SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - ISDA Calls Greece a 'Credit Event'

The market sloughed this late day news that ISDA declared a Greek credit event.

Let's see how they chew on it over the weekend. I think the algorithms missed it.

(Reuters) - Greece triggered the payment on default insurance contracts by using legislation that forces losses on all private creditors, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said on Friday.

The decision by the EMEA Determinations Committee to declare a so-called credit event was unanimous, ISDA said in a statement.

Markets showed little reaction to the widely expected decision. The euro edged lower against the U.S. dollar while U.S. Treasury prices saw losses pared after the ISDA announcement.

MF Global Trustee Freeh Asks Court to Pay MF Global Executive Bonuses

The entitlement of the financial class is the gift that keeps on giving.

And as for the customers? They are being asked to surrender their legal rights in order to receive partial payments.

Let them eat...er, is that even cake?

WSJ
MF Global Still Set to Pay Bonuses
By AARON LUCCHETTI and MIKE SPECTOR
March 9, 2012

Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much as several hundred thousand dollars each under a plan by a trustee overseeing the securities firm's bankruptcy case, people familiar with the matter said.

Louis Freeh, the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director now in charge of unwinding what is left of the New York company, is expected to ask a bankruptcy-court judge as soon as this month to approve performance-related payouts for the chief operating officer, finance chief and general counsel at MF Global, these people said. All three executives kept their jobs after the company's Oct. 31 failure in order to help Mr. Freeh untangle the firm's assets and maximize payouts to creditors.

Under the expected pay plan, the three executives and as many as 20 other MF Global employees working for Mr. Freeh would get the bonuses only if they hit specified targets such as increasing the value of MF Global's estate for creditors (led by JP Morgan - Jesse) ...

Read the rest here.

MF Global Trustee Giddens Asks Customers To Release Legal Claims In Return For Their Money

It is hard to believe that the Trustee Giddens intends to ask customers to surrender their right to sue Jon Corzine and other parties in return for only a partial repayment of their stolen money. 

This could be a simple misunderstanding. This would be a bit much even by the outrageous double standards of this scandal.

Let's see how this is resolved.

Bloomberg
MF Global Customers Call Trustee’s Demands ‘Unwarranted’
By Linda Sandler
Mar 8, 2012

MF Global Inc. trustee asked futures customers to release claims on the defunct brokerage in return for money they are owed, demanding an “unwarranted” transfer of legal rights, a group of customers said.

The customers, including William Fleckenstein, Thomas Wacker and Summit Trust Co., said in a court filing yesterday that they were notifying the judge supervising the firm’s liquidation of their “concern” in case he wasn’t aware that trustee James Giddens had mailed his demands to some customers along with his determination of their claims. One of Giddens’s demands may require customers to release claims made in class- action lawsuits, they said.

“It may be interpreted to release claims being asserted in the numerous class action lawsuits filed by aggrieved customers,” the customers said in the filing. “It could also potentially be asserted as a bar to recovery by some or all of the defendants joined in these lawsuits, including claims in the suits against parties alleged to be responsible for the misappropriation of customer funds.”

MF Global futures customers including Fleckenstein, a Seattle money manager, have filed at least seven separate suits against Jon Corzine, the parent company’s former chief executive officer, over the alleged theft of their assets, according to filings in federal court in Manhattan. Giddens has said there is a gap of at least $1.6 billion between funds he can obtain and commodity customers’ claims.

Kent Jarrell, a Giddens spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on yesterday’s filing. The futures customers will publish a detailed account of their objections to Giddens’s request later, they said in the filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan...

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

"When the international monetary system was linked to gold, the latter managed the interdependence of the currency system, established an anchor for fixed exchange rates and stabilized inflation. When the gold standard broke down, these valuable functions were no longer performed and the world moved into a regime of permanent inflation.

What will be the character of the international monetary system in the next century and how will gold intersect with it? This subject may strike modern audiences as a strange topic, but back in the 1960s, when people were deliberating about the future of the international monetary system, gold figured importantly in the discussions.

Even today, the importance of gold in the international monetary system is reflected in the fact that it is today the only commodity held as reserve by the monetary authorities, and it constitutes the largest component after dollars in the total reserves of the international monetary system."

Robert A. Mundell, Nobel Prize in Economics 1999

There is a fairly tight cap on silver.

The equity market seems to be pricing in a Greek settlement that is favorable to the paper markets. It is not yet clear that this is valid.

Let's see if this proves out, and how the precious metals react.