La Grecia abbandonerà l'euro? Aggiornamento al 7 maggio 2010.

Immeregendosi nella lettura dei giornali questa mattina è difficile non trovarsi d'accordo con le considerazioni dell'Economist nella sua analisi della crisi innescata dal (tentativo di) bailout della Grecia (la figura con le interconnessioni del debito dei PIIGS è invece tratta dal New York Times):

IF THERE was ever a week to be depressed about the euro, this was it. After an age of dithering, Europe’s politicians cobble together a colossal rescue package for Greece, worth some €110 billion ($145 billion), nearly three times the level discussed only three weeks ago—and behold the results: carnage on the streets of Athens, where three people lost their lives, and no respite in the markets. Not only have yields on short-term Greek bonds soared once again, but other euro members that the plan was supposed to wall off are under pressure, with Portugal and Ireland hit particularly hard. Stockmarkets around the world have slumped as investors fret about the financial stability of a region that makes up almost a quarter of the world economy.(...)
Despite its massive price tag, investors are unconvinced by the bail-out strategy for three separate (and hardly irrational) reasons. First, they fret that the promised €110 billion will not materialise because of continued political opposition in Germany or because the Greeks will not live up to the austerity promises they have made. Second, investors, like German voters, are nervous that, no matter how hard the Greeks try, their country will still be all but bust in three years’ time: the debts are just too big and will have to be rescheduled. Third, and most important, they worry that others, especially Ireland, Portugal and Spain, are in uncomfortably similar boats, facing a future of economic stagnation and spiralling debt.  (...) the numbers for Greece are grim: even if one assumes three years of austerity, the country’s debt burden will have risen to 140% of GDP. Greece will still be perilously close to insolvency. It will surely need more help—either an open-ended rollover of the official loans or some kind of debt rescheduling. This is the contradiction in the rescue plan. EU governments and the IMF refuse to discuss the possibility of an eventual rescheduling of Greek debt for fear that it would spark uncontrolled contagion. In fact, the logic may increasingly be the opposite. By refusing to admit that Greece faces an obvious solvency problem, whereas Spain, Portugal and Ireland do not, Europe’s policymakers have made it harder to draw a clear distinction between Greece and the rest. As a result contagion has intensified.
That is the dynamic that must be changed. One priority is more zealous action by Portugal, Spain and others to prove that, although they suffer from some of the same ailments, they are not Greece. Portugal, which has a big deficit and low growth, needs to announce a stronger, bolder fiscal package. Both it and Spain need to speed up competitiveness-enhancing structural reforms, especially freeing up their labour markets. At the same time, the rest of the euro zone must do its part to ensure that this huge internal adjustment succeeds. The ECB must prevent an overall slide into deflation. Germany should cut taxes and do more to boost domestic demand.

Sull'evoluzione futura della Grecia ecco le conclusioni dell'editoriale di Krugman sul NYTimes di ieri:

So is a debt restructuring — a polite term for partial default — the answer? It wouldn’t help nearly as much as many people imagine, because interest payments only account for part of Greece’s budget deficit. Even if it completely stopped servicing its debt, the Greek government wouldn’t free up enough money to avoid savage budget cuts.
The only thing that could seriously reduce Greek pain would be an economic recovery, which would both generate higher revenues, reducing the need for spending cuts, and create jobs. If Greece had its own currency, it could try to engineer such a recovery by devaluing that currency, increasing its export competitiveness. But Greece is on the euro.
So how does this end? Logically, I see three ways Greece could stay on the euro.
First, Greek workers could redeem themselves through suffering, accepting large wage cuts that make Greece competitive enough to add jobs again. Second, the European Central Bank could engage in much more expansionary policy, among other things buying lots of government debt, and accepting — indeed welcoming — the resulting inflation; this would make adjustment in Greece and other troubled euro-zone nations much easier. Or third, Berlin could become to Athens what Washington is to Sacramento — that is, fiscally stronger European governments could offer their weaker neighbors enough aid to make the crisis bearable.
The trouble, of course, is that none of these alternatives seem politically plausible.
What remains seems unthinkable: Greece leaving the euro. But when you’ve ruled out everything else, that’s what’s left.
If it happens, it will play something like Argentina in 2001, which had a supposedly permanent, unbreakable peg to the dollar. Ending that peg was considered unthinkable for the same reasons leaving the euro seems impossible: even suggesting the possibility would risk crippling bank runs. But the bank runs happened anyway, and the Argentine government imposed emergency restrictions on withdrawals. This left the door open for devaluation, and Argentina eventually walked through that door.
If something like that happens in Greece, it will send shock waves through Europe, possibly triggering crises in other countries. But unless European leaders are able and willing to act far more boldly than anything we’ve seen so far, that’s where this is heading.

Il Sole24Ore oggi in prima pagina ospita una difesa delle agenzie di rating relativamente alla crisi del debito sovrano che si sta sviluppando in questi mesi. In questo video Bill Gross di PIMCO analizza il ruolo delle agenzie di rating nella crisi finanziaria accusandole di essere troppo lente e troppo vicine agli interessi delle banche di investimento





Una settimana pesantissima per le borse, i fondi immobiliari, le materie prime e per l'euro, solo le obbligazioni europee a lungo termine registrano un rendimento positivo. Ecco l'aggiornamento al 7 maggio 2010.

Piccola rassegna sul buco nero che ieri stava riscucchiando il Dow Jones

Qui un articolo del New York Times su quanto è accaduto ieri a Wall Street.

Qui sotto trovate due video da CNBC sull'argomento.







L'indiziato numero 1 del crollo di ieri: il trading algoritmico. 

Intanto oggi la giornata è nuovamente pessima, a Milano dove sembrava che le cose si fossero un po' calmata, di punto in bianco, alle 15.38 la Borsa addirittura....chiude!

Se vi sembra normale....giudicate da soli.

Quando si dice un outlier...

Ecco un grafico dell'indice Dow Jones nella giornata di oggi (fonte: Yahoo Finance)

ed eccovi qui le transazioni su un ETF, negoziabile sul NYSE, che replica l'indice di volatilità VIX nei 3 minuti intorno alle 20.45 ora italiana, come le ho trovate sul sito del Nasdaq

 notate niente di strano intorno alle 14.46 ?

Se l'indice più importante del mondo perde l'1% al minuto...

Giovedì 6 maggio 2010, ore 20.45 (ora legale italiana):  da 1116,71 a 1065,79 in meno di 5 minuti, cioè una variazione di oltre -1% al minuto. Ecco le emozioni che l'indice S&P500 sta regalandoci in questo istante. Eppure oggi non è il lunedì nero....comunque vada a finire di questo giovedì sentiremo parlare a lungo.

Repos per tutti! Il diavolo sta nei dettagli.

Vi ricordate i repos, gli accordi di riacquisto che hanno consentito a Lehman Brothers di nascondere il deterioramento del suo bilancio? Beh niente ne vieta l'uso e pare che siano ancora di gran moda, anzi se la storia ci insegna qualcosa probabilmente sono più di moda ora di qualche anno fa. Ne parla oggi il New York Times che scrive:


The dangers — real and potential — of trying to keep certain assets off the books were made painfully clear during the mortgage collapse. Many bankers thought they had carefully hedged against the risks posed by mortgage investments with other, offsetting trades. Many of those hedges didn’t work. The parties on the other side of the bank deals are often other banks, hedge funds or firms set up simply to service banks’ borrowing needs. They may or may not have full knowledge of how the banks record the transactions on their books. Bear Stearns, which collapsed into the arms of JPMorgan Chase, will be front and center during the hearing on Wednesday and Thursday. Five former Bear executives, including the bank’s one-time leader, James E. Cayne, are scheduled to testify before the panel.
In his prepared testimony, Mr. Cayne, Bear’s former chief executive, says that the firm collapsed because Bear’s clients withdrew assets and its lending partners canceled those loans, which were known as repurchase agreements.
“The market’s loss of confidence, even though it was unjustified and irrational, became a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Mr. Cayne’s testimony says. Before they ran into trouble, both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers created so-called shadow financial vehicles. In 2001, Bear Stearns publicized a vehicle that it set up for its clients called Liquid Funding. Around the time, Lehman forged a close relationship with a small firm called Hudson Castle, which helped Lehman finance itself.
Such shadow vehicles typically employ repurchase agreements. Repos are a common tool that enable banks to sell assets with the promise to buy them back later. For accountants, the question is whether such deals should be recorded as loans or sales. That decision affects a financial company’s leverage ratio, which is a measure that is important to credit ratings agencies and investors.
Major banks like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are examining how to use shadow vehicles to help them borrow money in the future. Such entities typically issue short-term I.O.U.’s to investors, and then use the proceeds to make loans to banks. One firm that has created such vehicles to lend to banks in the past is BSN Capital Partners, a firm in London.
For the S.E.C., the financial inquiry commission and, ultimately, investors, the question is whether such deals are transparent.
Window-dressing is so pervasive on Wall Street that some analysts said they have tools to pinpoint how much in assets investment banks are hiding.
Mr. Hintz of Sanford C. Bernstein compares the interest rate expense that firms pay with their assets to see if their interest payments indicate that they often have higher assets during their quarters than they list at quarter-end, he said. Susan G. Markel, a former chief accountant in the enforcement division of the S.E.C., said Lehman’s suspicious repo transaction had put the focus on other firms.
“Obviously, as these come to light, it makes you wonder what was really out there,” Ms. Markel said. 

Il NYTimes dedica altri due articoli al tema della riforma: uno sulla proposta di tassazione degli investimenti più rischiosi delle banche e un editoriale che incita il governo a procedere senza esitazione alla riforma finanziaria. Ecco quanto scrive il NYTimes a proposito dei derivati

DERIVATIVES The central reform of the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market would move most derivative trades, currently executed as private contracts, onto fully regulated exchanges. Banks have fought the change because it would impair their profits — and they have succeeded in carving out many exemptions. More proposed exemptions are expected, like for pension funds that use derivatives. The Senate needs to pare back the exemptions in the existing bill, not add more.
The Senate also should adopt an amendment by Maria Cantwell, a Democrat of Washington, that would make it easier for regulators to crack down on market manipulation in derivatives.
One of the most divisive issues in the Senate bill is a provision that could force big banks to spin off their lucrative derivative dealings. The provision was added to the bill late in the game, without hearings. Opponents fear that it would push derivatives deals into hedge funds or other entities that would be harder to regulate. Supporters say that the bill would adequately regulate derivative dealers wherever they are.
The Senate debate, and hearings that can be scheduled before the House and Senate produce final legislation, can help settle the issue. One thing is already sure: Unless senators close loopholes in derivatives rules and give regulators more powers to police the markets, they should not even think about removing the provision.
There are other big fights in store — on consumer and investor protection, regulation of hedge funds, support for regulatory agencies and reform of credit rating agencies. Each of them will test how serious the Senate, particularly the Democrats, are about this reform effort.

L'idea di standardizzare molti derivati e di creare un mercato regolamentato nel quale confluiscano la maggior parte degli scambi mi vede d'accordo da sempre. Ma sappiamo bene che the devil is in the details...

Analisi, psicoanalisi e la casalinga di Treviso

Il New York Times dedica un articolo di analisi alla Spagna, da più parti indicata come il prossimo paese che avrà bisogno di aiuti, insieme al Portogallo:

Spain joined Greece and Portugal last week in being downgraded by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency. While Spain remains well above the junk level S.& P. gave to Greece and ahead of Portugal’s A- rating, its fall from AA+ to AA was a blow.
Among the reasons for its decision, S.& P. highlighted Spain’s private sector indebtedness of 178 percent of G.D.P. and an inflexible labor market that was likely to leave Spain with a jobless rate of 21 percent this year.
To date, Mr. Zapatero’s policies have rested on the hope that the economy would begin to recover soon and that the jobless rate would average no more than 19 percent this year.
Yet the jobless rate has already reached 20 percent, according to government statistics for the first quarter released Friday, almost double the level when Spain’s recession began in 2008. (...)
But now investors are turning their skepticism to Spain as the weakest spots in the country’s economy show little sign of improvement.
In a research note last week, analysts at Credit Suisse argued that beyond agreeing on a multiyear rescue package for Greece, Europe needed to set up standby arrangements for Spain and Portugal, allowing them to “fund their ongoing budget deficits while carrying out tough fiscal adjustment programs.”


Continuano a proliferare le (psico)analisi dei tedeschi e della loro reazione alla crisi e al bailout della Grecia:

qualche giorno fa vi segnalavo un articolo sul Sole 24 Ore, ieri era il turno del New York Times che titolava  In Greek Debt Crisis, a Window to the German Psyche. Scopro così la traduzione tedesca della casalinga di Treviso: 
“One should simply have asked a Swabian housewife,” Mrs. Merkel said during an address to fellow Christian Democrats in December 2008 in the southwest German region of Swabia, hub of the Protestant work ethic. “She would have told us her worldly wisdom: in the long run, you can’t live beyond your means.”




Non c'è poi da stupirsi se i tedeschi hanno scelto Angela Merkel come primo ministro: scrive ancora il NYTimes che incentra la (psico)analisi comparata sul confronto Germania/Francia:


Mrs. Merkel, a physicist raised in communist East Germany, has a hard-working, parsimonious lifestyle and an analytical, somewhat bland personality that in many ways reflect the national value system, said Gerd Langguth, author of a 2005 biography of her.
While Mr. Sarkozy resides in the majestic Élysée Palace and has an army of staff members, Mrs. Merkel still lives in the central Berlin apartment she occupied before her election in 2005 and has been seen doing her own shopping.

La valutazione dell'S&P500 e i miracolosi consumatori USA.

I costi del bailout della Grecia sono destinati ad andare ben oltre i 110 miliardi di euro previsti
dal FMI e dai paesi dell'eurozona. Secondo il Wall Street Journal The bailout announced here over the weekend will solve one pressing problem: Greece will have enough cash to repay an €8.5 billion bond that comes due in two weeks. But the bailout package is based on assumptions that by the end of 2011 Greece will be able to borrow again from capital markets. That may be optimistic, say some bond-market specialists.
(...) Counting the continued rolling-over of short-term debt, Goldman Sachs economist Erik Nielsen estimates Greece's needs at about €150 billion over three years. The sum of €110 billion has "taken the market out of the equation for at least 12 months," he says, but not three years.







Intanto ieri la borsa ha festeggiato il bailout e i merger. Ma le azioni sono care o a buon mercato?



Che mondo sarebbe senza il consumatore USA: è merito suo se l'economia continua la sua ripresa: scrive il NYTimes

After dragging their heels for many months, consumers were at last a major contributor to economic growth in the first quarter. Consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, a big gain from the 1.6 percent rate of the previous three months. Purchases of durable goods like cars led the way.
Whether Americans might retrench for the long haul after seeing their homes lose value has been one of the biggest questions about the aftermath of the Great Recession. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy, and it usually drives growth during economic recoveries.
Economists are hopeful that families will continue to pick up the pace of purchasing and make the recovery more sustainable, although consumers may remain cautious about spending given the tepid growth in job creation and personal income. Consumer sentiment dipped slightly in April, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index released on Friday.
“We haven’t had consumer spending growth this strong in three years,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. “But the caveat is that with real disposable incomes not growing, this was all done through the saving rate. We cannot rely on consumers continually driving down their savings. They need income support from hiring.” 

It's The End Of The World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine...)

L'esperto di derivati Dr. Espen Gaarder Haug ha depositato qualche giorno fa un
articolo su ssrn.org dedicato a uno scenario "fine del mondo"...



...altro che cigno nero! Eccovi l'abstract dell'articolo di Haug:

Few of the politicians or central bankers could see the credit crisis coming or its large impact. And who knows when it will be over. Billions upon billions of dollars have been used to bail out financial institutions. The massive bailout packages have been defended by statements asserting that the monetary and financial system is the lifeblood of our economy. If a series of big banks fails, the whole monetary system could fail and our whole economy could fail. Politicians and economists are now spending most of their time arguing about who to blame for the credit crisis and how to change the regulations so it never will happen again. Trying to solve the current problems in the economy is good, but too much focus on the present could make us ignore a potential disaster that could wipe out our whole modern monetary system. If you thought that the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke are the most powerful money masters in our current monetary system, you are wrong. There is in fact a much stronger money master that could destroy all our money within minutes, including the USD, the British pound, the EURO and the Ruble. 

Immaginate dunque una tempesta solare che invece di limitarsi a mettere temporaneamente fuori uso qualche satellite per le telecomunicazioni (come avviene con una certa frequenza) riesce a mettere in ginocchio l'intero sistema finanziario mondiale fondato sulle transazioni di moneta elettronica. Scrive Haug:


A very large coronal mass ejection from the sun that could cause a super solar storm if it should hit the earth might wipe out the global money system within minutes from impact. Stock exchanges would not operate, banking systems would not function, and both credit cards and ATM machines would stop working. We could find ourselves without the use of our modern electronic forms of money for months and possibly years

Il salvataggio della Grecia. Aggiornamento al 30 aprile 2010.

Alla fine ecco il bailout: secondo il Wall Street Journal

Greece reached a historic deal with other euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund for a three-year, €110 billion ($146.5 billion) bailout, as the country's prime minister on Sunday exhorted his nation to bear the sacrifices needed to mend broken public finances and vowed that his government won't "allow the country to become bankrupt."
The rescue involves outside aid on a scale not attempted in Europe since the U.S.-led effort to reanimate the Continent after World War II. No euro-zone country has ever taken a bailout from a peer. Besides its 2008 rescue of Iceland, the IMF's last intervention in Western Europe was in 1976, when it lent £2.3 billion ($3.5 billion at current exchange rates) to the U.K.
"We have no other choices and no time, so accessing the bailout is inevitable," Prime Minister George Papandreou said in a televised speech. Greece needs cash to pay back €8.5 billion in borrowings due May 19. A years-long fiscal spiral of debt and deficits has only gotten worse, cutting the country off from capital markets.
On Sunday, the finance ministers of the 16 euro-zone nations agreed that the 15 other countries would lend €80 billion over three years, after receiving a positive assessment of the need for a bailout by officials at the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, and the European Central Bank. The IMF will, in parallel, offer a €30 billion package.
The EU countries will lend as much as €30 billion this year. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the council of euro-zone finance ministers, said the first tranche will be delivered before the May 19 redemption.
The price of the aid is a set of searing measures to cut Greece's budget gap. The government will slash public-sector wages, raise sin taxes, increase value-added taxes, impose a new levy on businesses, cut pension payments and raise retirement ages for some public-sector workers.


Se volete approfondire i termini del salvataggio della Grecia, oltre all'articolo appena citato sul WSJ
potete anche dare un'occhiata al NYTimes: qui sono descritte le misure che il governo greco adotterà per ridurre il deficit, qui invece trovate un'interessante analisi dell'evasione fiscale in Grecia. Secondo le stime più attendibili il nero equivale a circa il 20-30% del GDP con un'evasione quantificabile in circa 30 miliardi di dollari USA all'anno (qui la fonte è la confindustria greca).


Ecco l'aggiornamento al 30 aprile 2010.

Krugman e gli euroscettici

Sul New York Times oggi Krugman si toglie qualche sassolino dalla scarpa:

Not that long ago, European economists used to mock their American counterparts for having questioned the wisdom of Europe’s march to monetary union. “On the whole,” declared an article published just this past January, “the euro has, thus far, gone much better than many U.S. economists had predicted.”

Oops. The article summarized the euro-skeptics’ views as having been: “It can’t happen, it’s a bad idea, it won’t last.” Well, it did happen, but right now it does seem to have been a bad idea for exactly the reasons the skeptics cited. And as for whether it will last — suddenly, that’s looking like an open question.

To understand the euro-mess — and its lessons for the rest of us — you need to see past the headlines. Right now everyone is focused on public debt, which can make it seem as if this is a simple story of governments that couldn’t control their spending. But that’s only part of the story for Greece, much less for Portugal, and not at all the story for Spain.(...)

What’s the nature of the trap? During the years of easy money, wages and prices in the crisis countries rose much faster than in the rest of Europe. Now that the money is no longer rolling in, those countries need to get costs back in line.

But that’s a much harder thing to do now than it was when each European nation had its own currency. (...) 

So is the euro itself in danger? In a word, yes. If European leaders don’t start acting much more forcefully, providing Greece with enough help to avoid the worst, a chain reaction that starts with a Greek default and ends up wreaking much wider havoc looks all too possible.

Meanwhile, what are the lessons for the rest of us?

The deficit hawks are already trying to appropriate the European crisis, presenting it as an object lesson in the evils of government red ink. What the crisis really demonstrates, however, is the dangers of putting yourself in a policy straitjacket. When they joined the euro, the governments of Greece, Portugal and Spain denied themselves the ability to do some bad things, like printing too much money; but they also denied themselves the ability to respond flexibly to events.

And when crisis strikes, governments need to be able to act. That’s what the architects of the euro forgot — and the rest of us need to remember.

Sempre sul NYTimes potete leggere un'analisi del ruolo dell'Europa nella crisi.

Il Sole 24 Ore dedica in prima pagina due commenti alla crisi europea innescata dalla Grecia. Da un lato si invoca senza remore l'espulsione della Grecia dall'Eurozona, dall'altro si invoca addirittura Freud e la sua analisi dell'isteria adolescenziale per spiegare la crisi....: Freud introduce il concetto di bugia primaria in rapporto all'isteria: «Ogni adolescente deve portare in sé il germe dell'isteria» e «delle condizioni determinanti della bugia originaria». E forse questa patologia dell'euro è davvero un problema di immaturità. 

Una faccia una razza...

Piccola rassegna stampa sulla Grecia, destinata a chi come me ha avuto una giornata talmente piena da ridursi a notte fonda per leggere le notizie del giorno:

• iniziamo con Nouriel Roubini che intervistato dal Sole 24 Ore dice molte cose condivisibili sulla crisi greca (grazie Antonio per la segnalazione). Secondo Roubini "è solo una questione di settimane se non di giorni prima che scoppi il caso Spagna, basta guardare all'aumento dello spread tra i tassi sul debito spagnolo e tedesco"
• la crisi in Europa sembra destinata ad aggravarsi anche secondo il New York Times.  Ecco la conclusione dell'articolo:  With Greece now shut out of the debt markets, it has little leverage to resist — especially in light of the 8 billion euros it needs to repay bondholders on May 19. Analysts expect a deal by next week at the latest. But whether a Greek resolution calms investor fears about the ability of Portugal and Spain to repay their own maturing debt remains unclear.
  In a recent note to investors, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, described the market concern as intensely focused on Spain.
  “Spain’s cash flows (current-account and budget deficit) are extremely bad,” Mr. Dalio and his colleagues wrote in a February letter. “Spain’s living standards are reliant on not just the roll of old debt, but also on significant further external lending. For these reasons, we don’t want to hold Spanish debt at these spreads."
• Due articoli del New York Times sulle esitazioni tedesche: qui trovate il primo centrato sul problema di come assorbire il debito greco proveniente dal bailout in aggiunta a quello già in possesso delle banche tedesche, il secondo più sugli aspetti politici. 
• Leggendo questo non ho potuto fare a meno di pensare a Mediterraneo...Italiani Greci,  una razza una faccia
  
  
  
  
  

Grecia, Portogallo e Spagna sotto pressione.

Oggi vi segnalo:

un video del Financial Times sull'aggravarsi della crisi dopo i downgrades del debito greco e portoghese da parte di Standard and Poors.

Un articolo dell'Economist che cerca di spiegare perchè secondo molti analisti la prima vittima del contagio dovrebbe proprio essere il Portogallo. Scrive l'Economist:

One answer is that Portugal’s biggest problem is not primarily fiscal. It concerns growth—or the lack of it. Real GDP growth over the decade since Portugal joined the euro has been the slowest in the zone, despite a boom in Spain, its main trading partner. The country avoided a property bubble of the kind that burst so disastrously in Spain and Ireland. Though it doesn’t help much, Portugal’s already slow growth also made it less vulnerable to the global recession. “Spain was the wild tiger of Europe and had much further to fall when the recession came,” says João Talone, a private-equity manager. “Portuguese companies were already used to extracting value in a difficult climate.”  (...) 

A slow-moving bureaucracy, inefficient courts, poor schools and state-supported pockets of the economy protected from competition combine to hold Portugal back. Businessmen moan about rigid labour laws, which there is little political will to reform. Portugal has one of Europe’s toughest employee-protection regimes.

In short, Portugal is indeed different from Greece. But if the markets decided to put this to the test, chronic low growth, a drastic loss of competitiveness and high public and private indebtedness are all weaknesses which could swiftly undermine the protection that being different is meant to bring.

Infine un articolo del New York TImes ancora sulla Grecia e sulle conseguenze del downgrade. Scrive il NYTimes:

A major ratings agency cut Greece’s debt to junk level on Tuesday, warning that bondholders could face losses of up to 50 percent of their holdings in a restructuring. The agency also downgraded Portugal’s debt by two notches.

Leading stock indexes across Europe plunged by 2.5 to 6 percent, and the euro fell to a recent low, for a 13 percent decline against the dollar since December. The Dow Jones industrial average slumped 213.04 points, to 10,991.99, a fall of 1.9 percent.

The downgrades, by Standard & Poor’s, pushed up the interest rates that Portugal must pay on its 10-year bonds to a high, and Spain’s costs rose, too. Investors are already demanding nearly 10 percent in returns on Greek’s 10-year bonds. The cost of insuring all three countries’ debt against a default are also at record levels — a clear sign that investors are shunning them.

“The situation is deteriorating rapidly, and it’s not clear who’s in a position to stop the Greeks from going into a default situation,” said Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research. “That creates a spillover effect.”

The problem is that it is not just Greece, which expects to receive international aid, but Portugal, Spain and other countries that must issue more debt soon.

“The issue is rollover risk," said Jonathan Tepper of Variant Perception, a research group based in London and known for its bearish views on Spain. "Spain has to issue new debt plus roll over existing debt to the tune of 225 billion euros this year. Fourty-five percent of their debt is held by foreigners so they are dependent on the kindness of strangers.”

(...) On Tuesday, a vice president of the European Central Bank said that the euro zone was facing its biggest challenge since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in 1997. Austerity measures in Greece and Portugal are already causing unrest there. Transportation workers in both countries protested on Tuesday, leaving train stations deserted because of strikes.

Officials from Standard & Poor’s said the main reason for downgrading the debt of Greece and Portugal was the prospect that forced austerity packages would be an even bigger drag on economic growth.

It is the most vicious of circles: stagnating economies are forced to cut back more, which reduces their ability to generate revenue and thus pay off their debts. As part of the euro zone, these countries do not have the ability to print their own money to stimulate growth and bolster exports, so increasing debt and an increasing prospect of default result.

Though they are under the most immediate pressure, Greece and Portugal are relatively small economies.

Given Spain’s size, its debt crisis is seen by many as the looming problem for world markets. On the surface, its debt load appears manageable. Its debt relative to gross domestic product, the broadest measure of its economy, is 54 percent — compared with 120 percent for Greece and 80 percent for Portugal.

But what Spain does have is the highest twin deficit, or combined budget and current account deficits, of any country in the world except Iceland, a reflection of how dependent it is on increasingly fickle foreign investors for financing. Spain has 225 billion euros in debt coming due this year — an amount that is about the size of Greece’s economy.

The base of investors willing to invest in the bonds of Spain and other distressed European countries is dwindling. Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of Pimco, one of the largest bond investors in the world, has said publicly that his firm is not a buyer of Greek debt and other Pimco executives have said they are underweight debt from peripheral Europe.

Given the losses that European investors have taken on Greek, Spanish and Portuguese bonds in recent months, it seems doubtful that such investors can be relied on to provide the capital these countries need.

Predicting where and when the next ripple will be felt is an inexact science. During the Asian crisis in 1997, Russia’s debt default took the world by surprise.

Some even worry that the next debt crisis may materialize closer to home — in the United Kingdom or even the United States, where budget deficits and debt burdens are growing. Both countries are now issuing debt at reasonable levels of 4 percent. The long run of cheap financing may be coming to an end, though, even for the most creditworthy countries.

Due articoli sulla Grecia. Forse la responsabilità della crisi finanziaria è anche politica.

Vi segnalo due articoli su La Voce dedicata al probabile default greco. Nel primo di Paolo Manasse si esaminano i costi del salvataggio della Grecia. Il secondo articolo di Angelo Baglioni e Rony Hamaui
analizza l'esposizione delle banche europee al debito greco. 

Riproduco inoltre qui una tabella tratta dall'articolo di Manasse con la probabilità di default stimata su un orizzonte temporale di 5 anni per alcuni dei paesi più rischiosi. La Grecia è quasi al 40%, da cui la prima parte del titolo del post di oggi.


Tabella 1: Spread e Probabilità di Default Cumulate a 5 anni

Highest Default Probabilities
Entity Name	Mid Spread	CPD (%)
Venezuela	821.04	43.71
Argentina	843.84	43.57
Greece	614.62	39.38
Pakistan	663.50	36.42
Ukraine	540.99	31.47
Iraq	415.70	25.64
Dubai/Emirate of	424.22	25.61
Iceland	370.40	22.33
Portugal	278.85	21.53
Latvia, Republic of	337.00	21.00

Con un Op-Ed il New York Times oggi affronta le responsabilità politiche nella crisi finanziaria. Questo aspetto viene sottovalutato in molti commenti ed è in cima alla lista delle preoccupazioni di quanti non vedono di buon occhio interventi che allarghino troppo il potere delle agenzie governative. Un ottimo esempio in materia è il commento di questa settimana di Bill Dirlam, il fondatore del sito Decision Moose dedicato a una strategia di asset allocation tattica fondata sul momento. Il commento settimanale di Dirlam è una delle mie letture preferite della domenica sera: Dirlam lo descrive in questo modo

Commentary has been split out from the weekly Market Review. This is so the author's words do not sneak up on those who, despite a secret interest in growing their own investments, are annoyed by the author's pro-investor, pro-capital, anti-bureaucrat ranting on behalf of the broader investor class. Forewarned is forearmed.

Molto spesso non sono d'accordo con lui ma non lo trovo mai noioso. Con la sua autorizzazione vi riproduco sotto un estratto del commento di questa settimana, dedicato al tema dei derivati e della loro regolamentazione. Dirlam rilancia il tema della trasparenza nel mondo della finanza. Non se ne parla molto, e probabilmente la sua descrizione dell'attività degli analisti pre-1999 è un po' troppo addolcita dal tempo trascorso e dimentica le incredibili sciocchezze che vennero scritte proprio dagli analisti durante la bolla di internet per giustificare le valutazioni di certe IPOs. Tuttavia ho l'impressione che non abbia tutti i torti a sollevare la questione della trasparenza e della libertà dell'analisi.

That inside-the-beltway sausage factory down on Capitol Hill spent the week grinding up banks in the name of financial reform. As the financial industry is rife with sin, it makes fertile ground for holier-than-thou politicians looking to capitalize on the voting public's  pre-conceived notions about (and in many cases outright prejudice toward) Wall Street. It also gives pols the opportunity to shift the focus off government's central role in the whole mess.  Both parties are frantically seeking to use the banking crisis as a spring board to election success next fall. In typical fashion, however, they are doing this not by actually addressing the root causes of the crisis, but by populist posturing. (...)

Probably the dumbest idea being bandied about is the proposal to ban derivatives trading by the largest banks. (...) Two things need to be kept in mind. First of all, derivatives trading desks did not directly contribute to the banking crisis.  (...) Secondly, derivatives are everywhere (...) there are both good, safe, and useful tasks for derivatives,  and dangerous ones.

For example, you may recall reading here that among the most wicked derivatives in the last meltdown were Credit Default Swaps or CDS's.  These highly-leveraged little instruments allowed people to take out massive bets on whether a company would go belly up, and default on its debt. Of course, as more people started betting on default, it became harder for the company to borrow at reasonable rates. As their debt servicing costs went up, their likelihood of default increased, and so did the bets against them-- literally driving the company into default.  It was akin to taking out a life insurance policy on your neighbor and then slowly turning off the oxygen from his respirator.  (...)

Don't get me wrong. We need financial re-regulation. I've always held a pretty dim view of the way some  financial institutions conduct business. (...)

We can regulate all we want, but unless the culture of institutional greed (and yes, public envy, for they are both sins) miraculously changes, politicians will continue to exploit these human weaknesses, and we will be back in the same situation at some point down the road. Since the financial business never really changed, even after Christ drove the money changers out of the temple two thousand years ago,  I seriously doubt that this unholy Congress will be any more successful.

Missing the Obvious

Though changing human nature ain't gonna happen, we should at least attempt to address the obvious.  The most glaring problem-- indeed the root cause of the "Lost Decade" in American investing-- isn't even being discussed. It is quite simply a dearth of timely, accurate, believable investment information. Think about it: if you had a nickel for every time you've heard the word "opaque" or the phrase "lack of transparency" to describe an investment gone wrong over the past decade, you'd be sipping "Pain Killers" on a hundred-foot yacht at The Bitter End right now.

Markets work best when there is a free flow of information-- from multiple sources. To my knowledge, there is nothing in this latest 1300-page regulatory proposal to address our decade-long total systemic failure in that respect. (...)  As you may have heard, it is very fashionable among the political class to assert that "no one understands these derivatives". That is not entirely true, of course, but it might as well be. People who do understand them, however, are no longer allowed to monitor their creation and use. By law, oversight has been reserved for the truly clueless-- the politicians, the regulatory lawyers, and you and me.

It wasn't always like that. Up until the late '90's, professional industry analysts, experts in their field, could visit publicly traded companies and check out the operations. They could visit the shop floor, or the trading floor-- any division-- to double check on the story being spun by the company's top management . They were like investigative reporters, only they had MBA's, years of specialized experience in their sectors, pulled down six figure salaries, and they wrote about esoteric things like EBIDTA, free cash flow, leverage, and potential FASB irregularities.

In 1999, the SEC outlawed the analysts' investigative activities, and stipulated that henceforth all financial information for any publicly traded company would be provided on a fixed schedule by top management, and only by top management. It was tantamount to outlawing the neighborhood watch in the ghetto while handing out automatic weapons to the drug dealers.

The reasoning behind this bone-headed regulatory decision devolved from a misguided populist desire to give the little guy the same access to investment information that large institutions paid billions for. The late nineties, recall, were the heyday of the day trader. While the SEC did level the playing field. so to speak, it did so by reducing institutions' ability to get at the real story-- not by increasing the small investor's access to institutional information.

Poking the institutional investors' eyes out proved just as devastating for the little guy if not more so. Though day trading was at a peak in 1999, the number of "little guys" invested in pensions, IRA and 401k mutual funds and other institutionally managed investment vehicles far surpassed individual stock traders. But in confusing a five-year bull market with their own brilliance as market players, day traders became the loudest and most demanding voice. They got their way, and it was everyone's undoing.

With no one peeking in through the blinds, creative accounting became the rage in many corporate suites. Within a year, we had Enron, MCI Worldcom-- and a whole string of lesser accounting frauds that bilked investors out of billions. That raft of fraud led to Sarbanes-Oxley, a massive regulation reiterating  that fraud was indeed illegal and adding hundreds of billions in regulatory costs to industry (costs which have been dutifully passed along to us).

One salaried SEC attorney overseeing a hundred corporations, will never be as informative (or as productive a deterrent to management foolishness) as having five or six industry experts per company-- all with a vested financial interest-- going after the truth. Had there been private analysts poking around at the divisional level at Enron, Worldcom, Lehman, AIG, et al, those crises may have been averted. At the very least, they would have been caught at an earlier less devastating stage. Same with the firms trading in sub-prime derivatives. Anyone visiting a bond trading floor in 2005 would have heard traders joking outright about the quality of the stuff that came across their desks and marveling that people were actually buying it.

The bond traders knew about sub-prime early on, but the ratings agencies, and the SEC remained in the dark. Not surprising since, unlike private analysts, who can actually help a company's stock price with a good report, government regulators and ratings agencies are at best viewed as a neutral and at worst as a negative. Employees are always instructed to cooperate, but not necessarily to facilitate. The relationship with private analysts, however was much less formal. More information was shared.

I'm a big fan of the little guy. And I admit I can be a bit of a flamer when it comes to regulation of any kind. But we need to bring back the neighborhood watch before we lose another decade to "lack of transparency".  The day traders are mostly gone now-- feeling permanently stupid after two mega-bear markets. Everyone knows now that we all live or die by the amount of transparency in any given situation. More is better. Since institutions can afford to pay for it, and since it behooves them to share it, why shouldn't they be allowed to search for it?  We would all be better off.

La Grecia più rischiosa del Venezuela? Come riformare le agenzie di rating?

Nuovo picco dei rendimenti delle obbligazioni del governo greco: secondo il Financial Times oggi i rendimenti sulle obbligazioni con scadenza biennale hanno raggiunto il 12.71% con un balzo di 258 punti base. Lo spread sui bund raggiunge così il 12% (!) L'idea è che mentre a brevissimo termine un default possa essere escluso (se il FMI e l'UE si danno da fare....), ciò non sia vero già su una scala temporale di medio termine.
Se si guarda poi al mercato dei CDS secondo il Wall Street Journal

Investors now judge Greece to be at greater risk of default than Pakistan and Ukraine. Only Argentina and Venezuela command higher prices to insure against default.

Intanto quando gli analisti parlano di rischio contagio continuano a concentrarsi su Spagna, Portogallo e Irlanda, lasciando la nostra amata italietta fuori dai giochi (per ora). 

Continua il pressing della stampa sulle agenzie di rating: oggi è il turno dell'editoriale di Paul Krugman sul New York Times. Com'è nel suo stile non usa Krugman non usa giri di parole:


Let’s hear it for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Its work on the financial crisis is increasingly looking like the 21st-century version of the Pecora hearings, which helped usher in New Deal-era financial regulation. In the past few days scandalous Wall Street e-mail messages released by the subcommittee have made headlines.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that most of the headlines were about the wrong e-mails. When Goldman Sachs employees bragged about the money they had made by shorting the housing market, it was ugly, but that didn’t amount to wrongdoing.
No, the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. And no, that’s not hyperbole: of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent — 93 percent! — have now been downgraded to junk status.
What those e-mails reveal is a deeply corrupt system. And it’s a system that financial reform, as currently proposed, wouldn’t fix.

Vi consiglio di leggere il resto dell'articolo che mi sembra molto chiaro e in gran parte condivisibile. Non mi convince però la proposta di riforma che viene indicata come esempio da  Krugman (il quale pure non sembra sostenerla con troppo entusiasmo):

The bill now before the Senate tries to do something about the rating agencies, but all in all it’s pretty weak on the subject. The only provision that might have teeth is one that would make it easier to sue rating agencies if they engaged in “knowing or reckless failure” to do the right thing. But that surely isn’t enough, given the money at stake — and the fact that Wall Street can afford to hire very, very good lawyers.What we really need is a fundamental change in the raters’ incentives. (...)
An example of what might work is a proposal by Matthew Richardson and Lawrence White of New York University. They suggest a system in which firms issuing bonds continue paying rating agencies to assess those bonds — but in which the Securities and Exchange Commission, not the issuing firm, determines which rating agency gets the business.
I’m not wedded to that particular proposal. But doing nothing isn’t an option. It’s comforting to pretend that the financial crisis was caused by nothing more than honest errors. But it wasn’t; it was, in large part, the result of a corrupt system. And the rating agencies were a big part of that corruption.

Bet against the american dream.

Secondo il FMI non siamo ancora al sicuro da un possibile riaggravarsi della crisi finanziaria. 

“After panic, action and relief is the phase of rebuilding,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the monetary fund, said at its spring meetings.

Youssef Boutros-Ghali, the Egyptian finance minister, who led a meeting of the fund’s policy making committee, said, “The worst is definitely behind us, but we are not out of the woods yet.”

The I.M.F., which only a few years ago found itself defending its relevance, has assumed a new prominence and increased its lending capacity since the global economic turmoil began in 2007. It extended loans of $2 billion to Latvia and $16 billion to Hungary in 2008, and it is now expected to contribute as much as $20 billion to a bailout of debt-stricken Greece.

(...) Asked about the protests gripping Greece over the joint rescue plan by the I.M.F. and the European Union, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said, “The Greek citizens shouldn’t fear the I.M.F. We are there to try to help them.”

Intanto George Soros si dice d'accordo per una regolamentazione dei derivati: come riportato ieri dal Sole 24 Ore, secondo Soros...

La causa intentata dalla Securities and Exchange Commission statunitense contro la Goldman Sachs sarà contrastata vigorosamente dall'accusata. È interessante fare ipotesi su chi riuscirà ad avere la meglio, ma non ne conosceremo l'esito per mesi. A prescindere dall'ipotetico risultato, tuttavia, il caso ha implicazioni di grossa portata per il disegno di legge relativo alla riforma del settore finanziario che il Congresso sta prendendo in considerazione.

Che Goldman sia colpevole o no, l'oggetto della causa non comportava vantaggi sociali: implicava un complesso sistema di titoli sintetici fabbricati a partire da titoli garantiti da prestiti ipotecari, clonandoli in unità virtuali su imitazione degli originali.
Questa obbligazione di debito sintetico collateralizzato non serviva a finanziare il proprietario di qualche abitazione in più o ad allocare più efficientemente i capitali. Serviva soltanto a far lievitare il volume dei titoli garantiti da prestiti ipotecari che hanno perso valore quando è scoppiata la bolla immobiliare. Scopo principale di queste pratiche era la creazione di emolumenti e di commissioni.

Questa è una chiara dimostrazione di come i derivati e i titoli sintetici sono stati utilizzati per creare valore apparente a partire dal niente. Sono stati così creati più Cdo (Collateralized debt obligation, letteralmente un'obbligazione che ha come garanzia collaterale un debito) tripla A di quanti asset tripla A vi fossero a loro supporto. Tutto ciò è stato fatto su vasta scala, malgrado il fatto che tutte le parti coinvolte fossero investitori esperti. Il giochetto è andato avanti per anni, ed è culminato con un crollo che ha provocato una distruzione di ricchezza quantificabile in migliaia di miliardi di dollari.

Non si può permettere, naturalmente, che le cose vadano avanti così. L'uso dei derivati e di altri strumenti sintetici dovrebbe essere assoggettato a regole precise, anche se tutte le parti coinvolte sono investitori esperti.
I titoli ordinari devono essere registrati alla Sec prima di poter essere commercializzati. Anche i titoli sintetici dovrebbero essere registrati nello stesso modo, benché tale compito possa essere assegnato a un ente diverso, per esempio la Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Intanto si scava nelle email scambiate tra i dipendenti di Goldman Sachs alla ricerca di indizi mentre Frank Rich dalle colonne del New York Times  chiede che siano perseguiti i responsabili del creative accounting che coprì le perdite fino al  fallimento di Lehman Brothers

(...) Equally compelling is the notion articulated by Ryan Avent, a blogger at The Economist, that “public anger” and “hooting derision” be increased to shame Wall Street into changing its ethos. This assumes, of course, that there is any capacity for shame. Perhaps the most productive tactic comes from Ted Kaufman, Democrat of Delaware, who is using his lame-duck residence in the Senate (as the appointee to Joe Biden’s old seat) to demand that we root out the “fraud and potential criminal conduct” that “were at the heart of the financial crisis.”

To achieve this overdue reckoning will require action — by the S.E.C., the Justice Department and any other legal authority that wants to get into the act. That no one at Lehman Brothers has yet been held liable for its Enronesque bookkeeping deceit is appalling. That we still haven’t seen the e-mail and documents that would illuminate A.I.G.’s machinations with Goldman and the rest of its counterparties amounts to a cover-up. That investigative journalists have consistently been way ahead of the authorities, the S.E.C. included, in uncovering Wall Street’s foul play is a scandal. If this culture remains in place, the whole crisis will have gone to waste.
As a reminder of the unchastened status quo, Blankfein remains the gift that keeps on giving. On Thursday, The Financial Times reported that he had been calling clients to argue that the S.E.C. case against Goldman would ultimately “hurt America.” The opposing point of view was presented by Ira Glass on his radio show “This American Life” this month. With reporters from the nonprofit journalistic organization ProPublica, it told the story of another hedge fund, Magnetar, that gamed the housing bubble. Bankers who worked on Magnetar deals walked away with their huge bonuses well before disaster struck — or, as the program put it, “bankers made money even when they were buying things that eventually blew up the bank.” Not to mention the economy. And it was all legal.
To award the audience a bonus, “This American Life” concluded with a Broadway song commissioned from a co- author of the satirical musical “Avenue Q.” Titled “Bet Against the American Dream,” it distills a complex financial saga to its essence: Those who shorted the housing market shorted the country.
Go online, listen to it and laugh. But the fact remains that those who truly hurt America are laughing harder still, all the way to the bank.






Bet Against the American Dream from Alexander Hotz on Vimeo.

Addio alla Grecia? Il comma 22 delle agenzie di rating. Aggiornamento al 23 aprile.

E' divertente confrontare il tono sdrammatizzante del commento di Roberto Perotti  al probabile default della Grecia pubblicato in prima pagina sul Sole 24 Ore di oggi (se non lo avete a portata di mano potete leggerlo qui) con l'editoriale del New York Times sullo stesso tema intitolato...Greece and who is next? Perotti invita l'Unione Europea a lasciare che la Grecia vada in default:


(...) Aiutando la Grecia, l'Fmi fa il suo lavoro; come sempre applicherà condizioni molto onerose, e per questo salutari nel lungo periodo; e come sempre verrà percepito come il diavolo yankee venuto a imporre austerità. È un ruolo cui è abituato, e che fa comodo a tutti i governi, a partire da quello greco. Il salvataggio della Ue sarebbe invece, per motivi politici, molto più riguardoso, e quindi molto meno utile nel lungo periodo alla Grecia stessa.

Quale occasione migliore, per la Ue, di dire «questa volta no»?

Questa invece è l'opinione del Times:


(...) Greece’s efforts to curtail public spending have not made enough of a dent in its deficit to persuade investors it can bring its debt under control. But amid a severe recession, which is likely to be exacerbated by budget cuts, even the tightest belt-tightening can’t eliminate a deficit that amounted to more than 13 percent of its gross domestic product last year.
To stop a rout, the European Union must commit to activating the bailout. Then Europe and the International Monetary Fund must start negotiations with Greece for a much bigger bailout package. This would help restore investors’ confidence, allowing interest rates on its debt to fall from the punitive heights of nearly 9 percent reached last week. While some economists believe Greece would still have to restructure its debts, it would have space to negotiate the terms.
As investors made clear this week, the turmoil doesn’t end with Greece. Portugal, Spain and Ireland have seen their deficits balloon as the housing bust and the economic downturn took a toll. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund must put together a pre-emptive bailout package to convince investors of the stability of their finances and head off a flight to dump their bonds on a bigger scale. Speed is essential.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and European finance ministers should start working on that during this weekend’s International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington. This is mainly a European problem. But Washington must ensure that the fund commits adequate resources. The good news, if there is any here, is that American banks do not own much Greek debt. But the American economy won’t be immune if the Greek crisis spreads much further.


Il New York Times si diverte a descrivere il clima all'annuale International Swaps and Derivatives Association conference quest'anno incentrata su “Collateralization and Netting — the Impact” e “Systemic Risk: Advances and Challenges in the Wake of the Crisis.” Sempre sul Times vi segnalo un altro articolo dedicato alle agenzie di rating  (oltre a quello che vi ho segnalato in questo post). Per giustificare le grossolane sottovalutazioni del rischio nel 2008-2009 si invoca addirittura il Comma 22 (io l'ho conosciuto grazie alle Sturmtruppen e recita: chiunque sia pazzo può chiedere di essere esonerato dalle missioni di guerra, ma chi chiede di essere esonerato dalle missioni di guerra non è pazzo): 

(...) The major credit rating agencies, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, drew renewed criticism on Friday on Capitol Hill for failing to warn of the dangers posed by complex investments like the one that has drawn Goldman Sachs into a legal whirlwind.

But while the agencies have come under fire before, the extent to which they collaborated with Wall Street banks has drawn less notice.

The rating agencies made public computer models that were used to devise ratings to make the process less secretive. That way, banks and others issuing bonds — companies and states, for instance — wouldn’t be surprised by a weak rating that could make it harder to sell the bonds or that would require them to offer a higher interest rate.

But by routinely sharing their models, the agencies in effect gave bankers the tools to tinker with their complicated mortgage deals until the models produced the desired ratings.

“There’s a bit of a Catch-22 here, to be fair to the ratings agencies,” said Dan Rosen, a member of Fitch’s academic advisory board and the chief of R2 Financial Technologies in Toronto. “They have to explain how they do things, but that sometimes allowed people to game it.”

Ecco l'aggiornamento al 23 aprile.

Agenzie di rating: poco accurate ma ancora potenti...la Grecia chiede aiuto: meglio il default?

Tra i protagonisti della crisi finanziaria, le agenzie di rating sono riuscite finora ad evitare di essere indicate al pubblico ludibrio per i loro errori e la loro cupidigia, al contrario di quanto invece è capitato ai banchieri e più in generale al mondo della finanza. Il pubblico sembra ipnotizzato dalle storie dello star system finanziario, con i suoi bonus incredibilmente alti, e a volte difficili da giustificare sulla base dei risultati.
Per questo vi segnalo questo articolo sul New York Times di oggi che affronta il tema del conflitto di interessi delle agenzie e analizza le proposte contenute nella legge di riforma finanziaria che cercano (timidamente, forse) di affrontare la questione.

La Grecia intanto, colpita dal downgrade di ieri di Moody's e dalla revisione del deficit del bilancio 2009 ad alemeno il 13,6% del GDP (fonte Eurostat), contro un dato precedente pari al 12,9%, è sull'orlo del default e si è rivolta oggi al FMI e  agli altri paesi dell'eurozona chiedendo che sia attivato il meccanismo di prestiti a tasso agevolato. Ieri i tassi di interesse sulle obbligazioni governative a 10 anni ha sfiorato il 9%. La notizia della richiesta di aiuto greca ha comunque prodotto una riduzione
dello spread sui Bund decennali al 5,11% dal picco di ieri del 5,86%. Vi consiglio l'articolo di oggi sul sito dell'Economist per approfondire l'analisi delle prospettive future...non è una lettura incoraggiante! Vi riporto qui sotto una sintesi delle conclusioni:

The default option

Is a sovereign default by Greece imaginable? Conventional wisdom has it that sovereign defaults are always messy and painful. In fact the lesson of such defaults over the past decade or more is that this is not necessarily so. (...)

In 2003 Uruguay restructured all its domestic and external debt, exchanging old bonds at par and at the same coupon rate for new ones but stretching maturity dates by five years. The country returned to capital markets a month later. The “haircut”, or loss to bondholders, was small (13.3%, in net present value), as were the amounts restructured ($5.4 billion), but it showed that orderly sovereign workouts are possible. Countries such as Jamaica and Belize have had orderly restructurings recently.

Greece is different because it has much more debt outstanding and because bondholders may face a more severe haircut—although with sufficient fiscal consolidation a more modest restructuring could be feasible. Sovereign-debt lawyers say that in some ways a restructuring of Greek debt would be easier than many people think. But other things would be new and harder, especially the complexity caused by credit-default swaps, which have not yet played a big role in any sovereign-debt restructurings. (...)

Would a defaulting country have to leave the euro? No. It is perhaps natural to conflate default with devaluation because they often occur together. But a euro member has no currency to devalue. Nor is there a means to force a defaulter out, since membership is meant to be for keeps. A new currency would have to be invented from scratch, a logistical nightmare. All contracts—for bonds, bank deposits, wages and so forth—would have to be switched to the new currency. The changeover to the euro was planned in detail and in co-operation. The reverse operation would be nothing like as orderly. A country that had lost the faith of investors in its public finances would find it hard to reconstruct a sound monetary system. Default by a member would be a body blow to the euro’s standing. But it need not spell the end of the currency.

Per concludere con toni meno tristi, vi segnalo la
formica e la cicala, ovvero come salvarsi dall'eruzione del vulcano...una rivisitazione fatta da La Voce della celebre favola di Esopo  per
sottolineare le differenze tra l'Italia (delle formiche) dagli USA (delle cicale). Conclude così Daveri il suo intervento:

è l’incrollabile ottimismo che farà ripartire la locomotiva americana, mentre è la paura del futuro a frenare la crescita dell’Italia.

D'accordo, ma la domanda forse più interessante è: come mai gli americani sono ottimisti incrollabili e gli italiani no? Non avrà per caso a che vedere con la differenza tra una cultura del fare e delle (poche!) regole condivise e una pseudocultura del disfare e della furbizia a scapito degli altri? Ai posteri l'ardua (?) sentenza...

Linkfest e un po' di ottimismo per l'economia USA?

Ho davvero difficoltà in questi giorni a trovare il tempo da dedicare a questo blog...
vi segnalo allora senza commenti alcuni articoli e post che ho letto nelle ultime settimane e che  ho trovato interessanti:

• Rileggete La ginestra almeno fino a Le magnifiche sorti e progressive e poi domandatevi....l'America del XXI secolo sarà più ricca e prospera che mai?
• Se gli americani tornano a rimpinzarsi da Pizza Hut e Taco Bell allora la crisi è davvero finita!
• Krugman, De Long e il narrow banking
• De Long, Bagehot (!) e il narrow banking
• Banche piccole, grandi o medie? Una banca media alla spina...
• Come fare infuriare i vostri amici economisti di professione: l'economia è una scienza o un'arte? 
• In difesa di Goldman Sachs
• Attenzione! Attaccare Goldman non renderà i risparmiatori più sicuri
• La microfinanza attira gli usurai?

Infine voglio rallegrarvi: sfogliando il blog del New York Times dedicato all'economia 

ho dato un'occhiata agli indicatori economici e devo ammettere che non è un quadro a tinte così fosche....guardate questo riquadro preso dalla prima pagina del blog

Economic Indicators