out.  Peripherals in the EU will suffer most, as they face the added indignity of being subordinated to the ECB at any point the ECB chooses to exercise its divine right of seniority.  The thing that used to be called the risk free rate no longer exists.  Bill Sharpe take note.

5)  One hundred billion euros worth of perceived wealth evaporated.  That can not be a good thing for a Eurobanking system already capital short, as it raises leverage (quick back of the envelop calculation) by about 6% across the board.  It also will not make the interbank market any more trusting, thus increasing the likelihood of perpetual LTRO.  LTRO lll looks to arrive sooner than QE lll.

6)  With the drawn-out Greek event and the LTRO, Europe might believe it has firewalled the system for at least three years and limited damage to Greece and Portugal (who will likely undergo a similar default by the 3rd quarter).  LTRO-provided liquidity, it is hoped, will lower market rates enough in Spain and Italy so that those countries can meet sovereign bond obligations and both service existing debt and issue new debt.  When the LTRO expires in 2015, "hopefully" something called organic growth will have taken over in countries imposing severe austerity measures on their public sectors, so that debt servicing becomes easier.  Organic growth obviously is something that comes in a can, a can which has been kicked out to 2015.

7)  As Europe now speaks increasingly of greater EU financial integration, Sarkozy's poll numbers will be the victim and a less EU friendly individual will likely win the upcoming election.  Since France and Germany fortunately have a long and storied history of being the best of friends, and no one in either country would ever pander to nationalist sentiments, this shouldn't present a problem.

8)  Given how much angst was caused by the drawn out Greek affair, the Spanish leader knows he has enormous leverage with EU leadership and he can continue to do what he has been doing with regard to ignoring the deficit targets demanded/suggested by the EU.  The EU might well bark at him, but they cannot afford to bite at this time.  Muchos gracias, Greece.

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