Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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• 65% of Italians Think Euro Made Things Worse for Italy's Economy
• Portugal Downgraded to Junk; Bond Yields Soar; Record Spread vs. Germany; Portugal to Follow Greece Into Default Abyss
• Greece Dispatches Officials to US Over Default Fears; Senior S&P Official Expects Default Soon; Greek One-Year Bond Yield Touches 415%; Ducks Lined Up for Merkel Orchestrated Default
• Timing the End of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy

65% of Italians Think Euro Made Things Worse for Italy's Economy Posted: 16 Jan 2012 04:48 PM PST CNBC has some interesting figures on a recent poll in Italy: Majority of Italians No Longer Trust the Euro 65% of those polled thought the introduction of the euro has been more damaging than beneficial for the Italian economy 55% percent of Italians have lost confidence in the euro single currency Confidence in the European Union stood at 51%, the lowest level in many years 31% said they would prefer a return to the lira The last bullet point is the odd man out. Expect to see that number rise as Italy heads into a massive recession. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Portugal Downgraded to Junk; Bond Yields Soar; Record Spread vs. Germany; Portugal to Follow Greece Into Default Abyss Posted: 16 Jan 2012 12:43 PM PST Portugal is poised to quickly follow Greece into the default abyss following a debt downgrade to junk status by the S&P on Friday. The Wall Street Journal reports Portugal's Bond Yields Rise Sharply After Rating Cut To Junk Portuguese borrowing costs rose sharply Monday as some investors were forced to sell their government bond holdings after Standard and Poor's Corp. downgraded the country to junk status late Friday. Portugal is now rated as non-investment grade by all three major rating companies. Moody's rates the country at Ba2, Fitch at BB+ and Standard and Poor's at BB. Non-investment, or junk, bonds have an increased risk of default and pay a higher yield than investment grade bonds to compensate investors for holding the extra risk. The yield on the two-year and five-year government bonds rose in excess of two percentage points Monday to yield 13.49% and 16.80%, respectively, while the 10-year benchmark rose by just over one and a half percentage points to yield 13.55%, according to data from Tradeweb. "Now that Portugal is rated as junk by all three agencies, there is forced selling by investors as it [Portugal] is removed from various bond indices and funds," noted one trader familiar with the matter. "It doesn't help that the markets are thin due to the U.S. holiday which makes price movements even more erratic." Investors are also worried that Portugal may have to follow Greece and re-structure their government debts as they are unable to access the funding market. The spread between Portugal's government bonds and German bunds hit record levels Monday with the 10-year spread widening by over one and a half percentage points to 1225 basis points. Portugal 2-Year Government Bonds Portugal 10-Year Government Bonds As shown in the above chart, yields continued to rise on Monday, after the WSJ article was written. Graphs in the above charts are not current, but the summary quotes on the left side of the chart are accurate. The yield on two-year Portuguese bonds is 15.78 and the 10-year yield is 14.41. Thus, the yield-curve is inverted once again and that is a sign of severe stress. Given that the Ducks are Lined Up for Greek Default, it's time to look ahead. A Greek default may be priced in, but what about Portugal or Spain? Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Greece Dispatches Officials to US Over Default Fears; Senior S&P Official Expects Default Soon; Greek One-Year Bond Yield Touches 415%; Ducks Lined Up for Merkel Orchestrated Default Posted: 16 Jan 2012 10:04 AM PST A Greek default appears likely soon as Greece Dispatches Officials to US Over Default Fears. Greece sent senior officials to Washington on Monday for meetings with the International Monetary Fund as it raced against the clock to break a deadlock in debt swap talks that has raised fears of an unruly default. Barely a month after an injection of bailout funds helped avert bankruptcy, Greece is back at the centre of the euro zone crisis as fears of a default and a subsequent euro zone exit overshadow a mass credit downgrade of euro zone countries. Cash-strapped Athens needs a deal with the private sector within days to avoid going bankrupt when 14.5 billion euros of bond redemptions fall due in late March. But Athens is quickly running out of time on the bond swap front. A deal must be sealed before senior inspectors from the EU, IMF and ECB "troika" arrive in Athens at the end of the week to agree details of a second, 130-billion-euro bailout. Furthermore, an agreement in principle is needed by the end of this week if it is to be finalized in time for the March bond redemptions, Charles Dallara, head of the Institute of International Finance who represents Greece's private creditors, told the Financial Times. Banking sources say Athens is not the problem in the talks, pointing the finger at terms insisted on by the so-called troika of EU, ECB and IMF lenders keeping Greece afloat with aid. In a bid to resolve the impasse, a government source said the head of Greece's debt agency and a senior adviser were travelling on Monday to Washington to meet IMF officials - just a day before a team of technical experts from the troika arrives in the Greek capital. One banking source said official sector creditors had asked for a coupon of less than 4 percent, irking banks for whom it would have meant losses of over 75 percent on the bonds. A second source involved in the discussions said the troika had pushed for a coupon of 2 to 3 percent that banks deemed unacceptable, below the 4 percent level that Greece and France proposed. Banks considered a 4 to 5 percent coupon sustainable for Greece, the source said. Without a more palatable offer, the level of participation among private creditors could slip to below the level needed to ensure the deal is considered voluntary, the source said. Senior S&P Official Expects Default Soon CNBC reports S&P expects Greece to default soon. Greece will default shortly on its debt obligations, a senior Standard & Poor's official told Bloomberg Television on Monday. "Greece will default very shortly. Whether there will be a solution at the end of the current rocky negotiations I cannot say," said Moritz Kraemer, the head of the agency's European sovereign ratings unit. "There is a lot of brinksmanship on and a disorderly default will have ramifications on other countries but I believe policymakers will want to avoid that ... The game is still on." Greek One-Year Bond Yield Touches 415% Ducks Lined Up for Merkel Orchestrated Default The hangup preventing an agreement is the coupon rate. Germany has proposed a 2% coupon rate. That would drive the losses on Greek bonds from 60% to 80%. Is this a signal that Chancellor Merkel has had enough of bailouts and wants to dump Greece? I think so and talks with the IMF suggest so as well. I do not really buy the idea that a deal has to be reached within days given bond redemptions are not until late March. It 's easier to believe the IMF and EU need that time to arrange for an orderly as possible Greek return to the drachma. It's possible of course that a deal is worked out, but it seems Germany and the IMF have had enough with Greece and the S&P is preparing everyone for the inevitable. The ducks are lined up for default.  All it takes is for creditors to refuse a coupon rate of 2% and the accompanying 80% losses (soon to be 100% losses) for anyone without Credit Default Swap (CDS) protection. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Timing the End of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy Posted: 16 Jan 2012 12:53 AM PST Neither German Chancellor Angela Merkel nor French President Nicolas Sarkozy is likely to survive the European sovereign debt crisis. The timing of the demise of Sarkozy is easy to predict. Polls suggest he will be not win the May 6 election and he might not even survive the first round of voting on April 22. Please see "Let the Euro Die" Candidate Trails Sarkozy by Slight 2 Percentage Points; Will Sarkozy Survive the First Round Vote? Eurozone About to Become Unglued The timing of the demise of chancellor Merkel is more problematic. Technically, her splintering coalition could fracture beyond repair at any time as a series of articles in Der Speigel suggests. January 6 Merkel's Coalition Partner on the Road to Collapse Germany's Free Democrats have been in freefall for months. But on Friday, the party, Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition partner, hit a new low. Inner-party bickering led to the collapse of a state government and a new poll found that just 2 percent of Germans would vote for the FDP today. Some 83 percent of those asked said that the FDP has not delivered on its promises. A further 72 percent say that it isn't clear where the party stands when it comes to the euro crisis. Just 15 percent of Germans think the party is credible. It is a situation which has not made things easier for Chancellor Merkel. The FDP's periodic hand-wringing over Germany's outsized role in bailing out struggling euro-zone countries has occasionally led to speculation that her coalition could collapse prematurely. Furthermore, she has periodically provided some legislative concessions in an attempt to breathe some life into the moribund party. Mostly, though, it is a situation that seems to indicate that Germany's party landscape no longer has room for the FDP. After all, even the Pirate Party, which focuses almost exclusively on Internet privacy issues, is doing better than the once mighty FDP. The Pirates managed 6 percent in Friday's poll -- numbers that the current FDP could only dream of. January 9 Confidence Wanes in FDP Leader Rösler Despite efforts to breathe new life into their faltering message, Free Democratic Party leader Philipp Rösler could be forced to step down soon. Should he fall, Chancellor Merkel could lose much more than a key political partner. Her entire cabinet could face a significant reshuffle. January 9 Scandal 'Could Mean the End of Merkel's Government' German President Christian Wulff refuses to step down amid a scandal involving a threatening phone call to a major newspaper and dodgy business dealings. German commentators warn that his resignation could cause Angela Merkel's government to collapse. The scandal surrounding Christian Wulff gets murkier by the day, but the German president is refusing to resign from the largely ceremonial position, despite growing calls for him to quit. On Monday, his lawyer even went on the offensive. At the crux of the affair is a message that Wulff left on the voicemail of Kai Diekmann, editor in chief of the powerful tabloid Bild, on Dec. 12. The newspaper claims that Wulff wanted to prevent the publication of a damaging story about a private loan that Wulff took out. Many Germans regard Wulff's alleged threats as an attack on press freedom. For his part, Wulff insists that he only wanted to delay the publication of the story. In a high-profile television interview last week, Wulff admitted he had made a "serious mistake" by phoning Diekmann but denied he had considered resigning. Last week, Bild said it wanted to publish the actual message as support for its version of events, but asked Wulff for his permission to make the voicemail public. The president denied the request. But on Monday, Wulff's lawyer, Gernot Lehr, said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk public radio that the president was not afraid of the message being published. If Bild "wants to do so, then let them," he said. "It is Bild's business if they want to break this taboo." In its new issue, published Monday, SPIEGEL printed lengthy extracts from the message, after obtaining a transcript. According to the transcript, Wulff did indeed ask the newspaper to delay the publication of the story. He also, however, threatened to take legal action, which observers see as a clear attempt to stop the article's publication. Parts of the German political establishment have already turned to the question of what will happen if Wulff steps down. On Sunday, the leader of the opposition center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), Sigmar Gabriel, offered Chancellor Angela Merkel help in a possible search for a successor. He said if the parties could agree on a joint candidate then the SPD would not put forward its own candidate. Merkel would probably be dependent on opposition votes in the Federal Assembly, the specially convened body that elects the German president, if it came to an election. The chancellor narrowly avoided a debacle in 2010, when her handpicked candidate Wulff needed three rounds of voting to get elected, despite the government's majority in the assembly. "So what can she do? With her coalition holding an extremely thin majority of a maximum of four votes in the Federal Assembly, putting forward another candidate to replace Wulff would be risky. This would hold particularly true if the opposition Social Democrats and Greens were to put their former candidate Joachim Gauck, who lost to Wulff in 2010 but is widely respected, back in the running. A defeat in the struggle for Germany's highest office in 2012 would send a major symbolic message for the loss of power in Merkel's coalition government. Together with the collapse of the 'Jamaica' coalition in Saarland (comprised of the CDU, the FDP and the Greens), the general withering of the FDP and the possibility of a CDU defeat in state elections in Schleswig-Holstein in May, a formidable political headwind could form that the chancellor would then have to fight during the next federal election in 2013." January 12 German President Blasted by Party Allies German President Christian Wulff promised transparency in a television interview last week regarding questions about his personal finances. But since then, he hasn't delivered. Several members of Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats, the party which propelled Wulff into office, have turned on him. CDU parliamentarian Karl-Georg Wellmann [suggested] Wulff should resign. "A horrible end is better than horror without end," Wellmann said, in reference to the likelihood that criticism will continue to dog Wulff if he clings to his office. "My personal advice to him would be to no longer subject himself, his family and his office to (the condemnation)." Several other CDU politicians likewise have heaped censure on the German president this week, including powerful conservative parliamentarian Peter Altmaier, a close ally of Merkel. And Bundestag President Norbert Lammert, a senior CDU member, complained in newsmagazine Stern of the "massive, comprehensive loss of trust" in the president. "On television, Wulff promised 18 million citizens that 450 questions would be answered and made public," Björn Thümler, CDU floor leader in the Lower Saxony state parliament, told the Norwest Zeitung newspaper. "I think we are all waiting for that and that is what must happen. There is no alternative." As of Thursday, Wulff had not budged. Instead, he stood for hours before television cameras greeting his some 80 visitors. Not all, however, accepted his invitation to the new year's reception. Transparency International stayed away, as did the German Journalists Association. In protest. Merkel's junior coalition partner is burnt toast and clearly she has other political problems as well. Moreover, Europe is heading into a massive recession and Germany will not be immune. Can she keep a working coalition intact until the 2013 election? I rather doubt it. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

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