Just a day after Greece's ND opposition party "committed" in writing to the details of the October summit agreement, Zero Hedge spots a potentially decisive Reuters story:
The country has now started talking to its creditor banks directly, the sources said.
"There are a number of people in the market who are saying why did (the IIF) take upon themselves this responsibility," one of the people said, asking not to be named.
"In part for that reason, Greece has been talking to creditors individually, just to get their own sense of market sentiment," the person said.
The Greeks are demanding that the new bonds' Net Present Value, -- a measure of the current worth of their future cash flows -- be cut to 25 percent, a second person said, a far harsher measure than a number in the high 40s the banks have in mind.
Banks represented by the IIF agreed to write off the notional value of their Greek bondholdings by 50 percent last month, in a deal to reduce Greece's debt ratio to 120 percent of its Gross Domestic Product by 2020.
In all fairness to Greece, the details of the October summit were somewhat fuzzy (as in nonexistent), and so arguably they are not backing out. But the banks were clearly thinking the ultimate haircut would not be as great as Greece is demanding. Once again, the complete lack of useful outcomes calls into question why the Europeans even bother to have summits.
But probably more important is the fact that Greece is now taking a direct role in negotiations. Remember that the previous haircuts were "voluntary" and negotiated by Greece's European overlords to prevent triggering a credit event and CDS payouts. And one has to believe that "following the October agreement" implicitly means the Greeks will not upset the apple cart and trigger a credit event unilaterally. But if Greece is at the table forcing lenders to take massive haircuts, it will be virutally impossible to justify that this is not a technical default.
This is shaping up to be the final test of the credibility of the sovereign CDS market - either exposure is hedged or it is not. Interestingly, either outcome is potentially catastrophic, with the end result being either the unknown outcomes of triggering CDS payouts or a complete flight from European sovereign debt. Maybe both.
I really hope somebody at the ECB is sticking around to work this weekend.
