The Collapsing Greek Income Statement, Or Why Greece Is Doomed

The Collapsing Greek Income Statement

zerohedge.com

With everyone focused exclusively on the Greek balance sheet, where apparently the market has now realized that you don't cure unmanageable debt with yet more debt (something the Troica will figure out just as soon as the eurozone breaks apart), a far more important statement is the country's P&L, or income statement. After all, if a country can not grow into its balance sheet with excess cash at the end of the day, all bailouts are completely irrelevant....

Egan-Jones', a rating agency that has proven infinitely better at predicting the future than Moody's or S&P, summary of what to expect:

End of the line - although Greece is likely to receive additional funds, those funds might be senior to existing debt and both creditors and Greece's patience is waning. The rise in interest rates is likely to place an unbearable burden on the issuer and the austerity measures will further pressure GDP. The Hellenic Statistical Authority cited an accelerated contraction in domestic demand and a fall in consumer expenditures with the decline.

We expect that Greece will be forced to restructure its debt within the next 2 to 18 months; it cannot sustain significant additional budget cuts, the tepid economy, restricted capital raising, and 20+% interest rates. Greece's stated debt is EUR329B, GDP is EUR230B, and the federal budget deficit is EUR3.8B before interest expense and EUR16.4B after interest expense. The country has failed to meet its initial deficit target of 8.1% of GDP for 2010 as agreed to under the joint IMF-EU bailout terms in May 2010.Meanwhile, Greek debt (currently the highest in the EU at 127%) is projected to reach 160% of GDP in 2011. Austria withheld funds due to Greece after claiming the country has failed to meet its spoken commitments for the EU bailout package

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You should always listen to the Dr.

Copper: the doctor’s prognosis

Published: March 10 2011 20:03 | Last updated: March 10 2011 22:50

It should come as no surprise that the strong, positive correlation between the world’s two leading industrial commodities has broken down over the past month. Oil has surged 15 per cent on supply concerns while copper is off 9 per cent from the record high of $10,190 a tonne it hit in London trading in part due to fears of what dearer and scarcer crude might do to the world economy. But developments in the Middle Kingdom, not just the Middle East, are affecting copper prices.

China, by far the world’s single largest copper consumer, already outstrips the appetite of what some decades ago was called the “industrialised world.” Its demand for the red metal overtook that of North America and Western Europe combined in 2008 and analysts at Credit Suisse forecast it will be double their consumption by 2013, soaking up a third of all supply.

Given its projected needs for copper-intensive infrastructure, those forecasts seem consistent with economic growth expectations. Even so, the copper market may be ascribing an overly smooth and upward-sloping trajectory for demand in the medium-term. Chinese imports of all industrial commodities took a tumble last month due to the Lunar New Year celebrations, but copper’s fall seems especially sharp. Shipments of 235,000 tonnes were the lowest since January 2009 when prices were a third today’s level.

For some months, local inventories have seemingly grown faster than underlying demand and the discount between local and international prices would have suggested. Some analysts, noting that a large part of Chinese bonded copper inventories have been used as collateral for loans, believe that this artificially stimulated the surge in imports. If so then this could make copper demand doubly-sensitive to Chinese government efforts to slow down credit growth.


Known as “the only metal with a PhD in economics” for its forecasting prowess, perhaps “Dr Copper” was warning us of speculative froth as much as expected growth when it surged earlier this year. If so, more weakness seems likely.

FT.com / Lex - Copper: the doctor’s prognosis

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Banks and investment firms have rebounded fastest since March 2009 lows

Chart of the day: Barclays and Lloyds soar since lows

Kit Chellel

18 Feb 2011

How financial firms in the FTSE100 have performed since the lowest point of the crisis

Two weeks from today is the second anniversary of one of the darkest moments of the financial crisis, when the FTSE 100 fell to a new low and Barclays shares were going for as little as 81p.

On that day, March 3, 2009, the 100 largest companies in the UK were worth less than they were when Tony Blair was elected in 1997.

The FTSE 100 has not hit such depths since, and an equities rally over the past few months has seen the index recover to somewhere near two-year highs.

Figures compiled by Financial News show that banks and investment firms have rebounded fastest, albeit from a lower level.

An investor who bought shares in the 10 financial firms (excluding insurers) currently in the FTSE 100 back in March 2009, would have seen a return of 149% in those two years, based on prices on Thursday morning.

This compares to an average of 73% across the FTSE 100 index.

An investor who backed Barclays would have done even better. The bank, which avoided a government bailout by tapping up Middle Eastern oil money, has risen a staggering 311% in the same period.

Lloyds is up 205% and private equity group 3i 182%.

The worst performer was investment group Alliance Trust whose shares rose 58.8%, which is below the FTSE average.

Second from bottom among the financial firms was Man Group which has been beset by problems since the crash. The listed hedge fund has seen half its assets under management pulled out by investors since the start of the crisis. Despite this, its shares have still gained 92 per cent between March 2008 and now.

The share gains achieved by banks are all the more impressive given that Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS all carried out multi-billion pound share issues to recapitalise following the crisis, diluting the value of stock.

The FTSE 100 index closed at 6087.38 yesterday, helped by strong performance from Lloyds TSB (up 2.9%) and RBS (up 3.8%). However the index remains some way below the pre-crisis peak of 6721.60 on September 31, 2007.

-- write to kit.chellel@dowjones.com

http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2011-02-18/barclays-and-lloyd-best-performing-shares-since-crisis-trough?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Market timing - European Financial Risk Breaks Out- Sell signal?

 Market timing - European Financial Risk Breaks Out- Sell signal?

CONCLUSION: As our mark Steele points out below, European corporate financial risk is breaking out...this was a SELL signal last spring. Yet this time so far, there has been a definite lack of contagion. The elastic band is being tested.....

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Relative Strength Filter	December 17, 2010 Research Comment Quantitative/Technical Research Website Mark Steele (416) 359-4641 mark.steele@bmo.com Assoc: Tiberiu Stoichita/Rahul Muralidhar
European Financial Risk Breaks Out
CLICK HERE for a printer friendly version of this report including research disclosures.

Figure 1: European Financial (Markit) and European Prime Broker (our .PrimeEU) Financial Default Risk; FTSE Global Banks

Source: BMO Capital Markets, Bloomberg, Thomson, Markit

· This morning, European corporate financial default risk breaks to the upside – Figure 1.

o This was a sell signal in the spring.

o This was a sell signal in November.

o This is a caution signal now.

§ What is different?

· If you carve out the too-interconnected-to-fail European prime brokers (our .PrimeEU index), and overlay this on the European Financial default risk chart, you see a definite lack of contagion.

o The core is solid.

o The caution, of course, comes as we assume that if overall European financial default risk continues to rise, then there will be a moment when the elastic band connecting the two (Figure 1 top) will force the too-interconnected-to-fail institutions into the fray.

§ Today, we get off with just a caution, but a big caution.

infographic: bailout mechanisms in Europe

As for those who still may be confused by how the various bailout mechanisms in Europe operate, we present to you this useful infographic by the Guardian.



http://the-masterblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/its-official-there-is-not-enough-money.html


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Hypo Fails, All Other German, Portuguese, French Banks Pass Test

Tyler Durden

Subject: Hypo Fails, All Other German, Portuguese, French Banks Pass Test

And we uncover that the German Landesbanks (the equivalent of the bankrupt
Spanish cajas) did their own stress tests. Time for the PPT to step in with
this pretext and soak up all offers. Totally pathetic BS.
Update 1: Somehow Bank of Ireland "passes" the test but needs over €2
billion in extra equity... uhm... WTF??? This is the point where the
audience rushes the stage and burns the theater down.
Update 2: 5 Spanish cajas, 1 German and 1 Greek banks are eliminated on
their quest to marry the US taxpayer. 84 other banks will soon be the
recipients of far more US taxpayer generosity. And with that the season
finale of the farce comes to a close.
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Financial (In)balances in the US, UK and Japan

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FX Swaps and the US Dollar