outs is politically untenable. This removes the implicit ‘cover’ that senior bonds holders have enjoyed and has increased speculation that implementation of the bail-in proposals under the EU’s Resolution & Recovery Directive (RRD) will be brought forward to 2015 from the current 2018 time-frame. e As such, our colleagues in European Credit have examined the implications of changing recovery rate expectations across the bank capital structure. Assuming that covered bonds remain outside the scope of the proposals, we expect senior bank bond spreads to widen relative to covered bonds and prefer being OW covered bonds vs senior bonds in the periphery, particularly in Spain where covered bonds have first claim over the entire mortgage book of the bank. From a relative value point of view, we also suggest owning subordinated bank bonds vs senior bank bonds in the core as, under the new RRD regime, there is a higher probability than before that senior bank bond holders will lose money and this risk is, in our mind, not yet in the price (Rethinking the capital structure, R. Henriques et al., Mar 27). Foreign Exchange e Today’s research note, Sacrificing Cyprus, examines several presumptions which have arisen over the past two weeks due to the Cyprus crisis, and scores them on a scale of truths, half-truths and falsehoods. There are indeed some right conclusions to draw from this experience, but also some wrong ones. As examples, it is true that capital controls have created a two-tier euro, but very unlikely that Cyprus is exiting EMU. And while it is true that markets deserve a risk premium for policy uncertainty, the size of the premium should be much lower than in previous crises due to backstops like the OMT. e For example, during the first Greek crisis in May 2010 EUR undershot by 10% relative to cyclical conditions at that time, and during Greek elections in May 2012 the currency undershot by 5%. The combination of Italian and Cypriot events have eliminated the euro’