Central Planners vs Credit agencies.

Every move of the market is by now turning into a war between the rating agencies and the central planners. While the news of an modified EFSF reached the news yesterday evening, the S&P came out with some severe downgrades of the biggest banks. Yes, many have pointed out the under performance of the financials prior to the downgrade, and yes somebody will look into the information flow (but as we have learnt over the past days, what is insider trading, is not that clear cut), but where this conflict of interest between the central planners and reality will eventually take us is still to be seen. From Bloomberg;

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Citigroup Inc. (C) had long-term credit grades reduced to A- from A by Standard & Poor’s after the ratings firm revised criteria for dozens of the largest global lenders.

Standard & Poor’s made the same cut to Morgan Stanley (MS) and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) was reduced one level to A from A+. S&P upgraded Bank of China Ltd. (3988) and China Construction Bank Corp. (939) to A from A- and maintained the A rating on Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., giving all three lenders higher grades than most big U.S. banks.

The moves may increase pressure on firms bracing for Europe’s mounting sovereign debt crisis and navigating economic weakness. Bank of America, which has plunged 62 percent this year in New York trading, said in a regulatory filing this month that it may have to post billions of dollars of additional collateral and termination payments on its trades if it were to be downgraded one level by rating companies.

“It’s evident that stress from the European banking system is taking its worldwide toll,” Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, said in an e-mail.

S&P, a unit of New York-based McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP), has been changing the way it looks at debt after its faulty grades contributed to the credit-market seizure that brought down Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. It started to review the methodology in December 2008, months after the collapse of those two firms.
`Adverse Impact’

The company, which noted the risk of downgrades from S&P and Fitch Ratings in its third-quarter filing, previously said it has prepared by lining up funding for a year. (Full article and full list of  changed ratings (ZH)).

And the (no) news on that (in) famous EFSF;

Brussels/Luxembourg – Euro area Finance Ministers agreed on 29 November on the terms and conditions to extend EFSF’s capacity by introducing sovereign bond partial risk participation and a Co-Investment approach. Ministers also adopted amended EFSF guidelines concerning intervention in the primary and secondary debt markets and precautionary credit lines in order to use leverage. Klaus Regling CEO of EFSF commented “Both options are designed to enlarge the capacity of the EFSF so that the new instruments available to the EFSF can be used efficiently”.

Under the partial risk protection, EFSF would provide a partial protection certificate to a newly issued bond of a Member State. The certificate could be detached after initial issue and could be traded separately. It would give the holder an amount of fixed credit protection of 20-30% of the principal amount of the sovereign bond. The partial risk protection is to be used primarily under precautionary programmes and is aimed at increasing demand for new issues of Member States and lowering funding costs.

Under option two, the creation of one or more Co-Investment Funds (CIF) would allow the combination of public and private funding. A CIF would purchase bonds in the primary and/or secondary markets. Where the CIF would provide funding directly to Member States through the purchase of primary bonds, this funding could, inter alia, be used by Member States for bank recapitalisation. The CIF would comprise a first loss tranche which would be financed by EFSF.

Chris Frankel CFO and Deputy CEO of EFSF commented “Following extensive discussions with investors covering all types and geographical regions, a number of them have given their positive views and signalled their willingness to participate.”

EFSF will now implement these two approaches to be ready early in 2012 to use them effectively in the context of the guidelines for the new instruments on market interventions.

EFSF will be able to use both leverage options simultaneously. The final amount of “firepower” achieved through the use of the options will depend upon the concrete use and mix of the instruments and particularly the exact degree of protection between 20% and 30%. EFSF has currently a lending capacity of €440 billion and firm commitments regarding Ireland and Portugal totalling €43.7 billion.

EFSF is also expected to finance a second aid programme for Greece and fulfil tasks such as financing recapitalisation of financial institutions in non-programme countries. Without knowing the exact amounts needed, EFSF should be able to leverage own resources of up to €250 billion. Deployment of either instrument using leverage will only be made following a request from a Member State. Any support from the EFSF will be linked to strict policy conditionality, monitoring and surveillance procedures.