Cyprus is truly a fascinating country. Have you heard of the ESTIA scheme? What is happening there is extraordinary. A quick thread.
The general idea of the scheme is great! The purpose is "to deliver a socially acceptable and financially sustainable restructuring solution to vulnerable borrowers who have mortgaged their primary residence".
Indeed, that sounds like a great idea. But how ?
Very straightforward.
"The government subsidizes part of the repayment instalments by 1/3 of the restructured loan."
WOW. FREE MONEY ! THAT'S GREAT! TAKE THE MONEY !
But bizarrely the scheme is a total flop. Barely anyone uses it. Isn't this strange. Why would people refuse free money?
There's a catch: to get the free money you need to give data on your income and wealth.
And believe it or not, people in Cyprus prefer to keep their finances secret than to get free government money !
How do you spell tax f... sorry, not the point of the thread. So you'd think banks are pissed off? Clients don't take the free money, so they can't repay! Surely, that's bad!
NO! THEY ARE SUPER HAPPY!
Why?
Because under the scheme, if people refuse the government's help, it's open bar for the bank to foreclose the assets 🤣
I mean, there are unintended consequences of public policy, and there is this. It's a work of art.
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It took me a while to write this thread about the ECB’s Financial Stability Review, but that is because (thanks to @michaelsteen and his great team), I got clarifications on some important points.
A lot has been said already, so I’ll try to focus on items which are not obvious.
On the macro front, I will just mention this chart, which looks at the phase-out of measures I believe are the most important for GDP/Banks: in the periphery Spain looks better than Italy, in Core, Germany is stronger.
But there are dozens of other interesting charts in the report, there is just no point reproducing them here. Let’s look at banks, now.
We all know one reason banks are doing well since the beginning of the Covid crisis is that so much has been swept under the rug with guarantees and moratoriums.
So it’s great to actually have a look at what is hidden under that carpet! Thanks, EBA.
Let’s start with the basics: the numbers, in % of loan book. And the differences in the EU are huge.
THE GOLDEN CARPET AWARD GOES TO CYPRUS
(And it's not even close even if Portugal, Hungary or a few others are really worrying.)
But one should be careful: EBA moratorium are not the only measures, some banks took measures that were not “EBA compliant”. Is this significant? Well, in some countries it’s up to 40% of all Covid measures.
Indeed, this strange phenomenon turned out to be the key to unlock one of the biggest mysteries of the universe: the wave-particle duality!
But it took a while to get there, because, unlike reflection or refraction, diffraction is hard to observe.
Let’s start with the basics: a shadow. Surely, that’s how you think a shadow works. The shape of the shadow is exactly the shape of the object because light travels in straight lines.
Time for our second thread! Because refraction has not revealed all its mysteries yet!
You will discover how a Danish doctor & hikers in Iceland defeated the mighty Newton & made America great… for the first time! But also how they (unknowingly) revolutionized physics!
The work of Descartes’s (and others) had clarified refraction.
This was the basis on which Newton would build his (second) masterpiece, Optics, and his theory of light. But you need to understand something first.
Ever since the Ancient Greeks, most scientists were convinced that any color was coming from the color of one of the four elements, but with varying intensity. So, for example, Aristotle knew that a prism decomposes light but he understood it this way:
The early study of light was mostly geometric & about straight lines. Thales’s theorem proven (hum!) using the shadows of the great pyramid, Eratosthenes’ measurement of the Earth’s circumference using the shadows in Alexandria & Assouan: light rays contributed to progress.
But one phenomenon baffled scientists and philosophers for centuries: refraction. And they were right to be baffled because understanding refraction led to the discovery of one of the most important principles of physics…But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
We finally have some Google mobility data for the lockdown period in France, after the end of the school holidays. What does it say?
I compared the daily cumulated changes in the mobility indicators after the announcement of the 1st & 2nd lockdown. Quick thread.
1st methodological point: for Lockdown 2 I compared the values after the lockdown was announced to the values before the holidays - to avoid some obvious bias.
The lockdown didn't start immediately. Unsurprisingly we can see a rush to retail on 1st day, which is consistent with anecdotal data saying that everyone decided to have a least beer/restaurant, whatever. Then the drop is sharp, but less than in LD1 (many shops r open)