If Greece defaults on its debt, the direct secondary effects on financial institutions could be much worse than what we saw after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers sent shockwaves through the global financial system—in part because it revealed that the United States government was willing to let a large, interconnected, complex financial company go bankrupt. Panic erupted, threatening the financial stability of other companies.

But the actual direct effects were few. Lehman had some 600,000 derivatives contracts and hundreds of billions in outstanding bonds, but Lehman’s institutional creditors were generally required to reserve some capital against Lehman’s collapse. This greatly diminished the direct knock-on effects of Lehman’s bankruptcy. Capital cushions actually cushioned.

There is roughly 270 billion Euros in outstanding Greek sovereign debt. Banks—mostly European banks—hold around 100 billion Euros of Greek bonds. Insurance companies, pensions funds and central banks hold most of the other 170 billion. For the most part, these holders of Greek debt have not had to reserve any capital against losses. This means that most of the holders of Greek debt will feel the full brunt of the losses, which raises the question of whether they are adequately capitalized to take the loss.

European bank capital regulations treat Eurozone sovereign debt as riskless. This was, in effect, a subsidy to the riskier Eurozone governments—allowing them to borrow at far lower costs than they other would have faced. The spread between German and Greek debt fell to 20 basis points in 2004, thanks largely to this subsidy. Read the rest of this entry »