While today’s market dump was certainly dramatic, it was a function of the scant liquidity in the market (as we warned would be the case first thing) and outsized moves following last week’s mauling, not the result of any fundamental (or not so fundamental) news.
That could change tomorrow, and change for the worse, because as Barclays reminds us, tomorrow is when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) is scheduled to hear testimony on the ECB’s non-existent Outright Monetary Transactions program (OMT). Recall that the OMT is the imaginary (again: non-existent) byproduct of Draghi’s “whatever it takes” speech: a byproduct that was supposed to exist purely in the imaginary realm (as it was merely a verbal bluff, one which was never meant to be actually activated), and never actually take practical shape (hence, why the OMT’s legal term sheet still does not exist, over two years later).
Sadly for Draghi, and the entire Deus Ex theater that managed to send European peripheral bonds from record wides yields to record low, tomorrow it will attain some much dreaded shape.
And while a ruling on the legal questions forwarded by Germany’s Constitutional Court is not expected this year, the hearing and questions posed by EU judges may give some early insights into their views and to what extent they might share the view of the German court that, unless several restrictions are imposed, the OMT should be considered illegal under European law.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 10/13/2014.
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