The challenges facing the Euro zone including most recently Italy seem so enormous and intractable that it’s easy to contemplate previously unimaginable outcomes. Der Spiegel reports that the German government is preparing for a possible Greek exit from the Euro. The currency was designed without an exit – it’s unclear how Greece could extricate itself. A weekend nationalization of banks with all deposits converted to drachma? The new currency would immediately collapse from its initial level as unwilling holders of drachma sold, and in any case the days and weeks leading up to such an event would no doubt see a sharp run on deposits from Greek banks. As it is there’s a tax on money leaving the country. And we read every day that supporting Italy will require the IMF and a reinforced EFSF. What will happen if Italy can’t refinance its debt, €250BN of which rolls over in 2012?

But you don’t need to bet on disasters to see downside for the Euro. Just muddling through and avoiding any of the crisis scenarios is going to involve slower growth. The Austerity Solution so favored by the EU and IMF is assuredly lowering GDP growth in the region as well as consumer confidence. The growth differential between the U.S. and the Euro-zone continues to widen. JPMorgan now forecasts +1.7% 2012 GDP growth in the U.S. versus -0.6% in the Euro-zone. Solutions and non-solutions seem to lead to the same place. The next 10% move in the exchange rate looks far more likely to be lower.

The Financial Times notes that Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) tanker ships are experiencing increased demand, one of the very few areas of shipping for which that is true. The rest of the shipping industry has shot itself in both feet as every operator positioned for a 10% increase in market share, which has crushed shipping rates through overcapacity and made the sector even less friendly than U.S. residential construction (if that’s possible). But the virtual shutdown of the Japanese nuclear energy industry following the earthquake has increased Japanese demand for LNG imports and is raising prices. Regrettably, producers of domestic natural gas in the U.S. are not direct beneficiaries because the U.S. currently has no facilities at which natural gas can be compressed for export, but greater global demand is a positive over the long term (i.e. 3-5 years).

Still on the subject of shipping, we continue to be invested in Aegean Marine Petroleum (ANW). They provide bunker fuel to the shipping industry and so operate a very different business model than their customers. Their stock price has been beaten down with their peers, although they continue to generate operating profits and just reported a third quarter of solid margins. If you can believe their book value (assets are ships and fuel inventory) the stock trades at a 40% discount. On their earnings call last week management asserted that market value for their ships was no lower than carrying value – much of the fleet is recently purchased so that ought to be true, although they did take a loss versus book value on the sale of one vessel in the third quarter. Even after rallying on last week’s earnings it still trades at less than 7 X ’12 estimated earings. We continue to hold a modest position in ANW.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) remains one of our biggest holdings, for reasons articulated the other day. Warren Buffett’s appearance on CNBC this morning was never boring, and he revealed an investment in IBM which is not a stock we would have bought ourselves. Many large cap U.S. stocks appear attractively priced, and the dividend yield on the S&P500 (SPY) remains more attractive than long-term government or high-grade bonds. The equity risk premium is not as wide as it was but remains nonetheless attractive in favoring equities over fixed income.

Disclosure: Author in Long EUO, BRK, ANW, SPY

In yesterday’s election the voters of Ohio rejected by 62% to 38% a state law that limited the ability of public sector workers to collectively bargain and to strike. It’s a remarkable reflection of how Ohio voters feel about their government – I mean, who do state employees work for if not the people of the state? Ohio employs 769,000 people in government which represents only 13% of the labor force, substantially less public sector employment than in other states. Union membership as a percentage of the labor force in Ohio is less than 14%, although modestly above the national average of 11.9%.

The law that the Republican-controlled legislature had passed included limits on the ability of public sector workers to collectively bargaining or strike and required greater contributions to their retirement and health plans. The average voter in Ohio must think that all these public sector workers work for some foreign government. I think they’re emulating the Greeks. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in Britain during the 70s when unions periodically held the country to ransom. At times in Europe they still do.

But as an investor you take the world as you find it. I don’t have any plans to invest in Ohio, nor live there. Democracy allows people to vote for concepts that are not obviously good for them. Ohio is adopting some of the values of Europe that have created the current Euro sovereign debt crisis.

Another near death experience in equity markets avoided – at least for now. Kevin KAL Kallaugher’s cartoon in last month’s newsletter could scarcely have been better timed (if you missed it October’s letter is available on our website). Stepping back to examine levels of risk seems a reasonable place to start.

There is perhaps no more fundamental a question for bank regulators than knowing how much systemic risk exists, and its trajectory. Although it’s hard to believe looking back over the past few years, there is a well-established trend in the U.S. to increase the amount of equity capital supporting banks. The chart below from the St. Louis Federal Reserve shows that banks have reached 11% equity to assets with only a modest drop during the financial crisis. The numbers exclude companies such as Lehman Brothers (which was not a commercial bank) whose equity: assets was reported to be as low as 3% (i.e. balance sheet leverage of around 30:1) when they filed for bankruptcy in 2008. When Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley quickly converted to banks in the aftermath an immediate consequence was that they reduce leverage. But looking at the system as a whole and measuring common equity divided by total assets there is a clearly improving trend upwards. This analysis does not include any risk-weighting of assets, nor does it include any off-balance sheet instruments such as derivatives that might be altering, perhaps substantially, the apparent reduction in risk displayed here.

Systemic banking risk may be lower by one measure, but it’s obviously an imperfect yardstick based on recent history. The chart below shows the standard deviation of GDP (from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) and the S&P 500. Economic swings have been fairly consistent for most of the past couple of decades while equity market volatility has been at times breathtaking. So is systemic risk really coming down or not?

The now soggy and cold Occupy Wall Street crowd may not yet articulate a coherent set of views, but one might speculate that the financially literate amongst them would favor still less risk rather than more. Measuring equity as a percentage of bank assets is a crude and obviously out-dated tool, in addition to which some of the biggest losses occurred outside the banking system (such as AIG and the Federal housing agencies FNMA and FHMC). The broader socialization of credit risk and a recognition that some banks are too big to fail have been necessary precisely because the banking system is (or at least was found to be in 2008) undercapitalized.  And even with  11% equity: assets, there can be little doubt that banks are in a class of their own when it comes to making their equity capital work hard. No other industry operates with anything like the leverage that banks employ. Companies with far more stable earnings incur far less balance sheet risk. To select a few by way of illustration: Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) has 34% equity: assets and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) 36%. These calculations exclude goodwill from assets and therefore use tangible common equity to be more conservative. As a result no adjustment is made to these and many other companies that own operating assets whose value has increased  substantially since they were acquired but which have not been written up in value on their balance sheets. Financial services companies rarely own assets worth more than their stated value. Loans and bonds are hopefully worth their face amount, but doing much better than getting your money back is hard unless such assets were acquired in distress and while banks often hold distressed assets they rarely acquire them as such. Even within the financial services sector Travellers (TRV) gets by with almost 21% equity. Not coincidentally, these are all holdings in our Hedged Dividend Capture Strategy, which seeks to offer better returns than corporate bonds through a hedged portfolio of equities of steadily growing and prudently managed companies. As regular readers know, outperforming high-grade bonds is not simply a reasonable objective it’s most likely imperative in order to avoid a loss in after-tax real wealth.

Banking leverage is definitely good for banks and is necessary at some safe level in order to allow credit creation and economic growth. While leverage has come down, financial risk has not and there may be a link between increasing compensation and higher levels of risk since the two have grown together. Reducing bankers’ bonuses shouldn’t be an objective of public policy, but further increases in capital would result in a greater share of profits to the providers of capital rather than labor and a safer system too. I’ve long felt banks were much better places to provide labor than capital, which is why I worked for a bank for a long time but have never invested in one beyond the requisite restricted stock employees receive. But since society bears much of the downside of banking catastrophes, it’s reasonable to ask whether society is receiving commensurate benefit. The financial system is measurably riskier over the past twenty years. Who else has this helped beyond the financiers?

It’s a complex question. The global economy has become more linked, and of course there’s only ever one version of history to evaluate. We can’t know how things would have turned out with even lower bank leverage but an otherwise unchanged script. There is no “control experiment” with which to compare, so it’s probably a question that will never have a satisfactory answer. There may be many problems with the Basle III capital guidelines, but directionally the shift towards even greater capitalization seems uncontroversial. If Greek sovereign debt hadn’t been assigned a risk weighting of zero under previous rules, French and German banks who suspended critical thought wouldn’t now hold so much of it. We wouldn’t have a semi-annual Euro crisis. As banks strenuously debate every increase in regulation, their attitude to systemic risk should be part of their response.

What exactly is a Credit Default Swap (CDS) on Greece worth? It seems likely that the International Swaps Dealers Association (ISDA), the industry body that rules on such things, will soon confirm that the 50% write-down on Greek debt accepted by the banks does not constitute a credit event, because it was accepted voluntarily by the banks and not forced upon them. Although the EMEA Determinations Committee has not yet met, ISDA’s website posts a press release that says, “…it does not appear to be likely that the restructuring will trigger payments under existing CDS contracts.”

Analysts have been predicting as such for weeks. But if a 50% loss doesn’t trigger an insurance pay-off, what does? And if Greek insurance doesn’t pay off, will CDS contracts on Italy, Spain or even France ultimately ever have any value? A sovereign default is a political decision, and quite possibly the insurance contracts owned will ultimately not protect their holders. It reminds me somewhat of the market for perpetual floating rate notes. Many years ago these instruments used to be priced as if they would eventually mature and traded at spreads comparable to finite-lived instruments. Then in 1987 investors realized that these instruments shouldn’t be priced as if one day the issuer would repay them and the market collapsed.

Such may be the fate of developed market sovereign CDS.

To list three credits of note:

COUNTRY	NET NOTIONAL (USD BN EQ)	GROSS NOTIONAL (USD BN EQ)	PRICE	NET MTM	GROSS MTM
FRENCH REPUBLIC	$24.0	$132.4	1.58%	$1.5	$8.4
KINGDOM OF SPAIN	$18.0	$167.8	3.16%	$2.3	$21.2
REPUBLIC OF ITALY	$22.0	$309.5	4.05%	$3.6	$50.1
TOTAL				$7.3	$79.7

Source: ISDA; CNBC.com

The table above takes most recent net and gross CDS outstanding from ISDA, combines them with current CDS prices and assumes four-year average maturity to estimate the approximate net and gross mark-to-market positions among participants from these three names. Although it should be a zero-sum game (i.e. gains for sellers of protections are losses for buyers) the table seeks to estimate the range of P&L swings among participants in the market. The true figures for these three are probably closer to the low end of the two totals above (i.e. $7.3BN) and even that assumes the swaps are worthless which is an extreme outcome. But the same analysis could be applied to other developed sovereigns, perhaps emerging market countries and even corporations deemed too big to fail. Indeed, it appears as if an important element of the negotiation between the banks and the EU was to ensure CDS contracts did not pay off. Avoiding contagion, but perhaps avoiding further losses (if the banks were themselves net sellers of CDS protection) were important consideration. A further step in the socialization of credit risk has been taken.

So buyers of CDS protection are confronting a brave new world. Perhaps selling protection on an EU  sovereign credit is suddenly the easiest money out there.