So Greece Won’t Be Paying That Bill Tomorrow

So that's...nice for them?

Author:
Jon Shazar
Updated:
Jan 14, 2019
Original:
Jun 4, 2015

Have me over? For tea?

Because, thanks to an IMF rule that hasn’t been invoked in 40 years, it doesn’t have to, Christine Lagarde’s expectations notwithstanding. Now, as to whether it makes that payment and three others at the end of the month? Ball’s in your court, Christine, Angela, et. al. Alexis will be around tomorrow night to talk about it.

“‘The decision was intended to address the administrative difficulty of making multiple payments in a short period,’’ the I.M.F. said in a news release announcing the decision….
Greek officials have been suggesting all week that whether the I.M.F. would get paid on Friday would depend on the prospects for an imminent deal to renegotiate the terms of its international bailout program.

Greece to Put Off Friday Debt Payment to I.M.F. [NYT]
EU could host Tsipras again late Friday, maybe EBC, IMF too –EU source [Reuters]
Greek PM has no plans for confidence vote Friday- govt sources [Reuters]

So that's...something?

So that's nice of them?

So that's...sort of good news?

False alarm!

By Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Greek crisis is starting to feel ancient, and whither Varoufakis?

Partying like its 2014. By DTRocks (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Who wants to add to the country's already-unsustainable pile of debt?

ISDA decided today that there has been no credit event for purposes of Greek CDS. Obvs! And by "obvs!" I mean what I said the other day, which is that with 100% certainty there's been no credit event yet, but with 100% certainty there will be, so everyone should just chill out. Except that it seems like that last part may be wrong. So go ahead and panic. I used to make convertible bonds and some of my time was spent answering questions about what happened to things upon Events. The most popular was: what happens after a merger? If you have a convertible that converts into 10 shares of XYZ stock, but now XYZ is being acquired and each share of XYZ is being acquired for $30 in cash and 4.5 shares of PQR stock and a pony - what happens to the convertible? And the answer I would give usually started with "don't trouble your pretty little head about it." Like, it's fine: you have a convertible that converts into 10 Things, and before the merger each Thing was an XYZ share, and after each Thing is exactly what an XYZ share transformed into, so you convert into $300 and 45 PQR shares and 10 ponies. It just works because it has to work. Economic interests follow without interruption from changes in form; derivative securities poof into derivatives of things that the underlying poofs into. There is no arbitrage! That assumption is central to doing any sort of derivative work, and it spoiled me a bit. Sometimes people would come up with more complicated scenarios involving dividends, multiple-step transactions, weird splits and spinoffs and sales, etc. etc. And I would generally start from the bias "it has to work, so I am sure the document written in the way that works." Where "works" means "the economics and intent of the trade are preserved after the change in form." But of course the document was written by humans, often specifically me, and those humans, often including me, are fallible. So there may well be documents from my former line of work that don't "work" in the sense that an issuer could do some structural tricks that would screw holders out of their economics - where the derivative doesn't follow the underlying everywhere it might go. These tricks are unlikely enough that I don't lose sleep over them. You can't predict everything. I sort of assumed that Greek CDS also had to just work but here is Felix Salmon at Reuters saying no. Lisa Pollack at FT Alphaville said something similar a week ago but I could not fathom that she meant it so I read it to mean something else. But she means it, and Felix does too. Go read it but the basic gist of this theory is:

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