The US Government is Absolutely Insane

Paulson and the Fed have done it again, panicked. Another 300 point drop last week and walla, they are off to save Wall Street.

I will say this one time: Buying the kind of debt that is on the books of financial institutions is complete madness. We are not talking about buying mortgages here. This is a quote from a Bloomberg article today: Read

``The scope of the government's purchase program is quite significant,'' Merrill Lynch & Co. strategists Akiva Dickstein, Roger Lehman and Kamal Abdullah wrote in a note to clients today. At distressed prices, the Treasury could acquire as much as 10 percent of the outstanding residential and commercial mortgages that aren't already owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae, they said.

This is not the half of it. The article goes on to say:

The U.S. Treasury late yesterday gave Congress revised guidance on its plan, which may allow the government to also buy other devalued assets such as car loans and credit-card debt. Paulson also has proposed as much as $400 billion to guarantee money-market mutual funds.

Am I reading this correctly? The US Government is going to purchase auto loans? Purchase credit card debt? Guarantee money-market mutual funds? (I have a whole nother dissertation about the lunacy of guaranteeing the money-market industry)

These guys are completely nuts. Off their rocker! Find me ONE and I mean ONE sane person with any hint of an economic background and they will tell you, Paulson is nuts! The Federal Government is going insane one 300 point Dow drop at a time.

Let me put something into perspective here. The market has only had a 20% correction since it’s all time high less than one year ago. You heard me correctly, LESS THAN A YEAR AGO!!

With the completely reckless way Wall Street and all other financial firms for that matter lent money to Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Structured Investment Vehicles etc. a 20% correction is peanuts.

After the dot-com crash in 2000 the Nasdaq dropped nearly 80%. We had telecommunications, technology and other bankruptcies of epic proportions. We had billions of dollars evaporate from all of the worthless pipe dream companies launched on a whim with idea of getting rich on the Internet (remember we were mostly dial up then also). The Dow fared well dropping only about 40% and as we sit today it is still above most of the levels of 2006 and all of 2003-2005.

So I ask you, who exactly are we protecting here? If the worthless paper sold as stock of legitimate companies during the tech bubble created an 80% correction in the tech heavy Nasdaq (which still has not managed to maintain ½ it’s highs of 8 years ago), is it not expected that an index like S&P Financial Index should not loose 80% of it’s value after the worthless mathematically engineered garbage pumped onto the balance sheets of nearly every financial institution, pension fund, local government and some individuals collapses? Well as I write this it is down roughly 50%. It touched 70% in July.

Now I am not trying to bore you with this index / history stuff. I am no chart watcher and do not profess to have expertise in this subject, but common sense will tell you, the government did not bail out Worldcom, PSI.net, Enron (well that was a world of it’s own), Global Crossing, Adelphia and Kmart right? Yes, about a Trillion Dollars worth of major bankruptcies (filings over $1 billion) happened over the four years from 2000 to 2003. The government did not bail anyone out, not anyone. So what gives?

I can tell you this for sure. This will not work. This is not the same as the Resolution Trust Corp. bailout. This is dangerous, reckless, stupid and disastrous for the US economy, dollar, interest rates, inflation etc. We will be bringing wheel-barrels of cash to buy groceries if we do this. Trust me. I am not kidding. I am not a doomsayer, conspiracy nut or radical. I have common sense and what Paulson, Bernanke and your government is doing right now is completely crazy.

I am not going to say there are easy solutions here, but when our government is run by to many impotent, bought and paid for weans who will bend over to any idea pushed out there to protect their political future instead of thinking of what is right for the American People, we are in trouble.

Bailing out Bear Sterns, Taking over Fannie and Freddie, and taking a controlling stake in AIG were all wrong. All of these situations could have been dealt with in a fashion that did not involve the government as we did.

Our government is playing chicken with the largest pool of unregulated money on the planet, the hedge fund industry, and until and when they shut this thing down, they will LOOSE.

Peak Energy, This is GOOD!, Message to Senator Obama

I want to encourage Senator Obama to avoid being sucked into the "drill more oil" debate by reading the message below and using this message to completely redefine the debate on energy extraction and use in the world. He is beginning to seem a bit of a reactionary to events around him on this issue instead of creating a leading vision. This message draws the framework for this vision.

The potential that we have reached "peak oil" is the greatest gift the human race could have right now. It means the earth is incapable of producing (humans are incapable of extracting) enough carbon-based energy (oil) to meet the growing demands of 6 billion plus people. Wow, think for a moment and consider the earth as one large complex computer program that includes a kind of formula for energy extraction and use that has human need and technological maturation in it. No matter how hard we try we cannot completely destroy our planet because of the limits of human kind to extract from the planet enough carbon based fuels at a rate which will produce enough pollution to completely destroy our environment; while at the same time human kind has reached the technological capacity to tap into “clean” energy (solar, wind, hydro current, and to some extent nuclear) at economic rates and efficiencies that make the replacement of destructive 19th century power sources we originally tapped into to fuel our insatiable demand for material consumption, practical.

This is kind of like keeping us from drinking too much by limiting how much alcohol we can immediately consume.

If anyone in the Obama camp, including Obama himself, can see this for what it is and take a hold of the idea that "earth" is telling us that if we truly could produce enough energy from carbon based sources to burn all we wanted we would destroy our very existence, i.e.; drink to much and poison ourselves. Instead, we cannot. The formula of energy to consumption has reached "peak" with carbon-based fuels. What better message, gift, could we have than to simply have to face the fact that the time is now to shift to non carbon based energy. It is the "Duh" factor.

Now, if we can spend $1 Trillion on some completely destructive mission half way around the world (in a country with a total population only 3 times that of New York City) and accomplish absolutely NOTHING, they why should the Obama camp not be capable of taking hold of this gift of global balance (peak) in carbon energy extraction and turn it into a powerful "vision" for removing us from its use. This message would resonate with everyone from the “religious” who believe in the wisdom of a supreme power to the science crowd and average Joe who can understand such an idea.

Surly a fraction of the $1 Trillion spent on destruction / reconstruction / destruction in the war (say $300 billion) could allow us to completely transform a large chunk of our energy to solar, wind and other renewables (not corn) over a period of less than 10 years.

The time has come to recognize a Gift Horse when you see one and stop pandering to the PR hype and Think Tanks.

Game of Chicken

Letter to my Senator:

Senator Mikulski,

I beseech you to please make it clear to those that are making these government bail out decisions that they are playing a loosing game against the most powerful unregulated pool of money on the planet, the Hedge Fund Industry.

This industry has over $2 trillion in assets and is completely unregulated, primarily incorporated in island nations where they are completely out of the legal jurisdictions of the nations they operate in, have no allegiance to any nation, and have one primary objective: To make as much money as possible indiscriminately, at all cost and risk.

The time has come to understand, "With 6.2 billion people on the planet and economies all interlinked there is no longer any positive role that can be determined by having $2.5 trillion floating around playing havoc with any asset class it so chooses”.


I cannot make this message any clearer. There is much talk about regulation and cleaning up Wall Street and Washington etc. However no person anywhere is talking about the Golden Cow in the room, the Hedge Fund Industry. Without an immediate set of regulations baring players in this industry from operating in the United States under any context, you will loose, the American People will loose and our government will loose.

I leave you with this thought:

There is a story in the Old Testament about a bunch of people who flee repression only to end up building and worshiping a golden cow. This leads to great moral degradation and a sinful and corrupt people. Does anyone see the golden cow here? Lets call the golden cow "hedge funds" for the lack of a better word.

The golden cow analogy: All of the powers that be, including the chiefs of all the financial firms and government leaders across the globe are playing with the golden cow. So why does the subject of hedge fund influence in Wall Street never come up? Why does everyone talk around the subject, talking about 'regulation' etc. without mentioning the golden cow? The golden cow corrupts deeply and its influence is broad.

Sincerely,

Paulson's 300 Point Panic Trigger

Every time the Dow drops 300 points Treasury Secretary Paulson has to jump. He and his buddy Bernanke at the Fed are two of the most incompetent people to ever be appointed to their respective positions. In one year these guys have dramatically lowered interest rates, pumped hundreds of billions of dollars of "liquidity" into the banking system, opened the Fed to non bank Wall Street investment firms so they could prop up the unregulated hedge fund market and themselves, and now the idiot Paulson takes control of Fannie and Freddie. Paulson still works for Wall Street only he sits in a taxpayer supplied office and has access to the largest checkbook in the world.

I know it has been fashionable for Dick Chaney and Presisent Bush to use the Treasury to write huge checks to their buddies over the past 8 years under the umbrella of the Iraq War, but to put a guy like Paulson in the administration so he could give his Wall Street buddies a gift every time the market goes through a badly needed correction, has been unlike anything Washington has ever experienced.

Back on 20 August when CEO Daniel Mudd himself was on the Diane Rehm Show in Washington, 88.5 FM I sent the following message:

Several years ago wall street ran an intense PR campaign to do away with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They were making billions and wanted to make more in the mortgage business. Their business model making money from retail level to securities to derivatives was so profitable they couldn't wait to destroy Fannie and Freddie and take that business. Today it is no different. Wall Street and its PR
campaign is doing everything they can to destroy these organizations and put them in private hands not unlike the same efforts they made to destroy social security and put it in private hands. I would like a comment from your guests.

I did not get the kind of response I expected but for the following week after Mudd's "appearance" on the show Fannie's stock rose from $4.5 to $7.5 per share. It was clear from Mudd's comments that Fannie was sound at least till the end of the year and that Paulson needed not meddle in their affairs.

But watch out when the market falls 300 points in a day!!! The idiot Paulson will spring into action.

Paulson has said he is leaving his post on 20 January 2009. What he has just done is his big gift to his pals on Wall Street. Once the Government takes over Fannie and Freddie, any idiot can see that the companies will NEVER be floated back on the market as they once existed. They will be broken down piece meal and sold to Wall Street and be no more, just like those guys want it. They hated having the competition, even though they proved their total incompetence in the mortgage business, and they can not wait to get their hands on the cash cow business that Fannie and Freddie ran until some really bad management allowed them to play around with the garbage Wall Street was selling as "securities" during the height of the "mortgage rip off scam" that Wall Street Firms were running and put their government sanctioned, taxpayer backed capital at risk.

I am pissed and I cannot wait until Paulson and Bernanke are gone and someone with the concern of the American Citizen is in their respective posts (not to mention the White House) who also have some inkling of economic principals and doing what is "right" and not what will "benefit their buddies on Wall Street".

The Fed is Wrong and Paulson has Panicked

As I read each day how the Fed has subjugated it’s own rules to extend more and more “liquidity” to the failed credit markets, I get more furious that the Fed, SEC, Treasury and Congress continue to ignore the elephant in the room. Hedge Funds, unregulated financial institutions that control around $1.5 Trillion in liquid assets and over $30 Trillion indirectly through leverage, no longer have a role to play or a legitimate right to exist on Earth. These organizations sued the SEC to stay out of their books. The Fed and Treasury were recently saying to “regulated” banking institutions in the US, “I am going to lend you billions of short term money and I want you to extend this credit to non bank financial instructions, read unregulated Hedge Funds and Wall Street investment banks.” Now they are saying “I am going to lend directly to unregulated Wall Street investment banking institutions with the understanding they will extend credit to their unregulated clients, read “Hedge Funds” again.

Lets look at what the Fed has been doing with collateral. First they dumb down the collateral to allow AAA mortgage assets from banks, now they are allowing these same assets from unregulated investment banks. Where are they going next? Read, “The Fed is going to buy mortgage bonds directly!” So the Fed is going to take an industry that went awry and created worthless paper and worthless loans to keep their stream of easy money and profits going for approximately 30 months after the housing industry priced itself completely outside of the realm of sustainability and buy their junk? Commercial paper has not collapsed yet but the Fed will join in this party directly. I read this. “Yesterday, the Fed expanded collateral eligible for its auction of Treasuries to include bundled mortgage debt and securities linked to commercial-property loans.” According to Bloomberg, Fed by 21 March the Fed had lent $28 billion to securities firms and made $30 billion available for the Bear Sterns (read Bull Sh--) bail out by JP Morgan Chase.

I am furious to say the least. This line of thinking is crazy. We will bankrupt the Fed with this logic. Bush Jr. has already piled on $3.5 Trillion additional debt in his 7 destructive years raiding the Treasury under the noses of an impotent Legislative Body of Government. With $7 Trillion in debt on the books and a Baby Boomer generation about to retire and eat into the nations cash flow with unsustainable medical costs, (not to mention soon asking the Fed to bail out their 401k’s along with their imploding real estate as their depleted social security accounts prove worthless in an inflationary world with a weak dollar) this is not the time to think about buying worthless paper off the books of unregulated financial institutions.

I will repeat, “The Unregulated Hedge Fund Industry no longer has a constructive role to play in the world of finance or a legitimate right to exist on Earth”. With over 6 billion people and the technology in place to move trillions of “dollars” around daily, the global population has no need for a bunch of Ivy League 72 degree preppies banging away at computer programs trying to squeeze 30% annual returns out of any piece of paper, commodity or security they can manipulate using ever more exotic and esoteric products that are indecipherable beyond mathematicians with no respect for the underlying economic viability of their models nor for the destructive capacity of their speculation.

There is simply too much money in the unregulated financial world and this industry needs to be completely shut down and brought under the world of regulated finance.

Who enjoyed all this debt?

I start with this quote from Dow Jones News Wire:

JPMorgan later said first-quarter charge-offs in its home equity portfolio may nearly double to $450 million compared with the fourth quarter. The firm's charge-offs on its $95 billion home equity portfolio had been rising steeply all year, reaching $564 million by the end of 2007, compared with $143 million in 2006.

The increase in charge-offs from home equity loans is "appears to have been driven by a higher incidence of no-equity walkaways given declining prices in geographies such as California and Florida," Bear said.

Who had fun in all this, the people walking from the houses? I should say, only the salespeople on Wall Street and at the mortgage companies and real estate companies who made millions selling overprices homes, worthless mortgages and worthless mortgage based paper did.

Those people and those responsible for lending money on inflated property values made millions. Now employees of these firms are told they will not have to “pay” for their reckless lending. In fact, they keep all the money they made from the reckless lending AND their bonus structure this year will also strip out all of the losses associated with that reckless lending their companies and shareholders are taking a beating for and instead pay them bonuses on other areas of business!

Storey in WSJ and Seattle Times on Washington Mutual, one of the largest mortgage lenders in the US:

Among the changes WaMu's board approved for 2008 is abolishing earnings per share as one of the four weighted factors used in calculating bonuses. In last year's bonus plan, earnings per share represented 40 percent of the potential bonus.

The 2008 bonuses will be based on these criteria:

--Net operating profit, 30 percent -- with loan losses and expenses related to foreclosed real estate excluded.

--Noninterest expense, 25 percent -- again, excluding expenses related to business restructuring and foreclosed real estate.

--Fees from retail banking -- a new factor, weighted at 25 percent. Many banks including WaMu have been increasing fees for services such as ATM withdrawals by noncustomers to compensate for losses in other areas.

--Customer-loyalty performance, 20 percent -- an increase from 10 percent in the 2007 bonus plan.

Bank statement

In a prepared statement, WaMu said, "The success with which credit costs are managed will unequivocally continue to be a major part of the board's final deliberations."

Further information on the company's compensation philosophy and the board's annual compensation-review process will be included in the company's proxy statement scheduled for release later this month, the statement said.

Spokeswoman Libby Hutchinson said the bonus plan covers almost 3,000 people in WaMu management, many of whom are not directly involved in lending.

Consultant's question

But Fred Whittlesey, a Bainbridge Island compensation consultant, questioned why awards for Killinger and the three other top executives named in the plan aren't tied directly to earnings.

"If (they) are not responsible for bank profitability, who is? There's no reason they should be insulated from expenses they created," he said.

The bank has said bonuses, long-term stock awards and other parts of its compensation plan are important to retaining executives.

In January, WaMu said Killinger would receive 3.2 million stock options to vest in coming years, providing him "a strong incentive to restore shareholder value."

But Cannon said WaMu's highest executives shouldn't require such incentives.

"We are somewhat surprised that top management needs extra compensation in order to be retained," he wrote.

"While for lower-level executives ensuring retention is certainly important, for the top four executives named in the 8K (regulatory filing), including CEO Kerry Killinger, we would think that restoring the value of their existing stake in Washington Mutual, as well as the reputation of themselves and the firm, following the downturn in performance in this period would be incentive enough to stay with the firm."

WaMu shares closed Wednesday at $12.80, down 59 cents or 4.43 percent. The stock is down 69 percent in the past 12 months.

So back to the original question: Who had fun in all this borrowing? If you are one of those who’s life was a party borrowing on your inflated house price at next to nothing rates, God bless you. I hope you managed a couple of opulent vacation trips, spent plenty of time and money in fine eating and drinking establishments, had plenty of sex and fun. If you are now walking away from you’re now rapidly descending in value house and ballooning unable to meet mortgage payments, at least you had fun.

For those who were sold a dream give cheap credit and rapidly lived a nightmare and you are also walking away from your home, I feel for you. You were scammed in the greatest American Ponzi scheme ever created. I thought this could only happen in Albania. Nope, it all happened here in the world’s greatest capitalist playground, The US of A.

Now the Carlyle story:

I cannot feel for these guys. The massive amount of money borrowed short term by hundreds if not thousands of “investment” funds and “invested” in long dated mortgage products was nothing more than a “investor” funded Ponzi scheme designed to leverage as much as possible with as little money as possible to rake cash out of an industry that paid high returns in what historically was a secure investment area, mortgages, and put that cash in their pockets and the pockets of those who financed them. They all deserve exactly what they are getting, the idiots who lent the money, and the idiots who set up the firms and the idiots who run them.

Look at this statement about Carlyle published by the Dow Jones Newswire today:

Carlyle Capital as recently as Monday had reassured investors on its funding lines, saying it had $2.4 billion in undrawn repo lines and that it had increased a credit facility provided by the Carlyle Group by 50%, to $150 million.

Its lenders as of Dec. 31 were: Bank of America (BAC), Bear Stearns (BSC), BNP Paribas (13110.FR), Calyon (4507.FR), Citigroup (C), Credit Suisse (CS), Deutsche Bank (DB), ING (ING), JPMorgan (JPM), Lehman Brothers (LEH), Merrill Lynch (MER) and UBS (UBS).

The repurchase agreements outstanding at that date had an average maturity of 20 days. Carlyle Capital's longest-dated repo line is for three months.

The company leverages its $670 million equity 32 times to finance a $21.7 billion portfolio of residential mortgage-backed securities issued by U.S. housing agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. All of the securities are rated Triple-A and are considered to be implicitly guaranteed by the U.S. government.

Carlyle Capital said Thursday that it has been subject to margin calls and additional collateral requirements totaling more than $60 million over the past week, and had met all calls up until March 5.

Chief Executive John Stomber said that recent margin prices aren't representative of the underlying recoverable value of these securities.

"Unfortunately, this disconnect has created instability and variability in our repo financing arrangements. Management is actively working with the company's repo counterparties to develop more stable financing terms," Stomber said.

Last week, the group said it "can and will do better" after losing 30% of net asset value between listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange in July and Dec. 31. Within weeks of the listing, Carlyle Capital was forced to sell a portfolio of leveraged loans to meet margin calls and borrowed $200 million in emergency funding from Carlyle Group. To preserve capital, it has yet to pay a dividend.

On a call with investors Monday, Carlyle Capital Chairman Jim Hance said margin requirements were changing by "tens of millions of dollars" on a weekly basis, and that daily changes as counterparties repriced the securities were "sizable."

"The last thing we want is for them to sell out the collateral," he said, calling it a "daily cash fight."

Would any sane person take money financed on an average of 20 DAYS, leverage it 32 TIMES and use the cash to purchase securities with average maturities of 30 years? These guys are taking down the financial system. There is no government capable of bailing out this “industry”. The Fed and Treasury were asleep at the wheel and have no idea how to sort out this mess.

You tell me. I don’t care how careful or sophisticated their “models” were for how to make money under these terms. These people are greedy fools.

Muni Crisis

We have a G** D*** crisis in the debt markets. Nothing short. If local and state governments cannot raise money and or refinance existing debt you better watch out. This is a serious mess that has the potential to make the mortgage "crisis" look like child's play. Just read this blurb on FT.com at this link.

Jeffrey Rosenberg, head of credit strategy at Banc of America Securities said: ”Failures in the auction rate securities market accelerated – on Wednesday – with an estimated 80 per cent of all auctions failing.”

He said: “With a total size of $330bn and roughly half of that held by individuals, a significant, albeit likely short lived liquidity crunch is again emanating out of the credit markets.”

”This is not a credit issue, but one of liquidity,” said Alex Roever, fixed income strategist at JPMorgan. ”Dealers hold more paper than they wish and there is a limit to how much they can hold. The investor base has backed away and in the absence of that support these auctions can not clear.”

”The auction rate securities market is unwinding and most of the market will enter a failed state. The lack of confidence is the contributing factor and there is a risk this type of structure will go away.”

The Skinny on Credit Default Swaps

I have been following this issue for some time and found a good summary in the FT for those of you interested in seeing what the hell I have been talking about:

The article is here:

Insight: CDS market may create added risks

By Satayjit Das

Published: February 5 2008 15:31 | Last updated: February 5 2008 15:31

In May 2006, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, noted: “The credit default swap is probably the most important instrument in finance. … What CDS did is lay-off all the risk of highly leveraged institutions – and that’s what banks are, highly leveraged – on stable American and international institutions.”

The reality may prove different.

The CDS is economically similar to credit insurance. The buyer of protection (typically a bank) transfers the risk of default of a borrower (the reference entity) to a protection seller who for a fee indemnifies the protection buyer against credit losses. Current debate has focused on the size of the market. But the key problem is that a combination of documentation and counterparty risks means that the market may not function as participants and regulators hope if actual defaults occur.

CDS documentation, which is highly standardised, generally does not exactly match the terms of the underlying risk being hedged. CDS contracts are also technically complex in relation to the identity of the entity being hedged, the events that are covered and how the CDS contract is to be settled. This means that the hedge may not provide the protection sought.

In case of default, the protection buyer in CDS must deliver a defaulted bond or loan – the deliverable obligation – to the protection seller in return for receiving the face value of the delivered item (known as physical settlement). When Delphi defaulted, for example, the volume of CDS outstanding was $28bn against $5.2bn of bonds and loans. On actively traded names CDS volumes are substantially greater than outstanding debt making it difficult to settle contracts.

Shortage of deliverable items and practical restrictions on settling CDS contracts have forced the use of “protocols” – where any two counterparties, by mutual consent, substitute cash settlement (based on the market price of defaulted bonds) for physical delivery. In Delphi, the protocol resulted in a settlement price of 63.38 per cent (the market estimate of recovery by the lender). The protection buyer received 36.62 per cent (100 per cent - 63.38 per cent) or $3.662m per $10m CDS contract. Fitch Ratings assigned a recovery rating to Delphi’s senior unsecured obligation equating to a 0-10 per cent recovery band - far below the price established through the protocol. The buyer of protection may have potentially received a payment on its hedge below its actual losses – effectively it would not have been fully hedged.

CDS contracts substitute the risk of the protection seller for the risk of the loan or bond being hedged. Some 60-70 per cent of ultimate CDS protection sellers are financial guarantors (monoline insurers) and hedge funds. Concerns about the credit standing of monolines are well documented. Recently, Merrill Lynch took a charge of $3.1bn against counterparty risk on hedges with financial guarantors.

In the case of hedge funds, the CDS is marked to market daily. Any gain or loss is covered by collateral (cash or high quality securities) to minimise performance risk. If there is a failure to meet a margin call then the position must be closed out and the collateral applied against the loss. As the case of ACA highlighted, banks may not be willing or able to close out positions where collateral isn’t posted. Collateral models also use historical volatility and correlation that may underestimate the risk.

Then there are operational risks – mark to market of the CDS and control of collateral.

If the CDS contracts fail then “hedged” banks are exposed to losses on the underlying credit risk. The CDS market entails complex chains of risk – similar to the re-insurance chains that proved so problematic in the case of Lloyd’s of London. A default may quickly cause the financial system to become gridlocked as uncertainty about counterparty risks restricts trading.

As the credit crisis deepens, the risk of actual defaults becomes real. The CDS market will be tested and may be found wanting.

CDS contracts may not actually improve the overall stability and security of the financial system but actually create additional risks.

The writer is a risk consultant and author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Re-regulate NOW!

I don't see anyone looking at history here. Through Greenspan's term he tacitly allowed Wall Street Investment Banks dip into all aspects of finance. By 1999 Congress finished by overturning most of the regulations passed in 1934 to separate various forms of finance and avoid another 1929 style collapse.

JP Morgan, now has its hands in:
Retail banking, Mortgage Business, Home equity loans, Mortgage banking business, Corporate banking business, Private Equity investments, Asset management, Treasury and security services, Credit card business, Investment banking.

This is the SAME house of Morgan that vowed to return to it's former glory come hail or high water, through as many generations it takes.

Well it took less than a decade for them and every other Wall Street firm to totally greed themselves into a mess, this time with technology and products not dreamed of in the 1920's but with the same old formula, "sell junk debt and debt instruments to any idiot who will buy them and take a cut on every deal". I find it fascinating "smart" investors and "professionals" running hedge funds were stupid enough to be duped by these simple-minded 19th century egg heads.

Of course if you want to see how deep these firms are in debt markets tied to mortgages read this quote from Bloomberg:

“Merrill is at risk of losses from sub prime defaults because it participates as an investor, lender, counter party and guarantor in markets tied to mortgages. They include CDO underwriting, other structured credit products and leveraged finance, the firm said in the filing"

Unless Congress has the stomach to re-regulate these "pigs" for better lack of a word, we will not see the end of what we are seeing now until we have another "depression".

The "unregulated" world of finance controls more cash then the value of the stock market so don't be fooled into whether this thing goes up or down. The Stock market and many stocks in it are but puppets of this market now.

Unregulated Markets Risk

I have often discussed how the massive size of the unregulated financial markets pose multiple risks to the regulated financial markets. Today in the FT an article based on a recent study by a couple of academics, Henry Hu and Bernard Black, sheds some light.
See article here.

Soros does a nice summary...

The worst market crisis in 60 years

By George Soros --- Published: January 23 2008

The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.

The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks' commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management

FT Article

Personal Note on Fed / Markets

Well Fed bailed us out again. Only this story has not worked in past few months so there is much to be seen. I think there has been some real pain over the past 2 weeks that may take longer to heal. My bad days were over a week ago. I had several puts expire worthless or I sold them Monday and Tuesday last week only to see them triple or more in value in the 3 following days... Timing is everything and I have been trying to short this market for months only to have the Fed bail it out over and over. Needless to say, I have had marginal success since September. It seems they are looking at my cards. All was great until the big fall bounce which came out of nowhere and should have never happened. Still trying to figure it out.

Anyway, If we really do get another .50 cut in a week the Fed will have made a really big mistake, bigger then the radical rise for 18 months (from 2004-06) and subsequent market bail out moves since. The US overturned the banking laws enacted in the 1930's here in 1999. It only took a few years for Wall Street to make a mess of finance again. I cannot believe the rest of the world, especially Europe, fell for the same thing they fell for nearly a hundred years ago, buying garbage debt and debt products from New York money centers (I cannot bring myself to call these organizations "banks". It would be an insult to the term.).

They all deserve to take their losses big and the Fed is making a big mistake flooding the markets with liquidity and dropping rates in big moves.

Having said all this, I learned a long time ago (although many time tested strategies have been destroyed lately), you cannot fight the interest rate move.

Novel Solution to Mortgage Problems for the Individual

Dear Senator Mikulski,

As per your request I have compiled a couple notes on the bill S. 1299 for Borrowers Protection. In general I support the bill and it’s intent. However it needs tweaked and it is important to note; the last thing you want to do is pass a law that is so rigid it stifles the mortgage industry, which after all is a free market based economic phenomenon with some quasi and direct government backed institutions to provide liquidity and set guidelines for a properly functioning market.

I have set out below, at the end of these notes, what I believe is a NOVEL approach to solving this problem for many Americans that has not been considered to this point. Please review after noting the comments below.

I would like to call on you and your colleges to alter the wording in the bill with respect to qualifying a customer on the highest interest rate attainable within the first 7 years of a loan. Your text under `(c) Assessment of Ability to Repay- reads:

`(2) VARIABLE MORTGAGE RATES- In the case of a home mortgage loan with respect to which the applicable rate of interest may vary, for purposes of paragraph (1), the ability to pay shall be determined based on the maximum possible monthly payment that could be due from the borrower during the first 7 years of the loan term, which amount shall be calculated by--

`(A) using the maximum interest rate allowable under the loan; and
`(B) assuming no default by the borrower, a repayment schedule which achieves full amortization over the life of the loan.

I understand the intent. Many if not most of the bad loans were made to people who could only qualify for the “teaser rate” or an exceptionally low rate of interest that often resulted in negative amortization and was drastically lower than the prevailing 30 year loan rate. However, this wording is weak and potentially stifling to the market. Most people with adjustable rate loans would not qualify if they had to based on the highest possible interest rate. For example, a normal adjustable rate loan (with no “teaser rate”) could start at say 5.5% with a maximum life of loan rate of say 11.5%. In addition, most loans adjust after a period of 1-5 years from the initial loan and adjustments are capped at say 2% per year to the maximum.

To make a lender qualify at 11.5% (the maximum rate could potentially be reached if after an initial 3 year term the rate adjusted to 7.5% then 9.5% then to 11.5% in year six given high inflation pushing discount rates high enough to result in such a rate) would be prohibitive to most borrowers. The real risk of such a rate rising so fast is minimal historically. However, with the Fed pushing discount rate to near zero after the recession in the early part of this decade resulting in adjustable rates dropping to a historical low of 3% for the initial term then boosting them at a record pace shortly thereafter it is not impossible for this kind of thing to happen. Having said this, these kinds of rapid macro swings in interest rates affect the markets in total. Trying to protect one segment of the overall economy from problems under this scenario is nearly impossible with legislation.

So, what should this bill be concentrating on? I say first you must put some language in the bill which forces adjustable mortgage rate products to 1) be based on an AMERICAN interest rate index of which you could either give choices or not. I don’t think basing American mortgage products on LIBOR (London Interbank Offer Rate) rates does the American borrower any good. If the Fed moves rates one expects US mortgage rates to move as well. Using LIBOR does not guarantee this correlation. 2) You should focus on the spread charged over base interest rates, how this is calculated and rules there should be to protect the borrower. What is happening now is people get a loan based on an index they do not understand with spreads up to several points above the base rate that cause some of the dramatic jumps in rates on the loan after the initial terms. For example, an adjustable loan with a “teaser rate” of 3% for 2 years when the prevailing 30 year mortgage rate is 6% could be based on LIBOR, which at say 4.25% plus 2.75% or 7% at the time of the loan. The customer would be receiving negative amortization of 4% if they paid interest only for the first 2 years adding substantially to the principal mortgage amount. The consumer should have this kind of product explained in plain English in clear terms with numbers they understand so they can SEE what they could be facing over the next 7 years in the worst circumstance and be able to make an educated decision on whether they should take the adjustable rate or not.

If the mortgage industry is stupid enough to create such a product and there are “investors” willing to purchase these products we have a real problem in general and once again legislation will not solve this problem because more creative products will evolve.

Basically force some selection of US based indexes, regulate the spreads allowable and force lenders to spell out in plain English exactly, in large font format, what the payment could be in each of the 7 years AFTER the initial loan term.

Under the section titled `(d) Rate Spread Mortgages-

`(1) ESCROW ACCOUNT REQUIRED- In the case of a rate spread mortgage transaction, the obligor shall be required to make monthly payments into an escrow account established by the mortgage originator for the purpose of paying taxes, hazard insurance premiums, and, if applicable, flood insurance premiums.

I suggest that Escrow Account payments as stated above should not be required under the terms of the loan. However, these amounts MUST be included in QUALIFING the borrower to receive the loan.

Otherwise I agree with the terms in this bill.

Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,


Patrick


Below is a short novel approach to solving this problem not yet addressed:

In a free market system, the kind of wreck-less activities seen in the mortgage market of late seem almost impossible. Very smart people made very poor decisions and created poorly designed products for short term profits and very smart people who manage large pools of money (much of this money in UNREGULATED markets I might add) were duped into borrowing short term money, often also creating high amounts of leverage (encouraged by the same banks Mr. Paulson so urgently requested self regulate months ago) to purchase these esoteric and poorly designed products which all depended on an unsustainable and extremely hyped market bubble in the underlying housing market and associated mortgages.

Given these realities it is important to understand that:

a) Government cannot stop the markets and should not try and “catch a falling knife” by “rescuing” markets. In this case “homeowner borrowers”, “lenders”, “purchasers of Structured Products”, “packagers of esoteric derivatives”, “financial institutions”, “hedge funds”, “off balance sheet Structured Investment Vehicles” amongst others are the “market” here.

b) There are Four General Categories of mortgage borrower I have identified and it is important to understand these categories in order to attempt a solution to our current problem.

1) The First Category is dominated by Investors who invested in one or many properties at once trying to capitalize on a rising housing price market and took whatever financing they could get their hands on to finance their speculation.
2) The Second Category is dominated by “homeowners” who over the past several years, with rising house prices and low interest rates initially (2002-4), decided to take Bush’s advise after 9/11 and go on a spending frenzy. They financed their spending addiction with their home equity by constantly refinancing their property (often not only their primary residence but a second home or investment property) even after rates rose substantially by taking risky loans with artificially low teaser rates.

Neither of these categories of borrower need or should be given any help. Those who made the loans and those who purchased the loans should all take their losses on the chin. However there are two more categories of people who should be assisted any way we can and I have figured out some ways to do this. They are:

3) Less than financially savvy people who actually “purchased” (not refinanced) their primary residence and were duped into taking more debt to purchase more expensive houses than they should have been able to (often they had no initial interest in the level of house they were “sold”) by unscrupulous lenders pushing teaser rates and telling them they could refinance later etc. They would have never qualified for the loan or the house they purchased under traditional circumstances, but the “industry” (and I know this industry from the real estate agent to the lender and appraiser were all in the game here driving people who had not a clue about the process of buying a home or the real estate markets) pushed them into a bigger house and loan obligations.

4) Finally the fourth category is people who once again purchased (not refinanced) their principal residence and could have qualified for a traditional loan under traditional loan terms close to what they purchased and the amount of debt they took on but where steered in the direction of sub-prime products for the benefit of the seller of the loan and the coffers of the parent company (increasingly Wall Street firms who purchased mortgage companies to gain access to the entire stream of revenues generated by mortgages) who could more profitably sell or package the loan for sale to investors.

Categories 3 & 4 need help.

Again, I will repeat, the Government CANNOT bail out any of these people or correct the markets that have already been created i.e.; loans made. This is not what I advocate in any way. This animal is too large and growing right now for direct government action to make a difference. Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke have come up with more dramatic attempts to create liquidity and they fail more spectacularly each time.

However, the government MUST take one path: Make sure a market exists for the people who want to purchase a home TODAY!

America moves. American’s move more than people in any other industrialized nation. We have a very flexible and diverse labor market and people will go where the opportunities lie and a fully functioning mortgage market is essential to this economic fact. We must have a market for legitimate home purchases, first time buyers etc. It is the government’s obligation to make sure Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Bank and FHA are all liquid and properly functioning institutions that are well capitalized for Today’s homebuyer. Their status must be monitored and actions taken to ensure their health.

My novel approach is to address the real problem the American Individual faces if they are forced in to foreclosure. Foreclosures often result in bankruptcies, which further disrupts the life and credit of the individual. At this time increasing bankruptcies may cause great strain on other credit institutions in the US. These are other types of financing i.e.; credit cards, auto loans, retail loans, health insurance etc. The list goes on. We don’t want a dramatic rise in foreclosures to result in a dramatic rise in bankruptcies.

We need to take Category 1 & 2 people and write them and the lending / financing institutions off. We need to take category 3 & 4 people and create a scheme to allow them to restructure or refinance their homes at the most favorable prevailing rates at a minimal cost out of pocket for them, say $500.00 Max. Bush’s plan is moving in this direction but did not dictate strong enough terms to allow this to happen. This should be mandated. As long as they are performing on their loan within the past 90 days they should be able to restructure and banks and lenders should be DIRECTED to allow them to do so.

If Category 3 & 4 people cannot be restructured or refinanced because their property value is to far under water and or they simply cannot make any prevailing mortgage payment because they were simply sold more money than they could reasonably pay back, then the Government should allow those foreclosures to happen but the individual citizen will immediately have the foreclosure expunged from their credit history.

That is what I said, have the foreclosure expunged from their credit history immediately so they do not have to declare bankruptcy and they can move back into a lifestyle fit for their income and move back to the housing market as soon as they are ready.

To qualify for this to happen, they will need to be qualified by a set of rules / tests set up by the Congress and implemented either by lenders or through an online site created specifically to process such requests. Credit bureaus would have to conform to the rules and play a part in making sure they are followed. Some of the rules would be the mortgage was for a principal residence, the consumer can show reasonable income at the time they obtained the loan i.e.; tax returns etc., the consumer can show they did not lie or inflate their income when obtaining the loan, the consumer can show they did not use the loan to refinance or otherwise borrow to meet other debt obligations with the mortgage loan etc.

Let Wall Street take the losses!! They drove the market to where would up. Let’s save the honest working American and allow them to get on with life after being unscrupulously taken advantage of by a very powerful and money hungry mortgage industry.

Patrik

Fed's Big Bail Out... Again!

Again and again the Fed has been trying to "provide liquidity" to the "credit markets" since August 2007. Again and again the institutions that function in these "markets" have failed to respond to these attempts. Interbank lending rates have risen, banks don't want to lend to each other and nobody wants to buy the esoteric garbage sold into these markets by Wall Street Banks over the past few years.

So what does the Fed do? They come in as the lender of last (and I mean LAST) resort. This time they are injecting $60 billion, $20+ billion to the European banks and $40 billion to the US banks. How is this different? Read the excerpt from this article:

"For the first time, it will accept bonds issued by sovereign nations rated Aa3/AA- or above; bonds by G10 government agencies guaranteed by national governments rated AAA; conventional AAA debt issued by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, the Federal National Mortgage Corporation and the Federal Home Loan Banking system; and AAA-related U.K., U.S. or European asset-backed securities backed by credit cards and U.K. or European residential mortgage-backed securities."

Basically the Fed is doing what no other bank is willing to; Take collateral NO OTHER BANK OR INVESTOR WANTS!

Does this sound stupid to you? Well it should. This was what was written in the FT today:

"In an extremely bold departure from its previous policy, the Bank of England is increasing the size of its scheduled auction next Tuesday from £2.85bn to £11.35bn, with £10bn of these funds allocated for three months. It has also torn up its collateral rules and will accept mortgage backedsecurities, covered bonds and dollar denominated securities for the first time...
Unlike the auctions in September, when banks shunned its three-month money, the Bank is auctioning this cash without a minimum interest rate of one percentage point above its official rate of 5.5 per cent. Instead, the Bank is following the ECB’s method of expecting a penalty rate to come from the bids for the money rather than a centrally determined price. Even though senior officials have qualms about changing collateral requirements in a crisis, the Bank felt there was now sufficient general fear in banking circles which could not be offset by any one bank."

Why are they doing it? Check out this blurb from the FT on 4 December:

Last week, the US Federal Reserve announced long-term operations designed to maintain liquidity in the money markets during the year-end period.
"We are now in the sixth month of the credit crisis. Funding costs have gone up for everyone," Suki Mann, credit strategist at Société Générale, said. "Although the year-end is playing a big part in the lack of liquidity, there is a worry it could go on into the New Year and that means trouble." Bob Janjuah, chief credit strategist at RBS, said: "I have never seen things as bad in terms of trading credit. There are lots of people hoping it will get better in January - but we are not so sure."

Of course there is this blurb on 1 December 2007 from the FT:

"Emergency plans to avoid a year-end funding crisis were unveiled by the European Central Bank yesterday, highlighting economic uncertainties that will almost certainly keep its main interest rate unchanged next week - despite
soaring eurozone inflation.
The ECB will take the exceptional step of extending a regular money market operation by an extra week to cover the year end, when financial institutions will be under huge pressure to show strong liquidity on their books. The move, the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive pledges to ensure markets function normally, followed a fresh surge in one-month and three-month interest rates. The US Federal Reserve announced a similar move this week."

If it seems as if the ECB and Fed seem to be "one upping" themselves like every week, you are reading correctly. They are dealing with an unprecedented crunch and the markets are not working, PERIOD.

So why do I write today? This bank action is really screwing up the markets. All this "short term liquidity" by the Fed and ECB is not working. But, every time they take action, the stock markets get rocked. They either rise or fall in dramatic fashion with every word or hope this mess will get cleared up or every word that we are doomed.

No rational investor can make money in this environment. I am a rational investor and am completely fed up with the Hedge Fund manipulated movements of the stock markets almost daily. I feel like I am getting a kind of sea sickness and if others are like me they soon will be loosing their insides, completely unable to tell which way is up. This does not mean the ship sinks but it damn sure means allot more money is going to be lost. So you better get on dry land now cause the storm is getting worse.

Peace.

Hedge Fund Consolidation Alive & Well

The FT reported today this article about Hedge Fund Consolidation:

Now, I don't know if I am just a mad pessimist or instinctively cautious about $1.8 trillion in assets being dominated by the top 100 firms in the Hedge Fund Industry.

This industry is unlike others in that they do not produce anything except profits or losses for its investors by buying and selling paper. OK, so what right?

Well, as we know already, one serious misstep by any fund can force a liquidation of that fund and therefore roil markets IF that fund has substantial enough holdings to force an industry markdown of "paper" assets. With consolidation this risk rises exponentially.

Having as the FT article points out nearly 70% of the industry's assets in the hands of 100 firms it is safe to assume a collapse of one of these large firms could wipe out $20 plus billion of cash from one firm when if leveraged say 6 to 1 could be $120 billion hit in asset values in short order.

These kinds of shocks are not to be taken lightly. With this kind of consolidation taking hold in the Hedge Fund Industry it is time to look at forcing transparency or if not down right regulation. At a minimum the industry should be forced into industry / government meetings on a regular basis so that governments and central banks can maintain a handle on asset prices, leverage and daily potential risks of the major firms.

Latest Mortgage Crises Solution Update

I am pleased to have read today another contemplation initiated by the Treasury to create a fund with the purpose of providing additional liquidity to the mortgage markets.

My only fear is the amount being considered is less than 1/2 of what I believe is needed overall. The number mentioned in the article I read on Marketwatch.com today was $100 Billion. I estimate this is enough to bail out Wall Street but not "Main Street".

This fund must be focused in its objectives and monitored by the Feds, not the Wall Street firms. They should pony up the cash but not be responsible for what the fund buys and sells.

The article can be read here: Banks, Treasury Discuss

More words on Bank's multiple plays

Note to sent to my Senators:

Dear Senator,

I have written you a select few letters with respect to finance, the mortgage industry and the ineffective job being done by Mr. Paulson over at the Treasury.

This note is a follow up and a call to reform and or revise our current laws governing banks and brokerage activity. Much attention has been placed on the activities these firms are allowed to partake in with respect to the individual investor but even though our laws recognize other firms as “individuals” legally, the laws on the books are not being enforced with respect to how these firms deal with their corporate clients.

We now have a meltdown in various credit markets as a result of their recent activities, which I might add, were tacitly approved by our former Federal Reserve Chairman, Allen Greenspan even though many of their current activities were disallowed or stringently regulated in laws passed nearly ¾ a century ago.

This paragraph taken from a Bloomberg article today from a statement by Merrill Lynch about their upcoming earnings sums it up entirely with respect to the mortgage mess we now have.

“Merrill is at risk of losses from sub prime defaults because it participates as an investor, lender, counter party and guarantor in markets tied to mortgages. They include CDO underwriting, other structured credit products and leveraged finance, the firm said in the filing.”

You can apply the above paragraph to the leverage buyout frenzy that has taken Wall Street over the past few years as well. Thus not only have these banks have been participating in EVERY aspect of each transaction, they have taken equity stakes in their deals and follow up by creating various esoteric derivative products which they price and hawk to the same funds they are lending to buy them.

There is no doubt that the approximately $300 billion in loan obligations they have on their books right now to finance corporate buyouts are going to cause them headaches. More importantly, their highly leveraged clients no longer have the equity or wherewithal to buy the debt off their books. What they do over the next three months remains to be seen but I fear the collapse of one or more of these private equity buyout firms due to the weight of their debt loads and the inability to refinance them will lead to the same kind of collapse we have seen in the mortgage industry.

This would have far more serious repercussions than anything we have seen in the mortgage industry and bears close watching and preemptive action now to alter the practices of these firms in the future.

Sincerely,

PS; It is important you act right now to stop Wall Street firms form demanding mortgage companies that have had to cease lending operations from wrestling away their servicing business. This threatens homeowners escrow accounts and will cause unnecessary problems you will soon hear about if you have not already. One of the companies causing problems is Freddie Mac. They need to be stopped. See article with respect to this issue here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118955540976824460.html

The greedy pigs are in deep...

I have been harping for a few years now (since the latest merger mania on Wall Street) that the Wall Street banks are in to deep in their deals. All you have to do is read their quarterly earnings over the past 2-3 years and have some common sense to see that when they are Advising on deals, Brokering the deals, Financing the deals, Participating in taking Equity in the deals and Creating Derivatives based on the debt associated with the deals, they have found a way to profit in every aspect of the deals. They have also found a way to LOOSE in every aspect of the deals if they go bad.

Hence this blurb from Bloomberg today. Note the bold paragraph. These guys deserve to be hammered and the idiots on Capital Hill should enforce some of the laws on the books with respect to conflicts of interest and if they must, write more. The home owner is getting punished but any idiot can see Wall Street got damn greedy and F----- up what was just a few years ago a sound industry.

Merrill Says Fair Value Adjustments Made for Subprime (Update1)

By Erik Schatzker

Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co., the biggest underwriter of collateralized debt obligations, said it made ``requisite fair value adjustments'' for the impact of rising defaults on subprime mortgages and they'll be reflected in the firm's third-quarter earnings.

The New York-based firm said in a regulatory filing today that credit-market conditions ``have continued to remain challenging in the third quarter.''

Merrill is at risk of losses from subprime defaults because it participates as an investor, lender, counterparty and guarantor in markets tied to mortgages. They include CDO underwriting, other structured credit products and leveraged finance, the firm said in the filing.

While Merrill reiterated previous disclosure that ``significant risk remains that could adversely impact these exposures and results of operations,'' the filing included no estimates for how the fair value adjustments may affect earnings.

Merrill fell $1.34, or 1.8 percent, to $73.80 in 9:59 a.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares are down 21 percent for the year.

Analysts predict that Merrill will report a decline in third-quarter profit next month in part because the firm needs to mark down the value of certain investments and financing commitments.

``Investors will be looking for transparency with respect to the manner in which brokers approach the mark-down process and specific disclosures around the current exposures and write-downs related to key areas of concern such as LBO loan commitments, CDO holdings and other mortgage-related assets,'' Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. analyst Roger Freeman wrote in an Aug. 30 report.

Last Updated: September 14, 2007 10:07 EDT

China Inflation?

I read an article published on Bloomberg.com today you can also read here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=
20601039&sid=aWHH.9qAjPf8&refer=home

This is my response to this article and the many other's like it after China published their latest inflation numbers.

Hello Mr. Pesek,

I am a little confused about your assertion that China needs desperate action to tame it's inflation. The confusion arises when I see China's inflation quoted including very volatile recent changes in food prices with no reference to energy.

The Fed and economist in the US have made the gross error over the past 5 years with respect to calculating our inflation by taking out food and energy when giving what they consider "core" inflation. Removing a "volatile" component from the index is OK when it is "volatile" but when it is consistently moving higher, tripling in fact, over the period as energy prices have, is disingenuous and dangerous to economic policy initiatives.

Now back to China. It is clear that lesser nations have paid heavy prices for pegging their currency while ignoring domestic price and market pressures and China may one day pay for their misguided policy, but for now I smell a rat. There seems to be an assertion that China's inflation should be quoted in total without stripping out volatile price components that are truly volatile in order to justify the need for dramatic increases in their interest rates and of course, added pressure to do the one thing Washington and Wall Street (with billions of dollars riding on the prospect) wants to see China do: Dramatically revalue their currency or let it float altogether.

So in the future, perhaps you may want to give the headline inflation number coming from China the same kind of scrutiny the headline number gets in the US regardless of the political will to do otherwise.

Sincerely,

What happens next in this market?

Nail biting time for markets. Selling not done in my opinion. The bounce after touching a 10% correction a couple weeks ago was simply the hedge funds all programmed to buy at a 10% correction. Amazing what a few hundred billion dollars in program trades can do to turn a market on a dime.

Smart shorts did not blink. I blinked 50% covered some shorts, sold some puts etc. However, with the quick rally to 13,400 I was back in short mode. This market must close in the 12,000 range on the Dow for me to even think we are finished with the selling. More like it would be a 1987 type of rout. If we see this happen then some scales will tip, some real money lost, some of these complete idiots leveraging 20 to 1 to buy debt instruments will go away and some normality can return.

However, I fear no quick recovery in real estate, continued attempts to bail out funds and credit markets and a slow painful spiral down over many months that will begin to erode the savings of many soon to be retired boomers. The bail out attempts of course will have the same effect as the attempt to bail out the Ruble in the 90's. Send a few billion here and a few billion there and it works through the system quickly covering the losses of the most well connected and the banks. The rest are left to fend for themselves. The only question is, how do you make money in this scenario?

And the FT chimes in on "Bailout" as I suggested...

The article published in the FT below suggests the same kind of solution I included as one of my solutions to the mortgage crises: (Note the use of the term "pyramid scheme" as I have suggested in the past with respect to "financial products" based on debt and highly leveraged.)


Banks should form a bail-out vehicle to ease the credit crisis
By Cambiz Alikhani, a partner at Arundel Iveagh Investment Management
Published: September 5 2007 18:50 Last updated: September 5 2007 18:50

Over the past few months, a modern day pyramid scheme of colossal proportions has begun to unwind. The sheer scale of it is clogging up the arteries of the financial system and has led to major disequilibrium within global credit markets.

Markets face a credit crunch that continues to manifest itself in the money markets and this can have pronounced effects on the real economy as the lending system becomes dysfunctional. This credit crunch could be alleviated by removing from the system the debt that created the problem in the first place.

In an ideal world, the process for such removal is one in which a new set of economic agents, unaffected by the problems that have beset the financial system and with access to long-term capital, step in to the buy the debt at attractive prices.

As that occurs, confidence and risk appetite should return to the system and markets return to a state of equilibrium.

However, the scale of debt involved in the current crisis is of such magnitude that demand from opportunistic investors alone may not be sufficient to remove the problem. In addition, much of this paper is difficult to price, further exacerbating the situation.

It may therefore be appropriate for a core group of leading financial institutions to consider the idea of a “bail-out” vehicle that would be capitalised with the purpose of providing both pricing for the market and a source of demand for paper that cannot find another home.

The fact that such a vehicle is funded by financial institutions rather than governments would not only shield regulators from the accusation of “moral hazard” but could actually involve them in a very pro-active way.

They could play an important role in providing transparency with regards to the scale of the problem and with regards to the different pricing mechanisms used by different banks for exactly the same type of paper.

Thus regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US and the Financial Services Authority in the UK could play the pivotal role of referee, while central banks provide the appropriate level of liquidity that the system needs in the meantime.

History has shown that there are examples analogous to what is being proposed above that have proved to be a success.

The bail-out of Long Term Capital Management in 1998 by a consortium of investment banks (and brokered by the New York Fed) is an example. Prior to that, the early 1990s saw the creation of a “bad bank” in Sweden as part of measures to keep the banking system solvent when it became overburdened with bad debt.

The savings and loan bail-out of the late 1980s in the US is another example. In fact, one may also argue that the lack of such a measure in Japan in the 1990s exacerbated deflation in that country as the government instead chose continuously to recapitalise banks that still held bad debt on their balance sheets. This bad-debt overhang reduced their willingness to lend to anyone other than the government, leading to significant overvaluation of the government debt market.

Although the structure and details of a new bail-out vehicle to alleviate the current crisis would be extremely complex, this is exactly what banks should be good at.

They have a long history of successfully negotiating work-outs and restructurings. In this instance, they are all in it together as it is their balance sheets that are being put to work to act as lenders of last resort. Thus a common solution towards removing “bad” or “unwanted” debt from the system would be beneficial to all.

The measure being discussed above would not only play a critical role in finding an equilibrium price for “bad” or unwanted debt but would also create a vehicle which such paper could be sold into, thereby unclogging the arteries of the financial system.

The chimes to raise FNM loan caps continue

From an article today on Marketwatch.

"Similarly, a private economist said Wednesday that the Fed will have to do much more to help the troubled housing market.

"My suggestion is for the Fed to partner with the Treasury to lift the cap on jumbo mortgages so that they can be bought by Freddie and Fannie Mae. This would keep the prime mortgage market liquid," said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. End of Story "

Senators chime in also...

This is a report on Dow Jones Newswires where the Senate is starting to wake up and request exactly what I noted in my letter: Raise the individual loan caps...

By Damian Paletta
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., urged the Senate on Friday to pass legislation that would allow Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) to purchase even more expensive mortgages than a bill Frank steered through the House earlier this year permitted.

"It now is clear we underestimated in the House bill how far we should raise the conforming loan limit, and the current crises in the mortgage market demonstrate we should raise it to a higher level." Frank said in a press statement. "I urge the Senate to make this a priority as part of GSE reform, because we now have the opportunity to help homeowners get access to needed credit by allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to play a larger role."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are only allowed to purchase mortgages on the secondary market known as "conforming loans," and these loans cannot be higher than the conforming loan limit, which is presently at $417,000. The House-passed bill would allow government-sponsored enterprises to purchase more expensive mortgages in states where the cost of housing is higher, but Frank and Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif., said Friday that the companies should be able to buy even more expensive loans.

Many of the current problems in the housing and credit markets are with subprime mortgages and "jumbo" loans that the GSEs aren't permitted to buy.
If the Senate passed a bill raising the conforming loan limit, House and Senate negotiators could agree on compromise language before the bill is sent to the White House.

August 17, 2007 15:20 ET (19:20 GMT)

Now the Officials Chime in..

This note from a "real" researcher on how much money it will take to "stabilize" the mortgage markets. Not far from my proposal eh?

By Lingling Wei and Kevin Kingsbury
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--It may take a long time for investors to start bidding for mortgages again.

In recent months, companies from mortgage lenders, hedge funds and firms investing in structured products - such as asset-backed bonds - have been racing to dump mortgage assets to repay creditors, as the fallout from the credit squeeze continues to reverberate. The upshot: Businesses are earning even less from selling loans, more lenders are failing, and investors - except for those savvy specialists in distressed investing - are reluctant to dip their toes back.

In a report titled "De-Leveraging Destroying Value - New Capital Needed," analyst Paul Miller Jr. at Friedman Billings Ramsey estimated that it takes roughly $150 billion to $250 billion of new capital to "normalize pricing" in the mortgage market. But it's also a kind of Catch-22 situation: Without new capital, it could be difficult for asset prices to come back up; without pricing adjustment and better returns, new capital may be hard to come by.

Miller projected that it will take six to 12 months for the prices of mortgage assets to normalize and for capital to flow back into the space. "There is no quick fix here," he noted. And until then, lenders will continue to come under pressure with respect to earnings and book values.

Now Countrywide Bank Responds..

Interesting, as I was reading the nice posting from Dow Jones on Barney Frank's comments another interesting note popped up related to my letter to my beloved Senator Mikulski. Again from Dow Jones Newswires:

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Countrywide Financial Corp.'s (CFC) Countrywide Bank unit said current issues in the mortgage market do not affect the security of FDIC-insured deposits at Countrywide Bank FSB.

The bank has more than $107 billion in assets.
Countrywide Financial's shares were up 2.25, or 12%, at $21.20 in recent trading. [end]

Interesting eh?

What is little know or understood by many has to do with one major legacy of the ex-Fed. Chairman Greenspan; he tacitly destroyed many of the laws passed by our Congress after the abuses in the 1920's and subsequent depression in the 1930's to protect investors. He did this with a "wink and nod" to deals and structures throughout his tenure and never sought nor received approval for his actions. It will only take one major failure luring in the FDIC to wake our sleepy ignorant government up.

The Credit Fallout Continues...Letter to Senator

Below is another letter I have written to my beloved Senator from Maryland. I think the nice lady actually listens because as before, the day following my letter Dow Jones Newswire posted a note related to the subject:

By Damian Paletta Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., urged the Senate on Friday to pass legislation that would allow Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) to purchase even more expensive mortgages than a bill Frank steered through the House earlier this year permitted.

"It now is clear we underestimated in the House bill how far we should raise the conforming loan limit, and the current crises in the mortgage market demonstrate we should raise it to a higher level." Frank said in a press statement. "I urge the Senate to make this a priority as part of GSE reform, because we now have the opportunity to help homeowners get access to needed credit by allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to play a larger role."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are only allowed to purchase mortgages on the secondary market known as "conforming loans," and these loans cannot be higher than the conforming loan limit, which is presently at $417,000. The House-passed bill would allow government-sponsored enterprises to purchase more expensive mortgages in states where the cost of housing is higher, but Frank and Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif., said Friday that the companies should be able to buy even more expensive loans.

Many of the current problems in the housing and credit markets are with subprime mortgages and "jumbo" loans that the GSEs aren't permitted to buy.

If the Senate passed a bill raising the conforming loan limit, House and Senate negotiators could agree on compromise language before the bill is sent to the White House. [end]

Seems someone may be listening:-) Now to my letter...

Dear Senator Mikulski, 15 August 2007

I am writing to follow up on my urgent request that you engage the Fed and Treasury in sorting out a solution for the secondary mortgage market crises that is upon us.

I was pleased to see some recognition of the problem by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson however no action has been taken other than to calm bank interchange rates with short term cash infusions of various sorts.

This letter is to offer specific actions that need to be taken immediately.

1) Increase the cap on Fannie Mae conforming loans by no less than 50%.
There has been talk of raising their overall portfolio limit. This is not necessary. It is absolutely crucial that the cap be lifted dramatically. As you know there are states like Maryland, New York and California where average home prices exceed $417,000 (the current cap) by a large margin.
Fannie & Freddie will NOT buy any junk off the market or be given the authority to invest in any sub prime loans existing on the market.

2) Force the major Wall Street banks (i.e.; JP Morgan, Goldman, Bear Sterns etc.) to pony up enough cash to create a “Fund” that will have the purpose of providing liquidity to the secondary market for loans. This “Fund” will likely need $250 billion in hard cash to function.
Note: This fund is NOT to “rescue” the garbage loans Wall Street packaged and sold to “investors” over the past few years. These loans were garbage, the credit standards ignored and “investors” should loose, period. There should be no purchases of these loans by this fund.
However, this fund is to provide whatever liquidity is necessary for sound lenders currently operating in the market to continue making qualifying home loans. This means purchasing their loans to be securitized and sold when market conditions improve.
In addition, this fund should provide the liquidity lenders need to refinance the garbage loans made by mortgage brokers with Wall Street’s blessing ONLY where the borrower (i.e.; citizen homeowner) has QUALIFING INCOME & CREDIT for a new loan. These refinances should be done where the borrower’s total out of pocket refinance costs are capped at 1% of the new loan amount (including transfers, taxes etc.)
This fund will NOT act as a “bail out” for any individual lender.

3) The government should seriously consider using Social Security receipts to purchase high quality AAA rated home loans form the market immediately.

Thank you for considering my options. Action needs to be taken now.

As you know the latest potential victim is the largest home lender in the country, Countrywide Finance. This company also functions as a bank taking deposits from citizens. The failure of institutions that are also retail banks will be of grave consequence to the American Economy!

Sincerely,

Subprime Primetime

Copy of letter to Senator Mikulski on Subprime meltdown and one rescue by German Government, yes RESCUE!


Hello Senator Mikulski,

I called your office yesterday to alert you to the ongoing problems with the mortgage industry in the US. I urge you to call the Treasury and Fed and request they take action to halt the meltdown of the mortgage industry.

The problems at hand are not unlike the meltdown in 1998 of Long Term Capital. Tuesday American Home Mortgage reported they failed to fund $650 million in promised mortgages to Americans on Monday & Tuesday. This is likely to have continued with millions of promised mortgages not going to closing because of Wall Street’s refusal to further fund mortgage companies.

Basically, Wall Street firms, in their infamous greed, managed to shift 40% of the home mortgage business to themselves over the past 5 years. Unfortunately, these firms are not banks so they depend on investors to provide the capital to fund mortgages. In addition, mortgage companies were financially incentivised to put higher and higher interest loans up for sale to beef up the fees and interest rates on the products Wall Street then sold.

The entire cycle will be looked on in the future as a great travesty on the American public with fraud and greed of Wall Street preying on potential homeowners as a way for them to cash in on rising property values around the country. Wherever there is money being made in this country, Wall Street will find a way to securitize it and make money off of it. This is what free market capitalism is about, OK, but when unregulated investment pools creep into the regulated economy of the American homeowner with Wall Street firms acting as the middleman you get a foul stew to say the least.

To have several of the top 10 mortgage companies in the US facing bankruptcy because the firms that funded them until now have forced massive write downs on their mortgage portfolios held as collateral causing them to have to put up more cash then they have on their books is wrong and poses grave risk to the entire debt markets.

Our nation unfortunately is founded on debt, period. To have the debt markets collapse in any category is dangerous and requires immediate attention by those at the highest offices in the US.

You may recall the letter I sent to you echoing my concerns to Mr. Paulson to pay attention to the debt markets and not to pay attention to Sarbanes-Oxley. Now my words ring true and I urge you to force action on Wall Street to fund these companies and stop the dominoes from falling.

Sincerely,

Patrick Henry

Ps: Please find this piece from the FT today where the German Government has intervened to stop an investment firm from collapse in that country.

Germany rescues subprime lender

By Our International Staff

Published: August 1 2007 21:49 Last updated: August 2 2007 00:40

US mortgage turmoil hit investor confidence on the other side of the Atlantic on Wednesday as details emerged of a German government rescue of a domestic lender that suffered heavy losses on subprime investments.

The rescue of IKB, a specialist lender based in Düsseldorf, began on Sunday when Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister, called top banking executives to discuss a bail-out. According to people who took part in the conference call, Jochen Sanio, head of Germany’s financial regulator, is said to have warned of the worst banking crisis since 1931.

IKB surprised investors this week with a profits warning after a multi-billion euro fund it managed was hit by problems stemming from its US subprime exposure. The news sent its shares plunging and prompted KfW, the state-owned development bank, to step in with a pledge to guarantee obligations of more than €8bn ($10.9bn) – more than five times IKB’s stock-market value.

The further government intervention suggested that the problems at IKB were much worse than thought. Mr Steinbrück phoned several banking executives – including Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank – on Sunday to bring them on board.

Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and other German lenders are taking a 30 per cent stake in a rescue fund worth €3.5bn, FT Deutschland, the Financial Times’s sister paper has learnt, with the rest shouldered by KfW.

The report on the German intervention came as more bad news from hedge funds and the housing sector roiled markets.

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