Europe Doesn’t Get It

I still think the most likely scenario is that some agreement to agree is made at the summit, which is then followed up by increased printing from the ECB, coupled with new Fed policies and fresh IMF money.  Although that still seems the most likely, I am getting concerned that Europe is once again missing the point.

Many EU leaders seem to actually believe that the Treaty changes are important.  The reality is the market could care less about treaty changes.  The market cares about only one thing, that the ECB will announce new, bigger, more aggressive sovereign purchases.  That’s all the market cares about.  The market believes that the treaty changes provide an excuse for the ECB and IMF to ramp up their efforts.  The EU can do all the treaty changes it wants, but if it is not followed up with aggressive new printing policies, the markets will sell-off.

Not only are politicians acting as though the treaty changes mean much, there is even talk about being able to implement changes without national votes.  That idea horrifies me on a personal level as it is yet again trashing any sense of democracy, but it is bad for the markets.  I have been assuming that the meeting will result in another agreement to agree. That is relatively easy to pull together.  Since it doesn’t really mean much, any countries that aren’t really on board, can be cajoled into holding hands for the photo-op and pretending they agree long enough for the ECB and IMF to throw more money at the problem.  Agreement is far less likely if real permanent changes are being implemented.  It is one thing to agree to the plan on the condition that you have to go back and get approval.  It is much more risky for someone to agree to permanent changes implemented using some backdoor legal technique.  Talk of actually implementing policy action this week is actually a negative as it makes it less likely that they can announce a “successful” summit.  On a side note, my favorite part of the proposal is the fines for going over the approved limits.  So countries that have the biggest deficits will be fined, adding to those deficits?  Debtor’s prison never worked very well, so why this would accomplish much is beyond me and would likely be waived any time it could be used.  But no one on wall street has bothered to read the treaty proposals because no one cares, all anyone cares about is that the ECB uses it as an excuse to print.

Yesterday’s FT rumor of ESM and EFSF working together was yet another reason to be afraid that Europe doesn’t get it.  Not only would implementing both at the same time place the AAA rated countries at greater risk of downgrade, but it ignores the fact that EFSF has been a total failure.  I thought Europe had moved beyond floating yet another iteration of something that hasn’t worked.  The fact that they haven’t is a potential indication that the printing presses aren’t going to be turned on as soon as the market would like.

Finally, there is more and more talk about what the national central banks can do.  People are acting as though they were cleaning the living room, and found some money when they lifted up the cushions on the couch.  This is not “found” money.  Participants and lenders are well aware of these reserves.  They can be used for example to fund loans to the IMF to lend back to some countries, though I don’t fully understand why they can’t just lend to the countries directly, but I assume there is some law that lending to the IMF lets them circumvent.  But there will be a cost to these actions.  There will be a consequence, and although it will later be viewed as “unintended” the consequences are actually foreseeable.  The countries with large reserves at the national central bank level have a reduced cost of funds because of those reserves.  Lenders are not always totally stupid.  There is value that is being realized from having those reserves.  Using them to create loans for the IMF will impact that country’s ability to borrow.  Plain and simple.  The fact that many pundits are treating this as newfound money that can be used any which way, without consequences is absurd and is yet another example of why so many ideas have failed.  Any plan that raids the national central banks for money for the PIIGS needs to be thought through more carefully and the potential costs need to be addressed.  The cost/benefit analysis may be worth the risk, but I suspect serious analysis would show that it is a bad idea.  The cost/benefit should be about zero since it is just shifting money from one place to another.  There really is no obvious reason to believe that this is a net positive.  In the real world it is likely negative because as we have seen time and again, these changes break the existing model and that causes confusion which more than offsets any potential benefit (not triggering CDS is a shining example).

So while we limp along towards the most likely outcome, the risk of disappointment or even outright failure continues to grow.  The inability to hold yesterday’s rumor rally is a signal that the market has moved well past the short squeeze phase and is now trading long.