Snippets from Reggie - much more at the link......

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-09-29/cascade-domino-greece-portugal

Cascade is to Domino as Greece is to Portugal as LTRO 2 is to...

Submitted by Reggie Middleton on 02/29/2012 06:00 -0500

• Bank Run
 
• Bond
 
• Citigroup
 
• default
 
• European Central Bank
 
• France
 
• Greece
• International Monetary Fund
 
• Ireland
 
• Italy
 
• Portugal
 
• Reality
 
• Recession
• recovery
 
• Sovereign Debt

In 2010 I penned a public post based upon subscriber research called Is Another Banking Crisis Inevitable. In it I presumed that serial and or cascading sovereign defaults will break the European banking system. Aside from calling me "Doom and Gloomer", has anyone really come close to proving me wrong? Short answer? Hell no!

...and in today's news...

Portugal PM Says Economy Behaving As Expected To Austerity

‎Troika officials are expected to give the thumbs up to Portugal's efforts, releasing about EUR15 billion to fulfill financing needs. Including that installment, Portugal will have received 70% of the bailout money since the program began mid-2011.

Pressure on Portugal's rescue program, however, has been growing amid fears the country won't be able to return to the market for financing in September next year as expected.

Last week, Citigroup said in a report that the recession should intensify over the next years, making the country's debt-to-GDP ratio increase more than expected and above the 120% the troika finds sustainable in the long term.

Therefore, Citi economists say, Portugal will require a Greek-like haircut of 50% of its debt.

Hmmm. More massive haircuts? I thought this Grecian move was the solution, not the problem. Then again, why should anyone else pay their bills if Greece is allowed not to pay theirs? Common sense, eh? From the Globe and Mail: "Portugal and Ireland will ask for a similar deal. Why wouldn't they?"

While it is not known whether Portugal has asked for equal treatment, Ireland was hunting for concessions even before Greece and the troika - the European Commission, the IMF and the ECB - confirmed Greece's second bailout after a 14-hour negotiating session that ended early Tuesday morning.

Ireland has been lobbying the ECB to cut the cost to the government of bailing out its banks, whose collapse triggered the Irish rescue.

"If the ECB are prepared to make this kind of concession to Greece, it would encourage me to think that they might be ready to make concessions on the promissory note to Ireland," Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said earlier this month.

The troika, however, has said that Greece's special treatment - notably the bond "haircut" - is a one-off event that was necessary to keep Greece from defaulting and potentially shredding the 17-country euro zone.

Offering the same terms to Portugal and Ireland is not on the table, if only for the sake of the stability of the bond market.

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As you can see from the screen shot below, just putting in today's writedowns, after effective recovery standing behind the ECB and the IMF(yeah, let's not forget to factor in reality), and not even bringing much into the discussion outside of the PIIGS debt, BNP still has a significant tangible equity hit. Now just imagine a cascading default which will assuredly go outside of the PIIGS confines and most definitely ding France something awful and you will find the equity slasher's blade will be bloody.

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But wait, there's more - much more!