And the markets’ reaction to this latest debt deal shows how the jig may be up when it comes to soothing investors while politicians play kick the can, writes MoneyShow’s Jim Jubak, also of Jubak’s Picks.
What, no dancing on Wall Street, or in the City of London? Or Frankfurt? Paris? Madrid?
The reaction to the new €130 billion Greek rescue package has been strikingly pessimistic—and surprisingly realistic.
In US markets, the Dow Industrials and the S&P 500 indexes closed up a piddling 0.12% and 0.07% today. In Europe, the German DAX index closed down 0.58%, the French CAC down 0.21%, and the Spanish Ibex down 0.58%. In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed up 0.25% and the Shanghai Composite was up 0.75%…but I expect them to follow the US and European lead tonight.
Why?
Because the markets are already billing this as the solution that solves nothing. The deal just kicks a probable Greek default down the road a few months, and investors fully expect to revisit exactly this crisis in May or June.
That wouldn’t be a problem for market indexes, except that this deal comes after a rally in global financial markets that pretty much anticipated all the good news in the announcement—and more.
This morning, the Financial Times published a ten-page debt-sustainability assessment put together for Eurozone officials last week just hours after the deal was announced, and while Eurozone finance ministers were still working out the details of the package. In effect, that meant the deal came to the financial markets with a damning critique attached.
The report goes straight to the heart of the likely failure of the austerity strategy being imposed on Greece in exchange for €130 billion in rescue money. Austerity could cause the level of Greek debt to rise as the size of the Greek economy shrinks.
And that could require support from outside sources—the Eurozone countries, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank—well past the 2014 timetable envisioned in the current plan.
Under what the report called its “baseline” scenario, Greece would need about €170 billion in rescue, well above the €130 billion agreed today. Under what the report called its “tailored downside” scenario, Greece would need €245 billion.
The report went on to cast doubt on the assumption in the current rescue package that Greece would return to economic growth in 2014. Or that Greece will be able to return to the private debt markets to sell bonds by 2014 or 2015.
The best that anyone at a European investment house had to say about the deal today is that it would buy time to wind up Greece’s affairs in an orderly manner before the country goes into default later in 2012.
Those skeptics will be looking for action at the March 1 summit of European leaders that indicates that the Eurozone will actually use that time well. An addition to the firepower of the permanent European Stability Mechanism to €750 billion from €500 billion is reported to be on the preliminary agenda for that meeting.
Bringing that to a vote—and actually passing it—would be the Eurozone’s first chance to show that it intends to put the time purchased by this deal to good use.
