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Via John R. Schindler of The XX Committee, Do the Swiss know something the rest of us don’t? Ueli Maurer, the Swiss defense minister, has been making coy statements about the European crisis getting ugly – as in really ugly, like needing armed troops to deal with it. This sounds more like Greece, where the rioting is regular and increasingly scary, than anything in Central Europe, but where the whole EU furball is headed does seem less than clear of late.
Greece is about to get an installment of 8 billion Euro. I'm going to assume that is their quarterly installment. Greece is running a primary deficit of about 6 billion Euro (as best as I can figure out). So that is 1.5 billion per quarter. So about 19 cents of every Euro of bailout money makes it way to fund Greece's current overspending. As best as we can tell, Greek banks hold about 75 billion of debt and other Greek entities hold about 25 billion, bringing the total to 100 billion.
And many thought Bill Gross was only posturing when he said he is getting the hell out of dodge. Based on still to be publicly reported data by Pimco's flagship Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, in the month of January, has taken its bond holdings to zero (and -14% on a Duration Weighted Exposure basis). The offset, not surprisingly, is cash.
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