Fast approaching

Being a glutton for punishment -- after eating (handle it better on a full belly) -- I went to "When Giants Fall". Now, you know their stock in trade is BAD NEWS ------------------ BUT, did I think it would be THIS BAD?? (please follow link to original)


"End Is Nigh for EU

At what point is an economic union no longer viable? When one out of 27 members gets into serious financial trouble? Or two? Maybe three? How about if six of them -- over 20 percent -- are at risk? Seems like that would make it almost impossible for the arrangement to survive. If you buy that -- and I do -- then the perspectives featured in the following Business Insider report, "Citi: Ireland, Greece And Portugal Are Insolvent, Spain Will Be Soon, Italy And Belgium Are Threatened," suggest the end is nigh as far as the European Union is concerned.

His Sovereign Debt Crisis Update names six countries in or on the brink of insolvency (via FT Alphaville).

Greece: "Greece is de facto insolvent, in our view, all the more so after the recent debt and deficit revisions. As long as Greece remains sufficiently compliant with the conditionality of its EU/IMF program, sovereign debt restructuring is likely to be postponed at least until mid-2013, when its EU/IMF programme expires. At that point, it likely will be transferred to the EFSF or its successor. Whether its debt will be restructured at that stage, including haircuts, will depend on factors beyond the sustainability of its debt."

Ireland: "Accessing external sources of funds will not mark the end of Ireland’s troubles. The reason is that, in our view, the consolidated Irish sovereign and Irish domestic financial system is de facto insolvent. The Irish sovereign cannot from its own resources ‘bail out’ the banks and make its own creditors whole. In addition, a fully-fledged bailout (permanent fiscal transfer) from EA partners or the ECB is most unlikely. Therefore, either the unsecured non-guaranteed creditors of the banks, and/or the creditors of the sovereign may eventually have to accept a restructuring with an NPV haircut, even if it is not a condition for accessing the EFSF or the EFSM at present.

Portugal: "After an Irish agreement with the EU/IMF, the market’s attention is likely to turn to Portugal’s sovereign, which at current levels of interest rates and growth rates, is less dramatically, but quietly, insolvent, in our view. We consider it likely that it will need to access the EFSF soon."

Spain: "For now, the markets have put Spain in Italy’s sovereign risk class when, in our view, it should be closer to Portugal and Ireland once its banking sector problems are recognised. We argued before that the EFSF should be much larger (€2trn). Should Spain need assistance, it will stretch the resources of the EFSF, perhaps beyond its current limits. There may be some room to expand the size of the EFSF. But, in our view, once Spain needs assistance, the support of the ECB will be critical (by purchasing Spanish sovereign debt through its Securities Markets Program — SMP — and funding Spanish banks using Spanish sovereign debt or sovereign-guaranteed financial instruments as collateral or by making loans to or purchasing the debt of the EFSF, legally a limited liability company that could even be made an eligible counterparty of the Eurosystem for this purpose). In the longer term, there may be a need for large-scale restructuring of the debt of the Spanish banking sector and possibly the sovereign."

Italy and Belgium: "At longer horizons, high debt levels and political instability in Italy and Belgium may yet give rise to fundamentally warranted sovereign debt crises, while self-justifying crises are possible even in the near term, despite roughly balanced structural primary budgets."."


Happy, happy -- Merry Christmas. What could be worse?? --- Tune in.