I’m continually disappointed that Moneyweb continues to partner with this distraction.

As I’ve done in the past, I’ve analysed very quickly some of the results of the most recent competition. As background to that, the basic rules are:

1. Put up R20,000 of your own money
2. Trade over three months in currencies, commodities single stock futures and some index trackers.
3. Whoever has the most at the end wins a million rand
4. Everyone keeps what is left of their initial “investment”

So let’s be clear, there are no long-term investment learnings here.

The winner did return 165.5% over 3 months, which is not an impressive performance even though it might look like it.  The point is, given the volatility of the investment universe available for the competition and the encouragement towards rampant risk-taking, it’s entirely pedestrian performance.  It’s very likely an individual’s performance will be good given the wide range of possible outcomes.

Let’s look at some other statistics

These are not performance statistics of which to be proud. They are similar to the losses incurred in prior competitions.

So in short, the competition cost the entrants in total just over a million rand. Losing a million rand is a great way to Make a Million.

The theory is that the insurer isn’t then exposed to changes in the term structure on interest rates, only exposed to illiqudity/reinvestment risk to the extent of mortality fluctuations, isn’t exposed to currency risk and certainly isn’t exposed to credit risk. Without complex margining requirements like some swaps and without the need to roll cash investments over, government bonds should allow ALM teams to sleep well.

Now, Solvency II is likely to adopt a swap yield curve rather than bond yield curve. There are some good reasons here, including arguably fewer distortions from temporary supply and demand imbalances, improved liquidity and so on. The same yield curve is used for liquid liabilities so the allowance for an illiquidity premium over and above the swap curve at some times, in some ways and for some products is still under debate.

But what should Greek insurers do in the meantime?

Frankly, Greek government bonds don’t remove credit risk and the huge credit spreads on these instruments will create huge funding gaps and variability in earnings unless a Greek govi yield curve is used to value liabilities as well. It’s not clear at all that Greece will stay part of the Euro, so German government bonds don’t remove currency risk. German government bonds in any case are show signs of nervousness as yields creep up.

The swap market is exposed to the same Euro break-up risks as bonds. Which banks will survive, what happens to currencies in the meantime and what does that do to long-term Euro swaps? What about Euro-Sterling swaps issued by Greek banks (I’m not sure if these even exist though).

All in all, it’s good to be involved in ALM in South Africa, and even the Middle East just at the moment.

I wouldn’t want anything to do with any bank that has much at all to do with European banks or European sovereign debt. The old South African Rand is seeming like a safer relative bet than at pretty much any other time in the last decade.

Part of the deal is a “50% loss for private investors”. Which is part true and part nonsense but will be an effective Greek default when enacted / agreed. (I don’t care how “voluntary” it may be, it’s a default and almost all definitions of default include restructuring of debt in any way that isn’t what was originally promised.)

Why is it only partly true? Well it’s not necessarily a “loss” for private investors. The probability of default on Greek bonds has been just about 100% for a while now. This probability of default is derived from market prices for Greek bonds and market spreads on Greek Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and an assumed Loss Given Default or Recovery Rate for investors when the bonds do default. Actual Recovery Rates vary widely, but often analysts plug in the average Recovery Rate over most of this century on unsecured debt which is around 40%.

So if market prices for Greek bonds assumed 100% default probability and a 40% recovery, then a 50% recovery doesn’t sound so bad. The potential downside is that Greece may still (need to) default on these written-down bonds at some point in the next two decades.

So the real question is what will the new probability of default be? Then we will know whether investors “took a loss” and perhaps gain the market’s view on how successful the deal really will be.

Hearing that the conditions are sufficiently onerous that the borrower may not want it is great news. At the very least this reflects a balanced package rather than one heavily in favour of the undemocratic absolute monarchy of our neighbour.

I wonder how many of these conditions were added or modified after the initial public announcement. Cosatu, amongst other powerful groups, has also been very outspoken against the loan.

Nevertheless, S&P did downgrade. Why? I don’t think it is primarily to do with a materially increased estimated probability of default. It has more to do with a change in the payoffs in a ‘game’ (as in game theory) S&P is playíng.

Consider the quadrant of options. S&P downgrades or doesn’t and the US defaults or doesn’t. I’ve constructed totally hypothetically, but perhaps plausible scenarios below, for the S&P’s potential assessment of losses under each possibility given their views and external perceptions of them before and after 2008.

Before 2008, the fallout that would come from downgrading the US and the US not defaulting would be significant and cries of “un-American” might be heard again. Even if the US were downgraded, default would still be a blow for S&P since anything above a BBB rating really shouldn’t ever default if there models are “correct”. I’ve thrown in another hypothetical, a 0.01% probability of default – in other words very low, and as you’ll see in the next scenario, not necessarily higher now for S&P to change their view.

Now, either on a traditional minimax (minimizing the maximum cost) or an expected value basis, before 20008 S&P wouldn’t downgrade the US. This is an important calibration, since S&P didn’t downgrade the US.

After 2008, even if we leave the assessed probability of default unchanged, the world is different and therefore we have different costs.  If S&P doesn’t downgrade the US – even if the US doesn’t default, there will be a cost to S&P since might share the view that the US could default now. The dent in credibility since 2008 means that S&P has to try harder to convince the skeptics that they don’t rate risky instruments as AAA. Along with this goes a massive hit if the US does default and S&P hasn’t downgraded the US. The good news is that at least now a downgrade is viewed more with more understanding even if the US doesn’t default (although be sure Obama’s White House is not happy at the moment).

After 2008, even if the assessed probability of default is unchanged, the minimax and expected value rules both suggested a downgrade is the better option for S&P.

So it turns out he was wrong.

Some of the individual underlying economies are in good shape. There is much to be said for Germany’s productivity levels, technology, social safety nets, strong exports, apprenticeship system and more. The house market / debt problems of the south are less obviously good.

The real problem is with the Euro. A single currency in an area more inclusive than theory would suggest as ideal for a common monetary area AND without fiscal union is proving to be very unstable.

I’m not quite ready to make a prediction that the Euro won’t survive, but I’m looking to that as a real possibility. Just take a look at the Germany-Italy spreads to get an idea of how nervous the market is.

It’s chock-full of analysis, numbers, tables and charts showing how as much as things change, the scope for financial crises changes very little.  The comparison of Developed and Emerging Markets is particularly interesting in that the differences, while they do exist, are far smaller than stereotypical views.  Emerging Markets do tend to have more ongoing sovereign defaults, but the frequency of banking crises is little different. Weirdly, some aspects of Emerging Market crises (such as employment impacts) are less than average for the Developed World.

It isn’t really the book’s fault, but this was one of the few books that I struggled with on my kindle – the graphs and charts and captions to figures were particularly difficult to read. Perhaps they would look better on the Kindle DX (the larger model) or even an iPad or something.

Although the book doesn’t focus on the current (still-happening, if you weren’t paying attention) financial crisis, there are several chapters dedicated to it with an analysis of the economic indicators leading up to the crash. Now it’s incredibly easy to predict an event after it’s happened, but I’m still hopeful that the results can be useful in predicting future problems and potentially impacting economic policies and regulations for the better.

Some key conclusions from the book for predictors of financial crises:

• markedly raising asset prices (yes, and in particular house prices given the likely co-factor of increases in debt levels)
• slowing real economic activity
• large current account deficits
• sustained debt build-ups (public and/or private)
• large and sustained capital inflows to a country
• financial sector liberalisation or innovation

That last point was particularly interesting for me – for all the statements that the US economy’s brilliant use of innovation and reduced regulations being a risk mitigant, history suggests this as a cause for the crisis.

For me, what was quite worrying is how well South Africa matches many of these points in the 2000s.  It seems that we either got off very lightly, or there is still an extended period of difficulty ahead.

After banking crises, house prices typically decline in real terms by 35.5% and this slump lasts on average 6 years. Now South Africa didn’t have a bank failure, so it may be that we missed the definition of “banking crisis”. However, given the pullback in credit offered along with international banking crises and property market declines, this suggests we’re in for an extended period of property market stagnation.

This begs the questions:

1. What business plans were used in determining investment on our airports?
2. How did actual experience compare to those budgets?
3. What can we and ACSA learn from the difference between expectations and actual?
4. Did the marketing benefit of the World Cup more than offset the de-marketing impact of higher costs of travel to (and inside) South Africa?
5. Have these “investment expenditures” been capitalised on ACSA’s balance sheet and has the resultant asset been impaired or not?
6. Have these additional costs been added to the official costs for the World Cup (and why not?)

Who am I kidding -  huge sums of money were spent on the gut feel that it was a good idea and because spending other people’s money is easy and it’s self-glorifying to build grand airports.

The article is fairly balanced, indicating the recent (and trust me on this, ongoing) problems with BitCoins. The idea of the app is fairly neat, using camera, display and barcodes to effect transactions. Then I read:

“Right now, Bitcoin appeals mostly to the hacker types,” said Android developer Brandon Iles, the app’s creator. “Down the line, though, it could gain traction between friends. There’s an advantage over credit card companies because there’s no fees involved in the transaction.”

Now this is a quote so I can hardly blame the journo, but the utter blindness of those involved with Bitcoin continues to astound me.

Yes, it may be easier to transfer bitcoins between friends than credit card transactions. However, after the transfer one of the parties is left with bitcoins that still need to be converted to something useful. Like real money perhaps. Bitcoins aren’t a unit of account, they aren’t a store of value and they are a means of transacting outside of a tiny handful of people who think it’s cool.

Bitcoin is a speculative fad.

But again, the worst thing that could ever happen is that it could actually become “money” since it shackles monetary policy (in a not dissimilar way to how the gold standard magnified the Great Depression and how not being on the gold standard made our current problems easier to deal with (pdf)). A hint – we produce more goods all the time, a limited currency means deflation, which is bad for economies (see Japan over the last, uh, 20 years?) and limits policy responses to economic downturns.

I’ve blogged about Bitcoins being a terrible idea before (and here and here too)

Update:  Thanks to @RiaanSingh for a link to an article from the economist magazine’s website asking whether economists agree with the excitement expressed by geeks for Bitcoins.  Unsurprisingly, they give the same message and the same flaws as I’ve expressed (albeit far more eloquently and with better pictures).  However, while they go as far to state that Bitcoins will likely lead to deflation, they don’t go far enough in outlining the dangers of deflation for an economy.

As an aside, US average hourly wage decreased according to the latest employment statistics (pdf) (see page 3). This in the face of many talking heads freaking out about inflation and what loose monetary policy has done. US Long term interest rates are still barely above 3%.  So yes, inflation in the US should not be first priority – jobs jobs jobs is what is needed.  (An easier job in the US since this is still primarily cyclical unemployment rather than South Africa’s more-difficult-to-fix structural unemployment.)