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Greece defaults

blogs.reuters.com

21–30 of 151 posts

Re: Greece defaults

#21
As I understand it you default on a loan, you don't default as an entity. So it's doesn't really make sense to talk about Greece defaulting without saying which loans they defaulted on. Hence the "kind of"/"selective" etc.

I read this as Greece defaulted on kind of all it's loans, so defaulted on some and not on others. The others may have been renegotiations, longer terms etc.

Re: Greece defaults

#22
post #12

The EU sort of rescued Greece, now Greece sort of defaults. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are not that far behind. The biggest problem, aside from Greece's fiscal mess, is that Germany can't muster up enough political support to clean up after their mess more decisively despite the fact that they are now in the same monetary union. The catch 22 of these financial crises is that inaction will result in financial meltdown…

82 Million Soon To Be Very Angry Germans, Or How Euro Bailout #2 Could Cost Up To 56% Of German GDP http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fatal-flaw-europes-second-b...

If only it were that simple. It probably won't only be the Germans who end up footing the bill for this. As I understand it, German banks bought Credit Default Swaps on these loans, so there's no telling who will ultimately end up footing the bill.

Re: Greece defaults

#24
post #16

FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default. It's binary. You either pay back creditors what they are owed or you dont. It's rare that a company or country defaults on ALL obligations all at once. As a member of Wall Street, I appreciate the WSJ's noble attempt to sugar coat this (article below) but that doesnt change the facts. Ditto watchandwait below.., glad it finally happened. http://profess…

The question you have to ask yourself is “What does it mean?” Will readers understand what “Greece Defaults” entails? If not, then it’s the journalists job to write something else. A semantic argument won’t help you there. If it were my job to write articles about the situation I certainly wouldn’t pick “Greece Defaults” as a headline. I would mention the default in the body and explain what that actually means. Cont…

It just means that instead of having the train quickly derail, they're going to stretch it out like it were a Hollywood movie. Seriously. No one believes that debt is going to be repaid. The politicos are just praying that the train doesn't hit the ground on their watch. If you read the text of this, it just "says" they're going to extend all the terms.

But we all know the truth. Shit is going to happen. If for no reason other than that the Greek government is going to stop working because it can't fund itself.

[Edit: What diff does it make if they're going to practically indefinitely extend the terms? And at those rates? That's like hoping that inflation will make the debt go away. Except Greece is in the Eurozone so that's not quite going to happen.]

Re: Greece defaults

#25
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mentions that they are sort of forcing bond holders to accept a lesser payment. That seems like a kind of default.

Whether they defaulted or not is actually quite key. You see, all the CDS (Credit default swap) holders get to demand the full face value of the Greek debt they hold from the CDS seller if Greece has defaulted. The CDS writers are going to take a huge bath if this happens. This is what took down AIG, except in that case it was subprime MBS (Mortgage backed securities) CDSs that did it.

what constitutes default will be pretty clearly defined in the contract - which is more in terms of credit "events" rather than just default. See for example the ISDA definitions: http://credit-deriv.com/isdadefinitions.htm

Re: Greece defaults

#26
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question you have to ask yourself is “What does it mean?” Will readers understand what “Greece Defaults” entails? If not, then it’s the journalists job to write something else. A semantic argument won’t help you there. If it were my job to write articles about the situation I certainly wouldn’t pick “Greece Defaults” as a headline. I would mention the default in the body and explain what that actually means. Cont…

It just means that instead of having the train quickly derail, they're going to stretch it out like it were a Hollywood movie. Seriously. No one believes that debt is going to be repaid. The politicos are just praying that the train doesn't hit the ground on their watch. If you read the text of this, it just "says" they're going to extend all the terms. But we all know the truth. Shit is going to happen. If for no re…

Wrong. The way it appears now, the debt is going to be repaid over a longer period of time. Your confusion about this indicates that writers are not doing a good job explaining this to people.

Re: Greece defaults

#27
post #12

The EU sort of rescued Greece, now Greece sort of defaults. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are not that far behind. The biggest problem, aside from Greece's fiscal mess, is that Germany can't muster up enough political support to clean up after their mess more decisively despite the fact that they are now in the same monetary union. The catch 22 of these financial crises is that inaction will result in financial meltdown…

Delayed action though leads to speculation and uncertainty as was shown in the past few weeks. Nothing changed in the Italian economic policy since friday last week, but monday and tuesday brought deep losses and the Italian BTP bonds reached the highest spread against the Bund in recent history. Today, 3 days later, Italy is back to a less crazy spread (still pretty high) and _nothing_ changed in its policy, 100 bas…

Thanks for the help. As you say, original detractors emphasized that Greece was at most a little over 2% of the EU economy but we've all seen how one bad apple can take down the whole barrel. Perhaps they need a stronger ECB. DSK was doing a commendable job holding it together until he got stopped in NY.

Re: Greece defaults

#28
The WSJ's article is like all "I have a friend who thinks she might be a teensey weeensey little bit pregnant...".

Tomorrow, the markets make an example out of Greece in order to send a message to the US. But they'd better watch out, it could backfire. Congress now has a taste of the thrill of writing a (raise pinky) one trillion dollar check. If another AIG starts to look shaky...

Re: Greece defaults

#29

FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default. It's binary. You either pay back creditors what they are owed or you dont. It's rare that a company or country defaults on ALL obligations all at once. As a member of Wall Street, I appreciate the WSJ's noble attempt to sugar coat this (article below) but that doesnt change the facts. Ditto watchandwait below.., glad it finally happened. http://profess…

So you're making a semantic argument, which is, you know, great, but surely there's a difference between the relatively modest haircut that's going on here and the kind of classical default in which little or none of the debt gets repaid? The author of the piece writes as if Greece is getting off scot-free here. Is not aware of the manner in which mobs have been rioting there for the past month? This is not a pleasan…

As far as I can see in other reporting, it's something of the order of a 20% write down (at least for the German Banks) with the EU buying up some of the bonds and the terms being extended to 15 and 30 years. In other words, it is not clear that how this is a default. In fact The Guardian says:

German government sources said they had received assurances from the international ratings agencies that they would not rush to judgment in declaring a Greek default but would take their time in studying the deal.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jul/22/bailed-out-eu...

Which implies to me that "default" is in the eye of the beholder.

Finance is not my kink, but my understanding is the nature of the "write down" is generally that as a bank you cannot borrow against the money that is owed to you, rather than actually giving up on collecting it entirely.

In other words, the OP headline sees a bit dramatic.

Re: Greece defaults

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just means that instead of having the train quickly derail, they're going to stretch it out like it were a Hollywood movie. Seriously. No one believes that debt is going to be repaid. The politicos are just praying that the train doesn't hit the ground on their watch. If you read the text of this, it just "says" they're going to extend all the terms. But we all know the truth. Shit is going to happen. If for no re…

Wrong. The way it appears now, the debt is going to be repaid over a longer period of time. Your confusion about this indicates that writers are not doing a good job explaining this to people.

Even if it does get repaid over a longer period, this more or less means those bonds are shot as an investment. Moreover, this means that no one is going to lend the Greek gov't any more money. I didn't see any terms in the agreement where they said they'd be lending the Greeks more money. That means the government is going to stop working. Or Greece will exit the Eurozone. The Greek gov't could of course cut all the way back, but that means a depression, which also means the money won't be paid back.
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