Displaying items by tag: Legislation, Law & the Government

Ireland has finally admitted the horrendous condition of its banking system. I actually give the government kudos for this, and await the moment when the US, China and the UK come forth with such frankness. That being said, things are a mess, I have forewarned of this mess for some time now.First, the lastest from Bloomberg: Ireland's Banks Will Need $43 Billion in Capital After `Appalling' Lending

 

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Ireland’s banks need $43 billion in new capital after “appalling” lending decisions left the country’s financial system on the brink of collapse. The fund-raising requirement was announced after the National Asset Management Agency said it will apply an average discount of 47 percent on the first block of loans it is buying from lenders as part of a plan to revive the financial system. The central bank set new capital buffers for Allied Irish Banks Plc and Bank of Ireland Plc and gave them 30 days to say how they will raise the funds.

“Our worst fears have been surpassed,” Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said in the parliament in Dublin yesterday. “Irish banking made appalling lending decisions that will cost the taxpayer dearly for years to come.”

Dublin-based Allied Irish needs to raise 7.4 billion euros to meet the capital targets, while cross-town rival Bank of Ireland will need 2.66 billion euros. Anglo Irish Bank Corp., nationalized last year, may need as much 18.3 billion euros. Customer-owned lenders Irish Nationwide and EBS will need 2.6 billion euros and 875 million euros, respectively.

‘Truly Shocking’

The asset agency aims to cleanse banks of toxic loans, the legacy of plunging real-estate prices and the country’s deepest recession. In all, it will buy loans with a book value of 80 billion euros ($107 billion), about half the size of the economy. Lenihan said the information from NAMA on the banks was “truly shocking.”

...

Capital Target

Lenders must have an 8 percent core Tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure of financial strength, by the end of the year, according to the regulator. The equity core Tier 1 capital must increase to 7 percent.

AIB’s equity core tier 1 ratio stood at 5 percent at the end of 2009 and Bank of Ireland’s at 5.3 percent. Those ratios exclude a government investment of 3.5 billion euros in each bank, made at the start of 2009.

...

Credit-default swaps insuring Allied Irish Bank’s debt against default fell 6.5 basis points to 195.5, according to CMA DataVision prices at 8:45 a.m. Contracts protecting Bank of Ireland’s debt fell 7 basis points to 191 and swaps linked to Anglo Irish Bank’s bonds were down 3.5 basis points at 347.5.

Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a company fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A decline signals improving perceptions of credit quality.

State Aid

If Allied Irish can’t raise enough funds privately, the state will step in with aid, Lenihan said. It is “probable” the government will then end up with a majority stake, he said.

...

Ireland may not be able to afford to pump more money into the banks. The budget deficit widened to 11.7 percent of gross domestic product last year, almost four times the European Union limit, and the government spent the past year trying to convince investors the state is in control of its finances.

The premium investors charge to hold Irish 10-year debt over the German equivalent was at 139 basis points today compared with 284 basis points in March 2009, a 16-year high.

Ireland’s debt agency said it doesn’t envisage additional borrowing this year related to the bank recapitalization. It is sticking to its 2010 bond issuance forecast of about 20 billion euros, head of funding Oliver Whelan said in an interview.

“The bank losses, awful as they are, represent a one-off hit. It’s water under the bridge,” said Ciaran O’Hagan, a Paris-based fixed-income strategist at Societe Generale SA. [What is the logic behind this statement? Has the real estate market started increasing in value? Are the banks credits now increasing in quality? Will the stringent austerity plans of the government create an inflationary environment in lieu of a deflationary one for the bank's customer's assets???] “What’s of more concern for investors in government bonds is the budget deficit. Slashing the chronic overspending and raising taxation by the Irish state is vital.” [This is a circular argument. If the government raises taxes significantly in a weak economic environment, it will put pressure on the bank's lending consituents and the economy in general, presaging a possible furthering of bank losses!]

and...

Juckes Says Outlook `Frightening'
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Kit Juckes, chief economist at ECU Group Plc, talks with Bloomberg's Linzie Janis about the outlook for Ireland's banks after the government set out plans to revive the country's financial system.

Now, notice how prescient my post of several months ago was, The Coming Pan-European Sovereign Debt Crisis:

If this article goes viral around the web, I wouldn't be surprised if the euro tanks and several European sovereign states' spreads blow out. I have busted several of them in another of a long series of "creative" economic forecasting schemes to fudge the appearance of "austerity".

Well, its official (sort of). Greece, a member of the European Union, will probably join the ranks of countries like Latvia (where policies are limited by the choice of the currency regime), Iceland (where the crisis has resulted in a very heavy external debt burden), the Ukraine (which is still affected by financial and political fragility) and a bevy of third world and emerging market countries in distress from the (not very) esteemed club of IMF financial aid recipients. What does this portend for the Euro? Well, I have blogged earlier in the year that the Euro's credibility is now highly suspect and those pundits who dared contemplate the Euro potentially replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency now see the folly of their ways. The chances of a break-up are significantly higher and quite realistic. Credit Agricole's currency strategist puts it succinctly:

“If Greece goes with the IMF, that says something terrible about the political process within Europe,” said Stuart Bennett, a senior foreign-exchange strategist at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank in London. “This undermines any confidence in the currency."

Greece will probably end up defaulting on their debt, with or without the aid of the IMF, and they will probably have good company with several other EU members. I say so, and so does UBS Economist Donovan.

“I think it’s in an impossible situation,” said Donovan, who is based in London, in an interview with Bloomberg Radio today. “Europe has failed to clear its first serious hurdle. If Europe can’t solve a small problem like this, how on earth is it going to solve the larger problem, which is the euro doesn’t work. It’s a bad idea.”

How dare I make such a proclamation? Well, because I am telling the truth based upon facts and the many forecasts from the various sovereign nations are basically based upon lies, fiction and farce! As it is look at how the market is viewing the Greek tragedy:

European governments have yet to agree on how to fund any rescue for Greece, which says it will struggle to pay its debts at current market interest rates. While Prime MinisterGeorge Papandreouannounced a 4.8 billion euro ($6.4 billion) austerity package on March 3, the extrayieldthat investors demand to hold Greek debt over German counterparts has since risen.

The spread was at 324 basis points today compared with 316 points at the start of the month. The euro fell 1 percent today to $1.3358, extending its decline this year to 6.7 percent.

I am willing to bet the "market" has not taken a strong, hard, objective look at those proposed austerity measures and uncovered the secrets that I am about to reveal. If they have, these spreads would have been blown out much wider.

A German finance official said yesterday that both countries may agree to involve the IMF. Papandreou said March 19 that Greece, which needs to sell about 10 billion euros ($13.4 billion) of bonds in coming weeks, is a step away from not being able to borrow and may need to turn to the IMF if European aid isn’t forthcoming.

Europe’s fiscal crisis shows the need for the euro region to create a common fiscal policy, former U.K. Chancellor of the ExchequerNorman Lamontsaid in an interview in London today.

“That would be the logical step,” Lamont said. “I don’t think they are prepared to do that, and without doing that I think the euro is a contradiction, a currency without a state.”

Bingo! The man hit the point right on the head. There are too many chiefs and not enough Indians.

I want to visually and verbally demonstrate what an absolute joke European economic estimates have been throughout this crisis, and more importantly how politicians and sovereign states are interpreting this joke in such a way that can deliver a punch line that can most assuredly end in sever global recession, or worse. This document/blog post alone should serve to sink the Euro and blow out CDS spreads for several European sovereign. Why? Because the truth hurts and the truth is not what has been coming from European sovereign states as of late.

The IMF and the EU have been consistently and overtly optimistic from the very beginning of this crisis. Their numbers have been dramatically over the top on the super bright, this will end pretty, rosy scenario side - and that is after multiple revisions to the downside!!! We can visit the US concept of regulatory capture (see How Regulatory Capture Turns Doo Doo Deadly and Lehman Brothers Dies While Getting Away with Murder: Regulatory Capture at its Best) for the EU, but due to time constraints we will save that topic for a later date. To make matters even worse, the sovereign states have taken these dramatically optimistic and proven unrealistic projections and have made even more optimistic and dramatically unrealistic projections on top of those in order to create the illusion of a workable "austerity" plan when in reality there is no way in hell the stated and published plans will come anywhere near reducing the debts and deficits as advertised - No Way in Hell (Hades/Tartarus/Anao/Uffern/Peklo/Niffliehem - just to cover some of the Euro states caught fudging the numbers)!

Let's take a visual perusal of what I am talking about, focusing on those sovereign nations that I have covered thus far.

We have finished our review of the Italian "Austerity" plans to whip its debt load into shape. As with Greece (see "Greek Crisis Is Over, Region Safe", Prodi Says - I say Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!), we have found it wanting. Believe it or not, the biggest issue is the credibility of the government. They stretch the facts, assumptions and gray areas to the point where you tend to doubt everything else. It is almost as if they believe no one will actually read what they have written, which very well may have been partially true in the past. Alas, that was the past and this is the present. Information, and to a lesser extent, knowledge travels through the web at the speed of atomic particles. On that note, I release to my subscribers the pdf Italy public finances projection 2010-03-22 10:47:41 588.19 Kb.

For those that don't subscribe, I would like to make clear that my assertions of flagrant and unsubstantiated optimism on the part of European governments stem from how quicly they feel their economies will grow despite the fact that they failed to see this maelstrom coming in the first place.

This is Italy's presumption of economic growth used in their fiscal projections:

Let's get something straight right off the bat. We all know there is a certain level of fraud sleight of hand in the financial industry. I have called many banks insolvent in the past. Some have pooh-poohed these proclamations, while others have looked in wonder, saying "How the hell did he know that?"

• Is this the Breaking of the Bear? It wasn't hard to see Bear Stearns collapsing 3 month before bankruptcy. Why didn't our regulators see what I saw?
• As I see it, 32 commercial banks and thrifts may see the feces hit the fan blades It wasn't hard to see that nearly all of these 32 banks would be facing the threat of insolvency. Why didn't our regulators see what I saw?
• The Commercial Real Estate Crash Cometh, and I know who is leading the way! It wasn't hard to see that commercial real estate was ready to implode and that GGP was about to collapse under its own weight. Why didn't our regulators see what I saw?
• Yeah, Countrywide is pretty bad, but it ain’t the only one at the subprime party… Comparing Countrywide Countrywide and Washington Mutual's collapse were visible AT LEAST a year in advance!
• The Next Shoe to Drop: Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Counterparty Risk - Beware what lies beneath! 'Nuff said...
• ... and even Lehman Brothers: Is Lehman a Lying Lemming?

The list above is a small, relevant sampling of at least dozens of similar calls. Trust me, dear reader, what some may see as divine premonition is nothing of the sort. It is definitely not a sign of superior ability, insider info, or heavenly intellect. I would love to consider myself a hyper-intellectual, but alas, it just ain't so and I'm not going to lie to you. The truth of the matter is I sniffed these incongruencies out because 2+2 never did equal 46, and it probably never will either. An objective look at each and every one of these situations shows that none of them added up. In each case, there was someone (or a lot of people) trying to get you to believe that 2=2=46.xxx. They justified it with theses that they alleged were too complicated for the average man to understand (and in business, if that is true, then it is probably just too complicated to work in the long run as well). They pronounced bold new eras, stating "This time is different", "There is a new math" (as if there was something wrong with the old math), etc. and so on and associated bullshit.