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# The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

## Re: on German banks and Southern Europe

Released on 2012-09-29 00:00 GMT

Email-ID | 126051
Date | 2011-09-14 01:57:15
From | michael.wilson@stratfor.com
To | analysts@stratfor.com
List-Name | analysts@stratfor.com

forgot a note I wanted...in red
On 9/13/11 6:54 PM, Michael Wilson wrote:
I don't think we need to even look at German banking exposure to figure
out why the German's are bailout out greece (which the numbers priesler
put below clearly show are not the reason.) All we have to do is look
back to past STRATFOR pieces.
I put both the MittleEuropa piece below as well as the piece on
German-intra EU & eurozone exports below, which clearly shows they have
an incentive to continue bailout out greece as long as it threatens the
dissolution of the Eurozone, an entity which is in their interests to
continue Which is where Peter's idea about kicking them out comes in
once a fund is contructed that makes them not threaten the Eurozone
What if, instead of the euro being designed to further contain the
Germans, the Germans crafted the euro to rewire the European Union for
their own purposes?
.......It is not so much that STRATFOR now sees the euro as workable in
the long run - we still don't - it's more that our assessment of the
euro is shifting from the belief that it was a straightjacket for
Germany to the belief that it is Germany's springboard. In the first
assessment, the euro would have broken as Germany was denied the right
to chart its own destiny. Now, it might well break because Germany is
becoming a bit too successful at charting its own destiny. And as it
dawns on one European country after another that there was more to the
euro than cheap credit, the ties that bind are almost certainly going to
weaken.
The paradigm that created the European Union - that Germany would be
harnessed and contained - is shifting. Germany now has not only found
its voice, it is beginning to express, and hold to, its own national
interest. A political consensus has emerged in Germany against bailing
out Greece. Moreover, a political consensus has emerged in Germany that
the rules of the eurozone are Germany's to refashion. As the European
Union's anchor member, Germany has a very good point. But this was not
the "union" the rest of Europe signed up for - it is the Mitteleuropa
that the rest of Europe will remember well.
Read more: Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux | STRATFOR
Of Germany's total exports in 2008, 43 percent went to the eurozone, 63
percent to the European Union (which includes the eurozone), and 37
percent to the rest of the world. When viewed this way, non-EU exports
only account for 16.5 percent of Germany's GDP, though that number grows
to 25.7 percent of GDP if Germany's exports to EU member states outside
the eurozone are considered.
Read more: Germany: An Examination of Exports | STRATFOR
On 9/13/11 2:48 AM, Benjamin Preisler wrote:
On 09/13/2011 03:01 AM, Michael Wilson wrote:
On 9/12/11 4:45 PM, Benjamin Preisler wrote:
This is the data from the last European-wide stress test of banks.
As you can see German exposure to Southern European government
bonds is somewhere around 60bnEUR. The data is from 12/2010 though
and since German banks have massively sold off Greek and Italian
debt especially (I remember a 9bnEUR figure for Italy alone, no
link though). If you want an indicator of the direction things
have been moving check out to what extent German banks were
exposed to Italian bonds alone in the previous stress test.
In addition to those sovereign bonds, German banks are holding
about 12bnEUR worth of assets in Greece, 137bnEUR in Italy,
130bnEUR in Spain. (I estimated those numbers real quick based on
this.) Again, these numbers are from 12/2010, so one can safely
assume that they have gone down since. (Also keep in mind that
Commerzbank effectively is still (semi-)nationalized.) btw who is
buying all this debt (assuming very cheaply and that Germany
selling these down is still at a loss) Good question, I don't
know. Maybe they're not even selling, I just assume they are to
minimize their potential write-offs. When I was in Greece over the
summer business people told me that right now is the time to buy
assets cheap.
Just to put this into context: The ECB has bought bonds worth
143bnEUR by now, Ireland received a 85bnEUR bailout, Portugal
78bnEUR, Greece's two bailouts will total somewhere around
240bnEUR.
Random note, these numbers german to greek exposure right? German
to Southern Europe pale when you compare them with Spanish or
French bank exposure to these in absolute terms and Greek, Italian
and Spanish banks exposure within their own countries in relative
terms.
Ok so what do we take from this? If Germany were to face a
bailout, just purely based on its exposure to greece it wouldnt be
that bad, right? ...it would less than what they have pledged to
EFSFII. German (direct) exposure to Greece is very, very limited and
mostly comes through the ECB (and then the Bundesbank). The private
banking sector isn't in any danger because of Greece (only more so
if you keep in mind that both HRE and Commerzbank are not really
private right now).
So they are worried about the larger fragility of the system. Is
that larger fragility due to say French exposure to Greece and
German exposure to France? In other words direct financial
contagion? Or (I assume more likely) is it due to Northern european
exposure to all southern economies and wanting to make sure they can
still raise debt at affordable levels. The European banks are linked
all over the place of course, the German banks would be exposed
indirectly in a number of ways through Spanish, French and Italian
banks holding assets in Southern Europe. One other thing to keep in
mind though is that the Southerners banking sectors would implode
first, not the German banks. If you add up all those numbers cited
above you realize that it might come cheaper for the Germans to
simply buy up all of its banks' exposure in Southern Europe than to
continue bailout out those guys.
Benjamin Preisler
+216 22 73 23 19
--
Michael Wilson
Director of Watch Officer Group, STRATFOR
michael.wilson@stratfor.com
(512) 744-4300 ex 4112
--
Benjamin Preisler
+216 22 73 23 19
--
Michael Wilson
Director of Watch Officer Group, STRATFOR
michael.wilson@stratfor.com
(512) 744-4300 ex 4112
--
Michael Wilson
Director of Watch Officer Group, STRATFOR
michael.wilson@stratfor.com
(512) 744-4300 ex 4112