[HN Gopher] Credit Suisse's $17B of Risky Bonds Are Now Worthless
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Credit Suisse's $17B of Risky Bonds Are Now Worthless
 
Author : nairboon
Score  : 44 points
Date   : 2023-03-19 21:31 UTC (1 hours ago)
 
web link (www.bloomberg.com)
w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
 
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If the casino always wins, why is it so hard to identify who owns
| this[1] casino?
| 
| [1] Not CS, but the entire "serious" financial system.
 
| codetrotter wrote:
| And they wonder why we want to replace the traditional banking
| system.
| 
| Here's a hint: it's not got anything to do with either
| "metaverse" bs nor with silly "NFT" JPEGs.
| 
| Read the original Bitcoin whitepaper.
| 
| https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
 
  | qwytw wrote:
  | Using an ultra deflationary token like bitcoin as a global
  | currency would literally be the most stupid thing that ever
  | happened in human history.
  | 
  | Basically people who held significant amounts of bitcoin from
  | early on would become billionaires (if not trillionaires...) by
  | having provided zero value to the economy. As awful and unfair
  | what we have currently is it's still several magnitudes
  | superior in almost any conceivable way than a global financial
  | system based on bitcoin.
  | 
  | I can imagine some sort of a crypto currency possible becoming
  | dominant in the future. But Bitcoin itself is pretty much the
  | worst option I can imagine.
 
  | justinzollars wrote:
  | The competing system is BRICS + Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran,
  | Turkey and Pakistan. They will probably transact in gold -
  | certainly not bitcoin. In the West, if there is a collapse of
  | our system, they will make bitcoin illegal. I just don't see it
  | as anything other than a short term speculation.
 
    | georgeplusplus wrote:
    | The problems with the gold standard is we had one and
    | everyone lied about how much gold they had, Causing the lost
    | decade in the 70s/80s.
    | 
    | Maybe BRICS will propose a solution that uses Blockchain to
    | verify gold ledgers.
 
      | adhesive_wombat wrote:
      | The ledger is verified but how do you know the gold is
      | really there?
 
      | Yoric wrote:
      | How could blockchain verify anything physical?
 
  | tuyguntn wrote:
  | issues are coming up mostly because of interest based economy
  | and multitude of instruments built on top of it.
  | 
  | IMHO, even if whole banking system will be replaced with
  | bitcoin, interest based economy will be built on top of it and
  | same instruments will be built with similar level of issues
 
    | pfannkuchen wrote:
    | The difference is that a central authority doesn't control
    | the size of the bitcoin supply. It wouldn't be a utopia, it
    | would only fix a certain class of problems we have today.
 
      | ClumsyPilot wrote:
      | If the national goverbment loses control of thr moneu
      | supply you will have auch a total disaster that current
      | issues will look rosy.
      | 
      | Just look at what happened to Greece, they cant control
      | their fiscal policy and they have been stuck in the mud for
      | 20 years. The same will happen to the world as a whole
 
      | georgeplusplus wrote:
      | You wouldn't want a central authority to control the size
      | of your money supply this would certainly lead to abuse
      | oppression and a dystopia.
 
      | r_hoods_ghost wrote:
      | A central authority doesn't control the size of the money
      | supply in our current economy either, as the vast majority
      | of money is created by private banks and other institutions
      | issuing loans.
 
| zhoutong wrote:
| I was initially surprised about this because AT1 notes are
| supposed to rank higher than equity. It seems that almost no one
| saw this coming (CS AT1 bonds traded higher this weekend before
| the write-down announcement), and traders presumed that
| bondholders should be made whole if equity holders get something.
| 
| However then I looked at the information memorandum of these AT1
| bonds (e.g. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/about-
| us/docs/inv...). Credit Suisse titled their issues as "Perpetual
| Tier 1 Contingent Write-down Capital Notes". Note that it's
| "contingent write-down" rather than the more typical "contingent
| convertible". The IM also doesn't contain an explicit conversion
| price or conditions.
| 
| Almost everyone would call this a "CoCo bond", even though its
| terms are exceedingly clear -- if CET1 falls below 7%, a
| Contingency Event, which is a Write-down Event, occurs, and "the
| full principal amount of the Notes will automatically and
| permanently be written-down to zero on the Write-down Date." In
| other IM issued by other banks I've seen, usually such event is
| followed by a mandatory conversion to ordinary shares rather than
| an immediate write-down. I wonder if this nuance was fully
| considered and priced in the trading of such instruments.
 
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| https://archive.md/EmhLs
 
| cpncrunch wrote:
| The Reuters article has more background information, and isn't
| behind a paywall:
| 
| https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/credit-suisse-write...
 
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(page generated 2023-03-19 23:00 UTC)