- Les Bourses nordiques décrochent

Les Bourses nordiques se sont effondrées jeudi, Stockholm et Helsinki perdant plus de 6% à la clôture, sur fond de doutes des investisseurs sur la vigueur de l'économie mondiale et de craintes persistantes sur la zone euro.
A la fermeture, la Bourse de Stockholm affichait une chute de 6,73%, celle d'Helsinki 6,45%, celle d'Oslo 5,97% et celle de Copenhague 4,69%.

- Is The Next Domino To Fall.... Canada?
While two short months ago, "nobody" had any idea that Italy's banks were on the verge of insolvency, despite that the information was staring them in the face (or was being [explicitly cautioned at by Zero Hedge->] days before Italian CDS blew out and Intesa became the whipping boy of the evil shorts), by now this is common knowledge and is the direct reason for why the FTSE MIB has two choices on a daily basis: break... or halt constituent stocks indefinitely. That this weakness is now spreading to France and other European countries is also all too clear. After all, if one were to be told that a bank has a Tangible Common Equity ratio of under 2%, the logical response would be that said bank is a goner. Yet both Credit Agricole and Deutsche Bank are precisely there (1.41% and 1.92% respectively), and both happen to have total "assets" which amount to roughly the size of their host country GDPs, ergo why Europe can not allow its insolvent banks to face reality or the world would end (at least in the immortal stuttered words of one Hank Paulson).
So yes, we know that both French and soon German CDS will be far, far wider as the idiotic market finally grasps what we have been saying for two years: that you can't have your cake and eat it, or said otherwise, that when you onboard corporate risk to the sovereign, someone has to pay the piper. Yet there is one place where that has not happened so far; there is one place that has been very much insulated from the whipping of the market, and one place where banks are potentially in just as bad a shape as anywhere else in Europe. That place is.... Canada.
As the chart below shows, which is a ranking of global banks by tangible common equity, lowest first, of the banks with a TCE ratio of under ~4% a whopping 30% are those situated in Canada, the same place where nobody thinks anything can go wrong, and which has been completely spared from the retribution of the bond vigilantes. Something tells us Canadian sovereign CDS, not to mention Canadian bank CDS, are both about to go quite a bit wider...






- Delors : «L'euro est au bord du gouffre»
Delors dénonce l'attitude de l'Allemagne.


Le père de l'Europe moderne, Jacques Delors, regrette que la chancelière allemande «n'ait fait aucune concession sur le fond» lors de sa rencontre, mardi, avec Nicolas Sarkozy. Comme le financier américain George Soros, il appelle à la création d'euro-obligations.
Un des père de la monnaie unique, Jacques Delors, ainsi qu'un des plus mythiques financiers de Wall Street, George Soros, font le même constat. «L'euro comme l'Europe est au bord du gouffre», s'inquiète le premier. «L'Europe est en danger», prévient le second. Les deux hommes proposent la même solution: mutualiser partiellement les dettes européennes en créant des obligations européennes (euro-obligations) afin de renforcer la zone euro et déjouer les attaques des marchés.
- Les craintes sur la croissance assomment Wall Street



- Le pétrole finit en chute de près de 6%
- La Bourse de Paris dégringole de 5,48%

- Zone euro : nouvelles craintes sur la liquidité des banques



- La Finlande se prépare à la rigueur







- Confidence is collapsing around us


By MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Confidence, the foundation of our economy and our markets and our democracy, is collapsing around us.
You can see it in the extreme volatility in the stock market, where 2% declines (interrupted occasionally with a 2% gain) have become commonplace. Investors are in a panic, rushing for the safest assets, such as cash, bonds, and gold.
And we’re seeing it in the economic data. Manufacturing firms in the Philadelphia region reported Thursday morning that business is horrible.
The Philly Fed index has been plunging like a stone.
Nearly half of the respondents to the monthly Philly Fed survey said business conditions had worsened in late July and early August. Forty-seven percent said new orders declined, while more than a third said shipments decreased. Read our complete story on Philly Fed factory index in free fall.
The 34-point drop in the Philly Fed index was the largest since October 2008, when the global economy was reeling from the failure of Lehman Bros. and the near-death of many other significant banks.
The drop in the Philly Fed index to negative 30.7 in August follows a weaker-than-expected survey from the New York Federal Reserve Bank earlier in the week. The news from these two Fed banks is that something awful is happening to business confidence.



- Home sales take a sharp turn down



- Les Bourses occidentales s'effondrent



- The Evil S&P Empire Strikes Back: Says Broad Muni Downgrade Will Come After Final US Budget



- Greece Threatens To Unwind Second Bailout By Agreeing To Finland Collateral Demands

One of the biggest stories this morning is that European cohesion and solidarity is about to crumble after it was disclosed that Greece was pursuing a private deal with Finland in which Greece promised to collateralize Finnish contributions, in essence eliminating Finland's contribution to the Greek Bailout round 2. As Kathimerini reported, "Greece and Finland agreed on Tuesday to virtually cancel the latter’s participation in the former’s second bailout package, following three days of negotiations between Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos and his Finnish counterpart Jutta Urpilainen. Finland’s share in the 109-billion-euro package amounts to about 1 billion, which Helsinki will pay to Greece but Athens will repay it through a new loan contract to be signed for this purpose and which will be valid for the next 25 years (likely to be the maturing period of the new loans, too). This means in practice that Finland’s contribution to the new package will be returned in full and deposited in a special account to be created by the Finnish government." End result is that everyone else has immediately come demanding the same treatment: first the Austrians, next the Dutch, and last the Slovenians. And what happens if Finland backtracks on its collateral demand: will it back out of the Greek bailout as well? Or, if Finland digs in, and all the non-German countries follow suit, will Germany say Enough and tell Europe (and China) to fix its own problems?
From Kathimerini:
Austria opposes Finland's deal with Greece on collateral for loans and will demand collateral as well if eurozone countries approve Finland's deal, a spokesman from Austrian finance ministry was quoted in a newspaper report as saying.

"The collateral model has to be open to all the euro zone countries. We will figure out if that's the case,» Harald Waiglein from the finance ministry told Finland's biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in a phone interview.

Earlier this week Finland reached a deal with Greece on collateral, its key condition for joining to help the debt-burdened country.

The agreement between Finland and Greece will allow the southern European nation to deposit cash in a state account that Finland will invest in AAA rated bonds. The interest generated will raise the amount to match the required collateral. Finland will return the money, plus interest, once the bailout loan is repaid, Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen said.

If Greece is unable to pay back its loans to the temporary stability mechanism, Finland would take possession of the capital put up by Greece following a procedure agreed upon in advance.
And from Reuters:
Austria, the Netherlands and Slovakia said Thursday they want collateral on loans to Greece after Finland secured a commitment, raising question marks over a second bailout agreed for Athens last month.

The three countries said their positions were not new and echoed the view of some other euro zone states.

They and the Finns account for only something like 11 percent of the new Greek bailout which totals 109 billion euros ($153.5 billion).

But new signs of discord will do nothing to encourage markets that euro zone politicians are getting on top of the debt crisis, after a blueprint from the leaders of Germany and France underwhelmed investors earlier this week.

"With more of Greece's euro zone partners asking for collateral for their contribution to the second rescue package, the available pool of money becomes smaller, rendering the success of the second package more difficult," said Theodore Krintas, head of wealth management at Attica Bank in Greece.
And why this could mean game over for the bailout plan:

Francois Cabau, economist at Barclays Capital, said Finland's insistence on collateral could threaten the process."

By agreeing to (collateral) ... you actually do the opposite of what you originally set out to do, withdrawing cash from ... somewhere that doesn't have any," he said. "This is likely to provoke some annoying political noise in the market."
It seems that Greece has realized just how precarious its rescue is courtesy of the following just released Venizelos headlines:
GREECE'S VENIZELOS SAYS COLLATERAL IS PENDING EURO APPROVAL
_ VENIZELOS SAYS HAS SHOWN GOOD FAITH, FLEXIBILITY ON PROGRAM
_ VENIZELOS SAYS COLLATERAL ACCORD IS PENDING EURO AREA APPROVAL
_ VENIZELOS SAYS GREECE COMPLETELY RESPECTS JULY 21 DECISION
The biggest problem is that Greece simply does not have enough collateral to backstop the entire €100+ billion second bailout tranche.
Look for this to be the source of the next "emergency" Merkozy meeting as Europe once again realizes that when you have 20 or so insolvent countries in the same union, things simply don't get done according to plan.



- Economic End Times



- A Society on the Verge of a Meltdown

By Jakob Augstein - The riots in London are a social Fukushima for the Western world.
Should we really be suprised that an increase in wealth for just a few, accompanied by simultaneous impoverishment of the masses, could not continue unabated?


- [Playing with Dynamite
_ Will Merkel's Coalition Hinder Euro Res->http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,781077,00.html]cue?

In light of the crisis in the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy would like to see further integration, including a euro-zone economic government. But it is precisely Germany that has sought to protect itself from transferring additional powers to Brussels.

Certains analystes, des «gens sérieux», commencent à réaliser quenous sommes peut-être sur la voie d’une Troisième Guerre mondiale, constate Business Insider.
Le site d’information économique s’appuie sur le communiqué officiel de l’agence de notation Standard & Poor’s (S&P) relatif à la dégradation de la note de la dette américaine, qui met particulièrement l’accent sur«l’incapacité du système politique américain» à gérer la crise. C’est donc la perspective de «l’aggravation du mauvais fonctionnement politique» qui a motivé cette décision, et non les «défis économiquesen cours». Pour Business Insider, cette situation va se détériorer:
«Les répercussions politiques, et même géopolitiques, de ce défi[économique] ne vont cesser de croître.»
Business Insider cite ensuite un article de John Judis publié dans The New Republic dans lequel le journaliste explique qu’une «dépression»plus longue et plus grave que ce qu’il était attendu semble désormais quasiment impossible à éviter, et qu'elle serait accompagnée de«bouleversements géopolitiques et d’un effondrement des institutions».Il évoque l’essor des «mouvements populistes d’extrême-droite» en Europe et aux USA, l’éventualité «de guerres économiques, d'une intense compétition sur les ressources naturelles et l’éventuel effondrement d’institutions comme l’Union européenne ou l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, et même la possibilité d’un conflit armé».



Attention, chute d'actions
Quelles conséquences pour l’entreprise quand ses actions dégringolent?
- Sur le parquet de la Bourse de New York, le 4 août 2011, après une baisse de plus de 4% du Dow Jones Brendan McDermid / Reuters -
Depuis le 24 juillet, les bourses mondiales ont perdu environ 8,1 billions de dollars [8 100 milliards] ce qui représente 14,8% de la capitalisation mondiale totale. Les investisseurs accusent clairement le coup, puisque ce sont eux les propriétaires des actions. Mais la chute des cours affecte-t-elle les entreprises concernées?
Indirectement, oui. Si vous achetez une action d’Apple 300$ et que vous la revendez 250$, l’entreprise elle-même ne perd pas d’argent. Dans ce sens, les fluctuations des cours d’un jour sur l’autre n’ont pas grande importance pour les entreprises stables qui ont des réserves de liquidités (Apple, par exemple, détient en ce moment 76 milliards de dollars). En revanche, une chute de son cours peut détruire une entreprise dépendant de financements extérieurs (PDF) pour ses opérations. La difficulté à obtenir des liquidités par le biais d’émission de titres est évidente—puisque le même nombre d’actions vendues à un prix inférieur produira moins d’argent. Les actions dont les cours baissent beaucoup font également augmenter le coût des emprunts, car les banques prennent en compte le cours de l’action d’une entreprise avant de décider de consentir un crédit et de calculer les taux d’intérêt. De nombreuses entreprises, particulièrement des sociétés jeunes dans des industries nécessitant un haut niveau de recherche et de développement comme les biotechnologies, ne peuvent survivre sans un accès à des capitaux bon marché.
La chute des cours peut également avoir une influence néfaste sur le maintien des employés dans leur société. Un certain nombre d’entre elles, notamment les jeunes, utilisent les stock options pour inciter leurs cadres à ne pas quitter l’entreprise, car le salarié doit y rester un moment s’il veut les exercer. S’il pense que ses options ne vont pas prendre de valeur — une stock option ne sert à rien si le cours de l'action est plus bas que le prix de l’option — il sera plus susceptible de quitter le navire. Et les clients peuvent eux aussi hésiter à faire affaire avec une société dont les actions dégringolent, dans la mesure où ils se demandent si elle sera encore là pour honorer les termes d’un contrat ou assurer la garantie d’un produit.