Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Buxelles on Greece - While Juncker's and Rehn's statements marked a significant shift in official comment on Greece's predicament, there was apparent disagreement among other senior officials about whether such a move was the right thing to do, although that may have reflected the confusing array of phrases used. "Restructuring, rescheduling -- off the table," French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said late on Monday, after Juncker had hinted at a "reprofiling" of Greek debt, a way of extending the maturities on its loans without going through a more fundamental restructuring process. "A restructuring or a rescheduling, which would constitute a default situation, what we would call a credit event, are off the table for me," she said. European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny told Austrian radio that a "soft restructuring" was not on the cards, insisting that Greece needed to shore up its finances. While all EU officials have rejected the idea of a full-on default, they have now introduced at least three terms to refer to the possibility of some alteration in the repayment schedule of Greek debt: restructuring, rescheduling and reprofiling. From the financial markets' point of view, there may be little difference among them. The manager of a debt fund in the United States joked that the only time he had heard the word "reprofiling" used was in reference to a nose job. But sovereign debt analysts draw a distinction between restructuring, which involves enforced losses, and "reprofiling," when bondholders are asked to exchange short-term debt for longer-dated bonds with a similar coupon, thereby altering the profile of the yield curve and effectively giving the debtor more time to repay the loan.

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