Greek PSI Update

Posted by on Feb 27, 2012 in Uncategorized | No Comments

So far, the PSI has become more confusing, rather than less confusing.  The official Greek PSI website now requires a variety of “confirmations” to proceed to the “invitations”.  So while waiting for the lawyers to figure out how to “check the boxes” it is actually harder to get information from the government on what is going on.

At the same time, there are still no details of which bonds remain in the “private sector” domain and which bonds specifically are held by the ECB.

Now Bloomberg actually has a whole series of bonds for the offer rather than a single amortizing bond.  That could be a mistake, though it is consistent with last Monday’s IIF press release, though inconsistent with Friday’s Greek press release (which may have been changed since they added “controls” to the website).

I expect at some point we will get an update that there is a high participation rate – but that will be from the banks who have no choice and from insurance companies who don’t seem well prepared to deal with real risk in their sovereign debt holdings.  While important, the key will be seeing the plans of any holdouts, and whether they wills stay the course or get pushed into agreement.

Germany is voting today, and is likely to approve, but there is a growing group of politicians willing to speak out against it.  Purely a move to help in future politics, but nonetheless shouldn’t be ignored since this bailout isn’t done and already there are concerns about a 3rd bailout, and Portugal and Ireland are potentially waiting in the wings for better deals of their own.