Soros bets against Euro

[Magda Hassan]

Finland To Support Portugal Bail Out In Exchange For Collateralization, Asset Sales


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2011 07:35 -0400

And so the stealthy campaign by Europe to asset strip its debtor prison nation continues. After on Saturday it was made clear that Europe will force Greece to issue an effective DIP loan ahead of its own bankruptcy, collateralizing post-petition creditors, and pushing existing sub noteholders lower in the cap structure, so the same scheme will now be used by Europe to grant Portugal rescue funding in exchange for Finland's "agreement" to help save the country. Per Bloomberg: "Finland will back a bailout for Portugal provided the third euro member to require aid in 12 months agrees to conditions including state asset sales. In addition, Finland wants a guarantee that bailout donors will get their loans repaid before private investors, he said." Which simply said, means that as PIIGS, already held hostage by a monetary union which threatens with world extinction should it be unwound, and by bankers who promise to never lend money should they be forced to take even once cent in senior debt impairments, will next be forced to literally sell themselves off at n blue light special auctions, where the liquidation sale biggest bidders will be none other than the very same financial institutions who have put these countries in their terminal predicament. Incidentally, all this is coming to municipalities and local governments in the US very, very soon.
More from Bloomberg:

"We have reached a common understanding," said Katainen, who leads parliament's biggest party after April 17 elections. He made the announcement following talks with the Social Democrats, Finland's second-largest group since the vote.

The accord ends months of uncertainty over whether the northernmost euro member would try to block rescue measures for Europe's latest fiscal casualty. Voters in Finland have rewarded parties critical of bailouts, with the euro-skeptic True Finns winning record backing to become parliament's third-biggest group. Katainen has struggled to secure Finnish support for Portugal's rescue before a May 16 meeting of his European counterparts and ahead of next week's coalition talks.

Naturally this means that the political crisisin the country will worsen, now that Timo Soini of the True Finns, whose recent Op-Ed in the WSJ was editorialized beyond recognition, has said he is out of any coalition government.

True Finns leader Timo Soini said today he won't join coalition talks, after Katainen made a pro-bailout stance a condition for negotiations.

"It was a hard decision, we made it ourselves," Soini said at a press conference. "We will now do opposition politics."

Expect many more anti-bailout political victories in Europe over the next several months.
And a little more on the collateralization issue, already discussed previously:

Finland will also require collateral from any countries seeking assistance from the European Financial Stability Facility after Portugal, Katainen said in a joint press release with Social Democrat leader Jutta Urpilainen.

"The collateralization issue makes a lot of sense politically and for sovereign creditors, but this is shadow burden-sharing for some bondholders, who will fall further down the credit food chain," Sassan Ghahramani, president and chief executive officer of SGH Macro Advisors in New York, said by phone yesterday.

Yet the bottom line is that Europe has kicked the can down the street for at least a few more months. Next: expect to see comparable riots in downtown Lisbon to what now appears to be a monthly, if not weekly, tradition in Athens' Constitution square.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/finland...sset-sales