Will Greece turn out to be Lehmans mark two as a US think-tank has suggested?After discussing the travails of the Euro zone and in particular Greece and Ireland yesterday I expected it to be a difficult day. Fortunately whilst there was some unrest and violence in Athens it seems nobody was seriously hurt. However the dithering and indeed confused state of the Greek government which did include at one point talk that the Prime Minister would resign combined with the fact that the Euro zone is acting as if it is in a paralysed state unsettled financial markets. At first this mostly meant Greek and the other peripheral Euro zone markets but late afternoon UK time markets became aware that a US think-tank had predicted that Greece could become a Lehman Brothers mark two. In case any readers are unsure of the significance of this the collapse of Lehman Brothers was one of the main triggers for the acceleration of the credit crunch which is still affecting us.
What Happened?
GreeceWe were already seeing higher government bond yields in Greece and this trend continued. Her ten-year maturity’s yield rose to 17.8% and her three-year yield went above 28%. Something I discussed yesterday as a possibility happened as her ten-year bond went below half its notional value closing as it did at 49.39. As it was only issued at just under 99 last April it is an extraordinary rate of fall for such an instrument and highlights the financial distress that Greece is now in. There are instruments which insure against your debt defaulting called contracts for differences or cds and the price of Greek cds went above 1700 for five year debt. Just to give you a comparison the price of cds on Italy is 177. Moving onto the Greek stock market the Athens Stock Exchange Ordinary Index which closed at a recent high of 1715 in mid-February dropped to 1243.
A Wider Impact as the frenzy beganAs the political disarray in Greece was added to by the think tank report then markets immediately seemed to be humming the hit by Aloe Blacc
I need a dollar,dollar, a dollar is what I need
The trade-weighted US dollar index rose by 1.7% on the day to 75.6 as fears of contagion meant that investors rushed to the (supposed) safety of the greenback. It rose strongly against the Euro which dropped from just above 1.44 to just below 1.42. However the same song gives us a clue as to what was happening elsewhere too.
Bad times are coming and I reap what I sow….Cause everything around me is tumbling down
With such a view markets also rushed to the security of the US government bond market. The theory behind this is that the US dollars status as the world’s reserve currency means that its government bond market is considered to be safe and secure. Personally I think that there are several weaknesses in that but be that as it may the yield on US bonds fell across the maturity spectrum by more than 0.1% with the ten-year yield falling again below the psychologically significant 3% level closing as it did at 2.97%.
What was “tumbling down”?We need look no further than the price of oil where the price of a barrel fell by US $4 on the day. In fact the real fall took place in only 3 and a half hours when the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate plummeted from US $99.95 to US $94.70 and the chart looks like something falling off a cliff or as the song points out “tumbling down”. There is a lot of food for thought in this if you think about it as why should the price of crude oil be affected so heavily? We can only conclude we were given an insight as to how much speculation there is in this market as “punters” rushed for the exit.
One factor that is not only persisting but in fact is getting more pronounced is the difference between the WTI nad Brent benchmarks which has now gone as wide as US $21 this week. In truth the explanations given for this divergence do not really cut the mustard so we may be seeing another sign of speculation. I would be interested in readers thoughts on this.
Equity markets decided that they did not like the news either and headed south with the US Dow Jones Industrial Average closing down 178 points at 11,897 which continued a recent weak trend. Overnight the bad news spread as the Japanese Nikkei 225 index fell by 1.7% and the Chinese Shanghai Composite index fell by 1.52%
A real sign of contagionIf you were looking for a replay of the Lehman Brothers episode you did see one or two flickerings of events which happened then. For example the front months of interest-rate futures contracts were hit hard late on as expectations of a tightening of credit grew. I do not mean liquidity provided by central banks as there is still plenty of that but more the willingness of one bank to lend to another. This was exactly the thing which escalated the credit crunch.
There were several examples of this. One was a discussion I found myself in over the number of banks in the calculations for UK LIBOR and for the Euro zones EURIBOR which are 16 and 55 respectively. This may seem arcane at first but the point is that as 15% of the quotes are ignored in calculating EURIBOR then up to 8 banks could be in trouble without this indicator necessarily picking it up. I hope now you get the point! Fear invariably leads to more fear does it not? For the day there was little evidence of the other motivator greed giving fear something of a clear run.
Another example was the way the LIBOR-OIS spread rose and a comment to yesterdays article showed a chart of it. In essence this measures credit risk too as in a nutshell it compares the interest-rate for a central bank with an ordinary one so a widening as we saw indicates life is getting tougher for the banks. This means that any bank in trouble will find life (even) harder.
Back to GreeceHere we saw only confusion. Greece’s government was trapped in a political mess where not only were protestors on the streets but the government itself seemed unsure if it could get its latest austerity bill through the Greek parliament. The Prime Minister offered to resign if a national unity government would replace him but unfortunately there was a marked lack of unity! Accordingly he will carry out a cabinet reshuffle today and there will be a vote of confidence on Sunday. Unfortunately we are left with the combined images of tragedy and farce from all this.
If we move from politics to economic the mood is unlikely to be improved by the news from the Hellenic Labour Force Survey this morning.
In the 1st Quarter of 2011 the number of employed amounted to 4,194,429 persons while the number of unemployed amounted to 792,601. The unemployment rate was 15.9% compared with 14.2% in the previous quarter, and 11.7% in the corresponding quarter of 2010 ……….The number of unemployed persons increased by 11.3% compared with the previous quarter and by 35.1% compared with the 1st Quarter of 2010.
So sadly many more people will be asking the question posed in the song.
What in the world am I gonna do tomorrow?
The European Central Bank makes things worseThis phase has not shown the ECB in a good light and ECB Governing Council Member Nout Willink has added to this. He has called for the Euro “rescue” fund to be doubled to 1500 billion Euros so that it can deal with Ireland and Portugal. There are various flaws with this.
1. Such statements at a time of fear and uncertainty only exacerbate the fear and uncertainty.
2.The Euro “rescue” fund or European Financial Stability Facility has a theoretical firepower of 440 billion Euros and an actual one (due to incompetence in its design) of around half that. So actually to get to 1500 billion requires a lot more than a doubling of the fund. In my opinion basic numeracy is one of the requirements of a central banker….3. The Euro zone has been unable to agree on much recently concerning the EFSF and talk of changing it has remained just that talk.
4. As we stand the Euro zone looks paralysed and appears incapable of agreeing on anything.
5. A larger fund would simply be an attempt to throw more liquidity at a solvency problem and would accordingly solve nothing.
Some have wondered recently if the ECB has a plan B for this crisis personally I wonder if it ever had a plan A!
PortugalThere is little solace to be found here as her Prime Minister has given an interview to the Financial Times talking of two ”terrible years” of deep recession and record unemployment. I notice that the economic projections in the interview have the Portuguese economy shrinking by 2% both this year and next. If we look at the Greek experience such projections are likely to be an underestimate.
CommentWe have reached the stage where the wider financial markets have woken up to the Greek crisis and they appear to have done so late afternoon yesterday UK time with something of a start. In reality all we have seen is a continuation of existing trends but we have also seen a type of political instability which does move the possibility of her defaulting and maybe switching back to the Drachma a notch higher.
Whilst I do not wish to overplay it we have also seen an increase in the type of problems that were in evidence after the fall of Lehman Brothers and we will have to see if this continues or if markets take President Franklin D Roosevelt’s advice “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”. This morning it looks as if the worries are continuing.