A recent thread entitled
Greece Wipes Out Citizens began to address the issues
involving the Greek debt default, but in reading through the OP and posts, I felt the very core was overlooked.
While I don't agree with all of
Ann Barnhardt's positions, I find her to be very knowledgable (especially in the
field of futures trading), fiesty and entertaining.
She has gone after Corzine and MF Global, and breaks down the whole Credit Default Swap insurance hedge by explaining who exactly is expecting
windfall profits as a result.
I'll let her explain:
EVERYONE needs to understand credit default swaps (CDS) first. CDS are insurance policies that investors have traded – very similar to OPTIONS
for my old clients and cattle people out there. Buying a CDS is essentially like buying a put. The buyer pays a premium, or fee, to the writer, or
seller of the CDS that says that the seller will guarantee and make whole the buyer’s position in a specific bond IF the entity behind the bond
(such as Greece) defaults. In exchange for paying the premium and being made whole after a default, the buyer of the CDS surrenders the bond position
to the seller of the CDS, and the seller gets to keep both the premium paid plus gets to keep any salvage value of the defaulted bond.
So you buy a CDS to hedge your other positions, pay the premium and, should a default occur, you are protected and made whole, right? Wrong.
Here is what I STRONGLY suspect is going to happen with this 70% haircut plan. The bondholders are going to take the full brunt of the 70%
haircut, BUT the body that actually dictates whether or not a default has happened – the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) –
will declare that this credit event is NOT a default, and thus all of the banks and entities that THOUGHT that their European debt positions were
hedged with CDS will find out that they have no protection at all. And then the excrement hits the fan. Big time.
So the fact that the bond holders will only be paid 30% of the value is NOT a default? How can that be?
The argument that the ISDA will make is that a 70% haircut isn’t a default. This is, of course, abject horse manure. Try paying only 30% of your
mortgage and see how quickly the word “default” is used. They are using the 70% figure because a 30% payout is just enough to make the legalistic
argument that a FULL default hasn’t occurred - which makes NO SENSE because salvage value is one of the core concepts in CDS contracts.
Default is not being able to pay in full, no? Why would they do this? Who stands to gain from this?
I will venture a guess as to who two of the largest writers of Eurotrash CDS might be. How about . . . oh, I dunno, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan?
Guys, what MF Global was doing with customer funds – “hypothecating” and leveraging the customer money into European bond positions “hedged”
with credit default swaps – THEY’RE ALL DOING IT. All of the brokerage houses. All of the investment firms. All of the retirement account
custodians. ALL OF THE BANKS. I can almost promise you that Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan have been sitting on a net short position in Europe, quietly
betting against European paper, all the while pimping and selling long European positions (It will be fine! The bailouts will come!) AND happily
selling TRILLIONS of dollars worth of CDS to their customers to “guarantee” the customers’ long-Europe positions against default, knowing full
well that Europe WOULD collapse. (Duh. Anyone who can do 2nd grade math knows that.) When the collapse happened they knew from the beginning they
WOULD NEVER HAVE TO PAY OUT ON THE CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS THAT THEY WROTE because the ISDA was populated BY THEIR OWN PEOPLE, and the ISDA would
therefore never declare a default. They would therefore pocket the premium received, but most importantly would then swoop in and BUY UP ALL OF THE
BANKS AND BROKERAGES DESTROYED BY THEIR UNHEDGED NET LONG-EUROPE POSITIONS.
Goldman and JP on both sides of the trades again? Perhaps knowing they will collect on the winner and not have to payout on the loser?
Nahhhhhhhhh....
Why would Goldman and J.P. Morgan write these CDS contracts knowing full well that Europe was mathematically impossible to save and thus
guaranteed to default, and that the inevitable European default would then lead to demands for payout that were – again – mathematically
impossible? We are talking tens if not hundreds of trillions of dollars. We are talking multiples of the size of the entire economy of the U.S. - and
that is just the exposure of ONE BANK (i.e. JPM @ $78TTT). There is no possible way to payout on that. It seems to me that these CDS writers knew from
the start that they would never have to payout. They knew that their people in the ISDA would never declare a default, but would always leave some
trifling payout to “legally” skirt default. If it ever got to the point that there was a full default, World War 3 would be the result and thus
the entire point would be moot. The bankster oligarchs would at that point be moving fully to declare a new totalitarian world government and abolish
and seize all private property. Game over.
I am neither surprised that this is a possibility, nor that Ann deduced it.
SOURCE