In the wake of the landslide victory by Greek Leftist party, Syriza, Europe is coming to terms with a renegotiation of the Hellenic debt. On Sunday, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis visited his French counterpart in Paris to discuss the future, as the formal Greek bailout plan ends at the end of the month. On Feb. 28, the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - collectively called the troika - will stop funding Greece unless the new government requests a continuation of the bailout provisions. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras campaigned on ending the bailout arrangement as it stands, thus we assume that come March 1, there will be a new Greece.
The Athens Stock Exchange appears to have accepted this new fate as equities have fallen over 12 percent since the newly elected government was seated. At issue is a high-stakes game of poker in which the Greeks hold the "Grexit" (Greek Exit) card, implying leaving the Eurozone altogether. The troika members and member states of the Eurozone hold the "cut-off funding" card. Both cards would spell disaster for the eurozone and Athens, as Greece would default in the near-term. Tsipras and his supporters argue that previous Greek governments have already forced Greece into insolvency and therefore delaying the inevitable through ineffective austerity measures only continues to cripple the frail Greek economy - and they appear to be correct.
An amnesty on some of the 300 billion euros in Greek debt would barely show up in the balance sheets of the ECB. Considering 60 percent of this debt is owed to Eurozone investors, member states are eager to come up with a solution wherein their investors can recover their principle. Another 10 percent is owed to the IMF while the ECB is owed only 6 percent outright. Non-eurozone banks and investors make up only 15 percent of the total debt, therefore any default of Greece will directly hurt the eurozone. Tsipras and his finance minister are keenly aware of these numbers; and with a newly issued mandate by the Greek electorate, they have the authority to enter into a game of chicken with their European counterparts. The Greeks have nothing more to lose as they see it, and thus they won't be blinking anytime soon.
The month of February will consist of public posturing by European leaders. Pictures of a stern looking Angela Merkel appearing to berate Tsipras while he stands tall, sans-tie, in Berlin will be plastered all over newspapers in the coming days. This will be followed by statements from ECB chairman Mario Draghi on the importance of austerity and the reluctance of the ECB to renegotiate even with its own member states.
After national audiences have been sufficiently pandered to and believe there elected officials have done what's right for them, what's actually best for eurozone investors will be implemented. Greek debt will be slashed by around 150 billion euros, the Greeks will rehire thousands of laid-off government employees, privatization schemes will be suspended and the Greeks will get the economic lifeline they are desperate for. The Greeks will join their European brethren in praying for the quantitative easing (QE) announced by the ECB to be their savior, which in five years, it will either have worked or it will have failed miserably. Failing any of this, however, both Greece and the eurozone will plunge into financial despair. This will be bad news for Turkey as the eurozone is one of its top trading partners.
The benchmark BIST-100 index took the past week of Greek negotiations in stride with the index trading higher on Monday. Equities have fallen a little over a percentage point in the last week as investors await further inflation reports and developments in Europe. The BIST-100 traded at 89,450 late Monday.
Bond markets saw mild profit taking with both the benchmark two-year and 10-year Government Issue trading lower as their yields edged up. The two bonds traded at 6.98 percent and 7.04 percent, respectively, off by 20 and 10 basis points in the last week. In currency markets, the Turkish lira traded higher against the U.S. dollar on Monday, trading at 2.4256 late Monday. It had traded nearly 200 basis points higher last week as investors moved out of the lira.
Credit default swaps, the insurance against economic uncertainty, were flat, trading at 1.88 percent to insure five-year Turkish corporate debt.
The Central Data Registry's "foreign participation index" in Turkish equities index dropped by 19 basis points to 64.25 percent in the last week, down from a record high of 64.44 percent.
A bailout of Greece will be great news for Turkish markets and the eurozone. Should inflation data released Tuesday indicate slowing inflation, markets will rally on expected rate cuts in the near future by the Turkish Central Bank.
