What Happens to Bank Stocks If Country Defaults
The prices seem very low even considering the risk? The prices are low because of the risk. Nothing happens to the banks if the sovereign defaults. However, the sovereign debt holders - lose some or all the money they lent to that sovereign. Incidentally, many banks invest in the treasury bonds of various countries, especially those they're located in. They also invest in other companies that rely on the government, or the currency. If that dependency is too high - the bank may fail. If the dependency is not high, or non-existent - the bank will survive. If the bank fails - yes, your shares will be wiped out, that's what happens with bankrupt companies. If you considering investing in banks in a country that you think may default - research them and see how much investments they have that will be affected by that default. Most national banks are required by the regulations of their host countries to hold significant reserves in the form of government debt. A default would likely wipe out their capital and your common stock would become worthless. The common stock only has positive value today because of the option value based on the possibility the host country will evade a default.
The government started the crisis and the banks concluded it.    Barney Frank and the House Committee on Financial Services continually pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to issue new mortgages with the intent of increasing home ownership.  The House set goals for mortgage issuances; thus Fannie and Freddie lowered the requirements for obtaining a new mortgage.  Other banks saw this happening and were forced to lower their requirements for issuing mortgages.  Then, the banks realized they were holding a lot of risky mortgages on their books, so they found a way to spread the risk among other banks and investors.  Through financial ingenuity to reduce risk and maximize return, they created a new investment (securitized the debt) where risky mortgages were bundled, the earnings tranched, and resold to investors.  In this way, they transformed hard-to-sell subprime mortgages into salable AAA and AA debt.  This depended on the fact that the risk of default on each mortgage was *independent* of the others.  This scheme reduced risk and increased returns for banks and investors.  However, the securitized mortgages contributed to a higher overall *system* risk.  As long as there weren't mass defaults, everyone was better off.  Well, clearly there were mass defaults on risky mortgages, which destroyed the securitization scheme and brought down the banks.    The missing element in all this was a strong, competent regulatory body that looked out for the country's welfare.  Everyone else was looking out for themselves: Barney Frank &amp; the House looked out for their voters' agenda to push home ownership.  Home buyers were taking advantage of the favorable credit.  The banks satisfied mortgage demand.  The banks also figured out a way to sell risky mortgages to investors so more could be issued.  However, no one looked out for the system-wide risk. Those government workers in Greece were just mooching off a corrupt system that was enabled by the blind pursuit of yield and the moral hazard of bailout expectations. They were way overpaid to do nothing but collect bribes and drink coffee all day. Good riddance. Greece is a poor agricultural country with some tourism and some shipping, and needs to go back to living within its means. Nobody is going to starve, and high unemployment was always the norm there until a few years ago - I lived there before the Euro, and they managed just fine despite high interest rates and inflation.   Japan has had lost decades because its banks, like those in the west now, are practicing extend and pretend, so there hasn't been a proper flush of the system. The PIIGS should just flat out default and get it over with, rather than slowly default while giving up sovereignty.   Even Germany would be better off if the PIIGS defaulted, since it is German taxpayers and savers who are going to pay for these bailouts. Let the banks fail, meaning let their equityholders and bondholders take losses - the depositors will be fine. The resulting lower asset prices will tempt risk capital back into the system, and life will go on. Bailouts just throw good money after bad and prop up corrupt banks and politicians.  EDIT: Let me clarify about depositors making out fine. The banks' equityholders and bondholders take losses before depositors, who are insured anyway. In most cases, in Europe as in the US, the write-downs are not large enough to eat through this cushion before threatening depositors. Creditors were rewarded with higher interest for lending to these irresponsible banks, so they should take the hit rather than get made whole at taxpayer and saver (inflation) expense. &gt; Posted tax rates vs actual effective rates differ, but you know that.  Yeah, but correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't the allowable deductions which can drag the actual rate down only applicable for stuff that happens inside the US? Therefore, wouldn't any foreign sourced income always be taxed at the marginal rate?  Also, the US still has high actual rates too. [It's not exactly like other countries don't have the concept of deductions as well.](http://taxfoundation.org/sites/default/files/docs/sr195.pdf) Today typically a Business needs to hold accounts in more than one currency. Banks in certain countries are offering what is called a dual currency account. It is essentially 2 accounts with same account number but different currency. So One can have an account number say 123456 and have it in say AUD and USD. So the balance will always show as X AUD and Y USD. If you deposit funds [electronic, check or cash] in USD; your USD balance goes up. Likewise at the time of withdrawal you have to specify what currency you are withdrawing. Interest rates are calculated at different percentage for different currencies.  So in a nutshell it would like operating 2 accounts, with the advantage of remembering only one account number. Designate a particular currency as default currency. So if you don't quote a currency along with the account number, it would be treated as default currency. Otherwise you always quote the account number and currency. Of-course bundled with other services like free Fx Advice etc it makes the entire proposition very attractive. Edit: If you have AUD 100 and USD 100, if you try and withdraw USD 110, it will not be allowed; Unless you also sign up for a auto sweep conversion.  If you deposit a GBP check into the account, by default it would get converted into AUD [assuming AUD is the default currency] Let's say today you buy the bond issued by StateX at 18$. Let's say tommorow morning the TV says that StateX is going towards default (if it happens it won't give you back not even the 18$ you invested). You (and others that bought the same bond like you) will get scared and try to sell the bond, but a potential buyer won't buy it for 18$ anymore they will risk maximum couple of bucks, therefor the price of your bond tomorrow is worth 2$ and not 18 anymore. Bond prices (even zero coupon ones) do fluctuate like shares, but with less turbolence (i.e. on the same period of time, ups and downs are smaller in percentage compared to shares) EDIT: Geo asked in the comment below what happens to the bond the FED rises the interest. It' very similar to what I explained above. Let's say today you buy the bond just issued by US treasury at 50$. Today the FED rewards money at 2%, and the bond you bought promised you a reward of 2% per year for 10 years (even if it's zero coupon, it will give you almost the same reward of one with coupons, the only difference is that it will give you all the money back at once, that is when the bond expires). Let's say tommorow morning the TV says that FED decided to rise the interest rates, and now on it lends money rewarding a wonderful 4% to investors. US treasury will also have to issue bonds at 4%. You can obviously keep your bond until expiration (and unless US goes default you will get back all your money until the last cent), but if you decide to sell your bond, you will find out that people won't be willing to pay 50$ anymore because on the market they can now buy the same type of bond (for the same period of time, 10 years) that give them 4% per year and not a poor 2% like yours. So people will be willing to pay maximum 40$ for your bond or less. There are very strict regulations that requires the assets which a fund buys on behalf of its investors to be kept completely separate from the fund's own assets (which it uses to pay its expenses), except for the published fees. Funds are typically audited regularly to ensure this is the case. So the only way in which a default of the fund could cause a loss of invstor money would be if the fund managers broke the regulations and committed various crimes. I've never heard of this actually happening to a normal mutual fund. There is of course also a default risk when a fund buys bonds or other non-equity securities, and this may sometimes be non-obvious. For example, some ETFs which are nominally based on a stock index don't actually buy stocks; instead they buy or sell options on those stocks, which involves a counterparty risk. The ETF may or may not have rules that limit the exposure to any one counterparty. It's quite the contrary. If there are mass failures of banks, then the money supply will collapse and there will be vicious deflation, increasing the value of money held as cash. It's only if governments print money to bail the banks out that there's a (small) risk of hyperinflation and the effective collapse of the currency. This article is 100% incorrect. The governments main concern is to PREVENT depositors and tax payers from losing funds in the case of bank default.  How?  By having debt holders being forced to converted into equity to create a capital buffer to keep a bank solvent which will help protect depositors and prevent tax payers from having to bail the banks out.  Please ask me more questions on this as I have done a lot of work on this topic as of late.