Much of the headlines about the referendum that is underway in Greece as I write this morning tell stories of confusion. What are the Greek people voting on? Officially, they are voting Yes or No on terms of a deal with creditors that is no longer on the table. Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, says a No vote will give [...]
Greece really should not matter, at all, outside of the tragic plight of the Greeks themselves. You’ll see that message echoed particularly inside the US where the status quo takes a contradictory turn toward reasonableness in order to justify further what isn’t. This is all about asset prices and how they have been so skewed almost everywhere that when one [...]
Here is a simple conditional probability table one might use to gauge the potential risks and rewards stemming from the Greek credit negotiations. The table considers 3 paths which may arise from ongoing talks. It assigns a probability for each and what an investor might expect for market returns under each scenario. Given recent events, the probabilities in the table have [...]
Recognizing the danger of overdoing it on Greece today, I think there is another important and complimentary factor that the uncertainty about default there is revealing. In addition to the economic re-awakening about how nothing much has really changed with Greece, including its fiscal impediments that endure despite its default three years ago, the financial theme that has provided such [...]
The Greek drama seems to have reached somewhat of a boundary, with deadlines and credit assistance drawing toward maximums. If this seems more than a little déjà vu that’s because it is an almost exact replay of 2012; all that is missing at this point is another default (debt swap or however it shall be classified). Greek banks have been [...]
The difficulty of being a central banker in Europe is that you face the challenge of dealing with the structure of a monetary union with no fiscal union. At any given time, the economies of different countries will require different monetary policy. So, while Greece may be begging for easy monetary conditions, Germany may not require or even desire such loose [...]
Nobody really knows what is going to happen as Greece disproves all the narratives about the ECB’s ability to actually fix anything. As with all things monetarism, the attempts of liquidity were really about time rather than dissuading imbalances. But the funny thing about trying to buy time is that it so often removes the very pressure necessary to instill [...]
With Germany’s bond market spooking fixed income all over the world, every rate system has fallen under increasing suspicion. US rates seemed to have bowed to the same ghosts, as the benchmark 10-year treasury rose in yield to an intraday high of around 2.30% last week. That was a sharp increase in only a few days, a trading week, that [...]
With Greece relenting on its game of chicken with the Eurozone noose, you have to wonder how much the ELA and the threat of total financial meltdown pushed that direction. From the view of credit markets in Europe, there was an unusual almost confidence in such an outcome from the moment of the election last month. Small wonder when Europe [...]
The US stock market made another all time high last week amid more mediocre - at best - US economic data. Much of the gain was credited to positive developments in the geopolitical arena as a ceasefire was announced in Ukraine and negotiations continued on Greek debt relief with some positive signs that an agreement might be reached. Whether either [...]
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