To: TobagoJack who wrote (77044 ) 7/29/2011 8:12:48 PM From: 2MAR$ Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 219937 Now 2am in france & you are down in the valley of sleep counting golden grape clusters , dreaming sweet Château d'Yquem dreams.... Possible fall after US labor day (sept 5th) after one more, near term market rally . Message 27515598 When a bigger economy with greater structural and social problems, for example Spain, comes to the fore, it will be the actual defining moment of the European financial crisis. Going back to 2008, the first collapse of an investment bank - Bear Stearns in March 2008 - was easily absorbed by the markets and there was a strong rally since. It took until after summer of 2008 for the real big impact - Lehman Brothers and AIG - to filter through. At 2% of the European economy, Greece was never the story. The drama around its rescue though is: and therein lies the tale for the markets, as the good bard would say. Dealing camels The deal itself appears to have very little to commend for it: a 21% haircut for private bond holders triggering a selective default by Greece, a load of new money thrown by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, maintenance of an austerity program even as interest rates on new debt are reduced further to 3.5% and maturities are extended from seven years to 15 and even 30 years in some cases. Confusingly, the haircut for private bondholders will be constructed using multiple options presumably designed to suit the differing accounting regulations for investors holding the debt - the European Central Bank (ECB), commercial banks and others. Confusingly, the deal seems to have missed all targets for constituents: 1. The ECB steadfastly demanded that there would be no default of any kind by Greece - this has been over-ruled by the deal; 2. Market investors were expecting a 50% haircut but will instead have a figure of less than half that imposed on them. However, this isn't the same as a settlement for credit default swap contracts, where prices could be decided later based on auctions; 3. Banks that were declared to have passed the stress tests last week by European authorities will, embarrassingly, have to fail them again, because the 21% haircut is higher than what was proposed by authorities at the time stress tests were promulgated; 4. New money has been made available for other European countries like Portugal as well as for any banks facing trouble through the offices of the European Financial Stability Facility; however, there is apparently not enough money in the kitty should any of the bigger countries, like Spain or Italy, face funding problems in the distant future; 5. It is not clear how the official assistance of 109 billion euros (US$157 billion) for Greece will be funded by European member states, some of whom (like Finland, the UK and Austria) have recently disavowed any further assistance for Greece; 6. The most chilling part of the eurozone statement is the assertion that the bailout for Greece is the "first and only" one of its kind. That is exactly the kind of statement that will be tested by market participants in coming months and years; 7. Lastly and most importantly, I see no evidence that the core issue of GREEK solvency has been addressed in the bailout. On the contrary, it appears that more debt is being heaped on a country that is already unwilling to bear the burden from its existing debt. As the old joke goes, a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee. In this particular case, the committee has given us a truly bewildering rescue plan for Greece. What is its likely near-term impact? There is a lot of cash lying around uninvested by different investors from hedge funds to sovereign wealth funds. It is possible that the rescue for Greece may prompt a strong summer rally - a capitulation trade of sorts that sees equity and commodity prices rising 25% or more in coming weeks on the notion that the GREEK plan is Europe's version of the QE2 (second quantitative easing) program that was pushed through in the United States by the Federal Reserve. That said, the second bailout for Greece comes at a time when economic data from around the world isn't looking too peachy - whether you look at US unemployment or housing, German manufacturing, or worst of all, Chinese loan statistics. In this particular case, we aren't even watching a new movie - just a dubbed version of a previously released one: namely the 2008 crisis I alluded to above; that time it was American and now it is being dubbed into GREEK with Latin subtitles. A bailout of Greece falls into the category of an event that satisfies the near-term requirements of bullish investors, but leaves a sufficiently large number of questions unanswered for the more bearish folks not to completely throw in their towels. Ergo, my expectation is now for a market rally going into the period after the US Labor Day (September 5), at which point a confluence of more sobering economic data and better market liquidity conditions will likely augur a crash.