Skip to main content

Greek write down, ECB & Disagreement

Over the past few days the ECB has been spoiling for a fight, arguing vehemently that a write down of 60% was unacceptable.  I could not understand their position, at first I thought that ECB was protected, but it turns out they bought ordinary bonds on the market -- so they have to face the same write down as commercial investors.  Moreover, it didn't make sense, that the ECB would be against such a necessary move -- Greece cannot support its current level of debt, its a fact.

Turns out the reason for the ECB's position is due to its own viability:  Turns out that the ECNB has just a bit more than Euro 5.1 billion in capital. it obtain an increase about 12 months ago (to Euro10 billion), but the money is coming in three tranches... over the 2010, 2011 and 2012 fiscal year.  It is also back loaded, so the bulk of the increase is only available in 2012.  

Guess what, the write down of Greek bond of 60% would deplete its capital dramatically... the loss for the ECB  in a 60% write down (we are assuming that they bought most of that paper at a discount to face value of about 70%), but that cut all the way down to 40% of face value would totally absorb the ECB's equity cushion.

Funny bit of course is that many European corporation have been "stashing" their cash with the ECB -- a sign of weakness of the European financial system -- imagine it is now the ECB that is in trouble.  BTW blame leverage, the ECB has a 30:1 leverage (less than DB, Comerzbank, BNP or SocGen -- to name Europe's most leveraged banks).





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more