Greece

  • 22 Feb 2012 at 6:29 PM

One Last Greek CDS Post Before It All Goes Poof

By Matt Levine

One of the side benefits of Greece taking whatever somewhat irreversible steps it is now taking is that something will happen to CDS written on existing Greek debt and that will mean that we can stop talking about what will happen to CDS written on existing Greek debt and start talking about more interesting things like quasi-CDS written by the EFSF on shaky Eurozone government debt.

For now, though, we’ve got at least a few more weeks of surprisingly and unsurprisingly ill-informed fretting that triggering the $4bn of Greek CDS will Bring Down The Entire Global Financial System. That seems sort of silly because notionals aren’t that big, mark-to-market collateral is mostly being posted, and at this point the marks are pretty close to what you’ll get from Greece so it doesn’t look like there’s tons of unknown unrecognized losses lurking out there.

On the other hand, we’re mostly through with the speculation that not triggering Greek CDS will Prove That CDS Is Worthless and thereby Bring Down The Entire Global Financial System, so that’s nice. The reason that’s mostly over is that it sure looks like Greek CDS will in fact trigger, as Athens has moved to adopt a collective action clause that will flip the Greek restructuring from “voluntary, heh heh heh” to “involuntary” and thus trigger the ISDA restructuring event definition. You can argue that the mechanics of the cash settlement auction will mildly screw CDS holders but I’m not so sure, and in any case this is pretty solidly in the category of derivatives nerdery rather than Bring Down The etc. Continue reading »

  • 22 Feb 2012 at 2:47 PM

Robert Shiller Has 1/1,000,000, 000,000th Of Greece He’d Like To Sell You

By Matt Levine

Here’s a delightful idea that is also a nice piece of synergy. Apparently Yale economist and half-a-housing-index Robert Shiller has been floating this idea since 2009 but I just saw it today in a new Harvard Business Review piece (via Counterparties):

Corporations use a combination of debt and equity to finance their investments and operations. Nations, in contrast, rely exclusively on debt. When a nation’s economy stalls and its debt continues to grow—you may have noticed this happening a lot recently—disaster looms for the country’s taxpayers. This is why Europe is in turmoil right now. But things don’t have to work this way.

Here’s an audacious alternative: Countries should replace much of their existing national debt with shares of the “earnings” of their economies. This would allow them to better manage their financial obligations and could help prevent future financial crises. It might even lower countries’ borrowing costs in the long run.

The proposal is for something he calls “trills,” which pay a dividend equal to one trillionth of GDP: Continue reading »

  • 21 Feb 2012 at 2:38 PM

This Is Really Only The “Second” Greek Bailout?

By Matt Levine

If you’re into Greece you’ve probably already read all about it and if you’re not I can’t make you. But in brief: Greece is fixed and we will NEVER HEAR ABOUT ANY PROBLEMS EVER AGAIN. In less brief:
(1) Some folks stayed up all night and produced a statement.
(2) Greece’s private creditors will be offered the long-anticipated opportunity to voluntarily exchange their old bonds for new bonds, which will for the most part be the same as the old bonds except for minor differences including but not limited to a greatly extended maturity (to 2042), a 53.5% reduced face amount, and a 3.6% blended interest rate.
(3) If they don’t voluntarily exchange, which they will because – hilariously – they’ve already taken accounting writedowns (and also because I guess it’s better than a disorderly default), private holders will get CAC’ed, which may or may not be as bad as it sounds, but in any case at least CDS will pay out, unless it doesn’t.
(4) Also the public sector will do various helpful, confusing things.
(5) In exchange for this, Greece will enact horrible austerity, and because no one believes that Greece will actually do that, there will be escrow accounts and what Reuters ominously calls “permanent surveillance by an increased European presence on the ground.”
(6) Everyone is pretty sure we’ll be doing this again in six months and, look, just fair warning, I will not be writing about it then, because feh.

We haven’t had a serious international bankruptcy, which this pretty much is, since I started paying attention to the financial markets, two months ago, so I mostly think about insolvency from a US bankruptcy law perspective. One thing that happens in bankruptcy is that, like, really really roughly speaking, the creditors stop being creditors and become the owners. This isn’t always the case but the basic playbook of US bankruptcy law is: Continue reading »

Hedge Fund Rights Are Human Rights

By Matt Levine

It probably speaks well of the overall state of human rights in Europe that the European Court of Human Rights devotes a lot of its time to compelling moral issues like George Soros’s insider trading conviction. (Fine, there’s some torture too.) But how good is this:

Hedge funds have been known to use hardball tactics to make money. Now they have come up with a new one: suing Greece in a human rights court to make good on its bond payments. The novel approach would have the funds arguing in the European Court of Human Rights that Greece had violated bondholder rights, though that could be a multiyear project with no guarantee of a payoff. And it would not be likely to produce sympathy for these funds, which many blame for the lack of progress so far in the negotiations over restructuring Greece’s debts.

You … you think? You think that might look bad? Hmm.

More specifically the potential human rights violation here is the retroactive introduction of a collective action clause into the Greek-law bonds, which represent some 90% of the outstanding Greek debt. The idea here is along the lines of add CAC, scrape together a majority of the bondholders to agree to the exchange, and then force the holdouts to exchange on the same terms. Because Greece’s bonds do not currently have a CAC, people who bought the bonds would understandably feel a bit miffed to have one added retroactively, and some of them might replace the words “feel a bit miffed” with the words “have their human rights violated.” At the very least, though, retroactively and unilaterally adding material terms to the debt agreements seems pretty shady.

But one can have a little bit of perspective on this. I think there are about four things that Greece could do with its Greek-law bonds: Continue reading »

  • 10 Jan 2012 at 7:16 PM

Jerks To Get Paid More Than Nice People

By Matt Levine

No, not your comp, though probably that too. The Times and the Journal check in today on the state of play in Greece and it’s kind of how you might expect. From the Times:

For months now, Greece has desperately been trying to persuade its private-sector creditors that it is in their interest to exchange their existing Greek bonds for longer-term securities and accept about a 50 percent loss as part of the bargain. The negotiations are known as the private sector involvement, or P.S.I.

A few months ago the deal looked doable, as the large European banks that held must of this debt, estimated to be around €200 billion, recognized that it was probably a better alternative than default, which could cost them everything. Moreover, the banks were sensitive to political pressure from their home countries, where they have a big stake in remaining on good terms with the government and key officials.

But as the talks have dragged on, many of these banks, especially big holders in France and Germany, have sold their holdings. Among the buyers have been hedge funds and other independent investors who are now questioning why they should accept a loss, known as a haircut, if, as it turns out, the deal remains voluntary in nature and Greece keeps paying interest on its debt.

And as the number of such hedge funds holding Greek debt has grown, so has their ability to forestall a restructuring agreement, thus bringing them closer to being able cash in on their high-stakes gambit.

From the Journal:

There are many potential pitfalls, each, in a way, leading to another pitfall-strewn path.

Ha! Also ha! on the Times’s sort of strange description of what the hedge funds are up to, though what they’re up to doesn’t itself sound strange. If I were a hedge fund here is what I would do:

1. Not buy bonds and then later “question why I should accept a loss”;
2. rather, buy bonds because I plan to get a gain;
3. specifically because I’m planning to be all “oh, man, I must have lost that consent solicitation in the mail, could you send it again” and otherwise generally stall on this voluntary offer until my bonds come due and are paid off with bailout money (maybe?);
4. or, alternatively, because I’ve got CDS against those bonds and have no intention whatsoever of voluntarily exchanging them and voiding my protection.

That or “stay the hell away from this situation.” But, like, the above is at least a strategy. Now, if I were a French or German bank here is what I would do: Continue reading »

  • 16 Dec 2011 at 1:23 PM

It’s Not So Easy To Get Away From This Voluntary Greek Bond Swap

By Matt Levine

Bloomberg reported today that, back in July, David Einhorn and some other people decided that (1) betting against European sovereign debt was, and would remain, a good idea, but (2) doing it in CDS form was kind of dumb, so (3) they’d switch to doing it in physical form, by borrowing and shorting the debt. Here’s what Einhorn had to say in his July investor letter:

The letter touched on two risks tied to credit swaps on European sovereign debt, including regulators’ attempts to fashion a Greek bailout in a way that prevented the contracts from paying out. The second risk was the possibility that banks that wrote billions of dollars in credit swaps on sovereign debt might not be able to make good on their obligations should a country such as Greece actually default.

Let’s talk about that first reason for a minute because I think it’s sort of illuminating. The problem is that Europe was in July, and is now, and wow that’s depressing, trying to cobble together a “voluntary” debt exchange where holders of Greek debt happily hand it in to Greece and get back a thing with a 50% face value haircut that is also a piece of crap. If you’re a European bank who owns Greek bonds and CDS to hedge them, and you feel pressured to accept that deal, then you feel like the “insurance” you bought on your bonds should “pay out,” I suppose, though that’s all fairly hypothetical. If on the other hand you’re David Einhorn and you bought CDS and then Greece haircuts its debt, you feel like your bet against Greek debt has been vindicated so it should pay out. But it doesn’t, says ISDA, because the exchange was voluntary and there was no “credit event” under the rules governing your CDS. Continue reading »

  • 05 Dec 2011 at 2:59 PM

Joe Biden: This Euro Crisis Is Nothing Some Old Fashioned Elbow Grease Can’t Fix

By Bess Levin

“I think that out of difficult times, opportunities present themselves,” Mr. Biden said today in Athens. “And with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, a year from now we will have not only weathered this crisis, but even be in a stronger position.” [WSJ]