Something Is Not Right

Friday, February 13, 2009

PIMCO - IO Feb 2009 Gross Beep Beep

PIMCO - IO Feb 2009 Gross Beep Beep: "Similarly, municipal yields are now trading at nearly twice their Treasury counterparts, implying that municipal bonds are trading at 80 cents on the dollar instead of 113 cents like the average Treasury. To enable states and cities to return to normal functioning, those bonds must return to par. Modern day capitalism depends on the successful refinancing and issuance of securities at a price and yield level not significantly divorced from past experience. That is the same thing as saying that current yields must come close to matching the economy’s embedded cost of debt if default is to be avoided. Not only municipalities, but the efficient operation of hospitals, nursing homes and even universities depend on the leveling and returning of municipal bond prices to higher levels. Similar arguments can be made for corporate bonds as well."

PIMCO - IO Feb 2009 Gross Beep Beep

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PIMCO - IO Feb 2009 Gross Beep Beep: "PIMCO’s advice to policymakers is as follows: you can’t bail out everyone, yet economic recovery is not possible unless certain critical asset sectors are not only reliquefied, but rejuvenated in price. The prior Administration’s focus on the banks has been critical but unidimensional. The shadow banking system with its leverage and financial innovation, powered a near 25-year global economic expansion, but it is the delevering of those hidden quasi-banks that is now threatening its petrification. Policymakers should not focus entirely on one-off bailouts of large real estate developers, municipalities, or even credit card issuers like they have with Citi, BofA, and AIG. Rather, they should recognize that supporting critical asset prices such as municipal bonds, CMBS, and even investment grade corporate bonds is a necessary step towards eventual economic revival. Capitalism at its philosophical and practical center depends on credit, and while new loans can be and are being advanced via the banking system, it’s a much more difficult task to force shadow banks to lend. That lending depends on securitization which in turn depends on stable and eventually higher asset prices than currently exist. The original focus of the TARP was on asset prices, but the prior Administration quickly lost its way or perhaps its"

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

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Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "“The economic setback is still in its early stages, and any further decline in housing prices could accelerate the downturn, intensifying the pernicious feedback loop and possibly leading to a second wave in the financial crisis in the next 6-12 months,” Ozeki wrote. “In order to overcome that second wave, governments worldwide would have to spend vast quantities of fiscal funds. The resulting erosion in their finances would increase the risk of dangerous side effects.”"

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "The world economy faces a “second wave” of the financial crisis unless governments adopt larger spending plans, wrote Koyo Ozeki, head of Asia-Pacific credit research in Tokyo at Pacific Investment Management Co.

There is “no clear sign of an end to the chaos,” he wrote in a report published today analyzing the experience of Japan’s so-called lost decade in the 1990s."

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

KYOTO, JAPAN - MAY 5: Supachai Panitchpakidi (... Image by Getty Images via Daylife

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him: "Global economy"

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him: "Decisions taken in the next few months will shape the world for a generation. If we get through this crisis without collapse, we will have the time and the chance to construct a better and more stable global order. If we do not, that opportunity may not recur for decades.

We are living on the cusp of history. The priority is to reverse the downward spiral of despair through overwhelming and concerted action. That will only occur if the US now gives the leadership we need. Mr Obama may even find, as many presidents have found before him, that leading the world is easier and more rewarding than cajoling a recalcitrant Congress. This may not be the challenge he expected. But it is the challenge he confronts. History will judge his presidency on whether he dares to succeed."

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him: "Contrary to views expressed in some circles, notably in the US, depressions are neither good for us, nor unavoidable. What is needed is determined and globally co-ordinated action. The lead must come from the US: it remains the hyperpower; the economic system is one it promoted; and the crisis had much to do with mistakes its policymakers and private institutions made, even if aided and abetted by mistakes elsewhere.

So what are the principles to be followed? I suggest the following:

First, focus all attention on reversing the collapse in demand now, rather than on the global architecture.

Second, employ overwhelming force. The time for “shock and awe” in economic policymaking is now.

Third, make future normalisation of fiscal and monetary policies credible.

Fourth, act in concert. Even the US cannot solve its problems alone.

Fifth, avoid protectionism.

Sixth, strengthen the ability of global institutions to help the weaker."

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him: "Private credit growth is falling across most economies. Trade finance has been particularly affected, with dire results. The flow of private funds to emerging economies is collapsing: according to the Washington-based Institute for International Finance, net private flows are projected to be just $165bn in 2009, down from $466bn in 2008. Central and eastern Europe is particularly vulnerable."

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him: "The general mood in Davos was one of gloom verging on despair. The gloom is justified, as the update of the World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund makes plain. Global economic growth is now projected to fall to a mere ½ per cent this year, its lowest rate since the second world war. Output in high-income countries is expected to fall by 2 per cent, the first annual contraction since 1945. Industrial production and merchandise exports are in free fall, as consumers decide they do not need that new car or other goody right now (see charts)."

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him: "the update of the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report notes: “Worsening credit conditions ... have raised our estimate of the potential deterioration in US-originated credit assets ... from $1.4 trillion in the October 2008 GFSR to $2.2 trillion.” Losses are also spreading to many other asset classes and economies as the slump worsens."

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Davos Man is waiting for Obama to save him

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - It is always the economy, stupid

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - It is always the economy, stupid: "Buck up,” as my colleague Samuel Brittan says. Life is going to be much harder for longer than almost anybody imagined two years ago. But the UK can, with tough discipline and some luck, manage even these shocks."

Monday, February 9, 2009

PIMCO - Gross Beep Beep

WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 21: Life size bronze sta...

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PIMCO Beep Beep: "The current financial and economic crisis is difficult to appreciate, not only for the drop in elevation, but because of the swiftness of the declines. It’s been a Wile E. Coyote 12 months – straight down like a dead weight. A year ago, global equity prices were nearly twice today’s levels and recession was only a whisper on the lips of the gloomiest of economists. Today, descriptions drawing parallels to the Great Depression make it obvious that a major shift in economic growth and its historic financial model, as well as policy prescriptions for its revival, are underway. Most of the world’s connected economies and its citizens are in shock, conscious but not fully aware of the seismic shifts that will unfold in future years.

PIMCO’s thesis for several years has held that the levered global economy long ago morphed from a banking-dominated regime to one that hid behind securitized lending and structures resembling a “shadow banking” system. SIVs, hedge funds, CDOs and increasingly levered mortgage and investment banks fueled asset appreciation in all investment markets, which in turn propelled real economic growth and employment to unsustainable levels. But, with U.S. housing prices as its trigger, the delevering process did a Wile E. Coyote and headed over the cliff in"

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Zero Hedge

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Zero Hedge: "So does the upcoming bailout have the makings of actually fixing the structural problems in the economy? Some thoughts on the various approaches, from BAC:

Aggregator Bank

This is an off balance sheet vehicle that pools multiple bank’s bad assets into one “Bad Bank” or “Aggregator Bank” that can both manage and dispose of the bad assets it buys from banks. To alleviate the pricing problem, the bad bank could focus on trading account securities and loans that have been most heavily marked down. By either taking these at the latest mark, or standardizing these marks across banks of the (relatively) more price transparent assets, the pricing issue – setting the correct price to protect taxpayers – could be avoided. The impact of this move would remove further downside uncertainty for the banks, freeing them up from those assets (while at the same time transferring all future upside to the government as well). However, that pool would be limited to those deemed sufficiently marked down to be able to avoid both price uncertainty and the potential that by setting too low of a price, further capital inadequacy issues would be exacerbated. These were the core problems of the first TARP program.

Ring fencing

This approach has two attractions. First, it avoids having to deal with the pricing issue. This is important for loans with no ready price an"

Zero Hedge

Cover of Financial Accounting

Zero Hedge: "The newsflow from D.C. over the next two days will make the lives of capital markets participants very exciting. Among the key expected news items is the rumored (temporary) abandonment of Mark-To-Market accounting principles, which caused quite a market rally on Thursday of last week. So as we prepare to say goodbye to the last relic of what was once an efficient market, it might make sense to reevaluate just what it is in the current accounting rules that is so inconvenient for the administration and Wall Street. Among these, chief is the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 157 (here for the full 158 pages of FAS 157) as well as its lesser known cousin, FAS 115.

FAS 157 was fast-tracked for adoption in Q1 2008, with a simple goal: to streamline the valuation of an increasing plethora of hard-to-evaluate securities to a 'Fair Value' price. FAS 157's mission statement is the following:

This Statement defines fair value, establishes a framework for measuring fair value in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and expands disclosures about fair value measurements. This Statement applies under other accounting pronouncements that require or permit fair value measurements, the Board having previously concluded in those accounting pronouncements that fair value is the relevant measurement attribute. Accordingly, this Statement does not require any new fair value measurements. However,"

How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18

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Zero Hedge: How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18: "On Thursday (Sept 18), at 11am the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it."

Friday, January 30, 2009

The Slide Continues

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Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "The U.S. economy is likely to keep deteriorating in early 2009 after shrinking last quarter by the most since 1982, as consumers and businesses retrench.

The 3.8 percent annual pace of contraction in the fourth quarter was less than forecast, with a buildup of unsold goods cushioning the blow. Excluding inventories, the decline was 5.1 percent, the Commerce Department said yesterday in Washington.

Job cuts announced this month by companies from Starbucks Corp. and Pep Boys - Manny, Moe & Jack to Eastman Kodak Co. mean there’ll be little respite in the first half of this year, economists said. The Obama administration used the figures to reinforce its call for Congress to pass a stimulus package in excess of $800 billion to arrest the economy’s decline.

“The recession is going to last through most of 2009, and we’ll be lucky to have growth back at zero by the end of the year,” Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor, said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Davos, Switzerland, yesterday. Economic growth “will be pretty tepid for a long time.”"

B of A to defer some bonuses over three years

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Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "Bank of America Corp. is deferring payment of 2008 bonuses of $50,000 or more at its capital markets and investment banking units over three years, according to people familiar with the matter.

Employees who had expected a bonus this month based on their 2008 work will instead get most of it in three annual installments, starting in February 2010, said the people, who declined to be identified because the plan isn’t public."

How to not let this happen again

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Allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse had such severe systemic effects that the global financial system went into cardiac arrest and is still dealing with the aftermath.

How do we set up a sytem to eliminate the risk of (another) global financial meltdown? In their FT.com article 'A proposal to prevent wholesale financial failure', NYU Stern students Lasse Pedersen and Nouriel Roubini have devised a way to avoid the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Bail-outs of major financial institutions are based on a fear that their collapse would cause havoc, with collateral damage to the real economy. Examples include the Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, and Citigroup.

The current system is "vulnerable to financial contagion when big banks (or many small ones) go bust. This is the systemic risk. The root of this problem is that "banks have little incentive to take into account the costs they impose on the wider economy" if their failure prompts a liquidity crisis.

"This is akin to when a company pollutes as part of its production without incurring the full costs of this pollution. To prevent this, pollution is regulated and taxed."

How do we reduce both the moral hazard and the cost of bail-outs in the event of a liquidity crisis? Impose a new systemic capital requirement and systemic insurance program. Once systemic risk can be measured, it can be managed.

Banks already use standard risk-management techniques internally to weigh how much each trading desk or division contributes to the overall risk of a bank. But the authors suggest that these same ideas should be used to evaluate the banks themselves. They set out their ideas in an NYU Stern project on restoring financial stability.

"First, the regulator would assess each bank’s systemic risk. The higher it is, the more capital the bank should hold. This would seek to ensure that the banking system as a whole had sufficient capital relative to the system-wide risk. This is just like the headquarters of a bank charging each trading desk or division for use of economic capital measured by its contribution to overall firm risk.

Second, each institution would be required to buy insurance against its systemic risk – that is, against its own losses in a scenario in which the whole financial sector is doing poorly. In the event of a pay-off on the insurance, the payment should not go to the company, but to the regulator in charge of stabilising the financial sector."

What happens then? A market-based estimate of the risk the develops (the amount of theinsurance premiums). Second, each bank would have an incentive to limit systemic risk (via lower insurance premiums). Finally, it would reduce the fiscal costs and the moral hazard of government bail-outs (because the company does not get the insurance pay-off).

Since the private sector may not be able to put aside enough capital for all the systemic risk insurance, government could provide part of it. Government already provides such partnership on insurance with the private sector in terrorism insurance.

"Unfortunately bank regulation, such as the Basel accord, ignores systemic risk since it analyses the risk of failure of each bank in isolation. It seeks to limit the probability of failure by each bank, treating isolated failures and systemic ones in the same way (and also ignoring how much a bank loses if it fails). However the move by many large banks to lever their balance sheets with similar mortgage-backed securities is more dangerous than if they had made loans to diverse borrowers."

More broadly, a systemic crisis that feeds on itself is more dangerous than the isolated failure of smaller banks. A small bank will probably be taken over with a smooth transition of operations – it does not bring down the economy.

"We believe our proposal offers several advantages by explicitly addressing systemic risk based on tools already in use by private companies to manage internal risks. Our proposal is a better way to deal with the trade-off between letting a large institution go bust (Lehman, for example) and causing a global cardiac arrest of the financial system or being forced to spend trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to bail out such systemically critical institutions."

The writers are professors at NYU Stern School of Business and the proposed regulation of systemic risk is part of the NYU Stern project Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System (John Wiley & Sons, 2009)

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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Japan Heads for Worst Postwar Slump

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Bloomberg.com: Worldwide: "Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Japan headed for its worst postwar recession as factory output slumped an unprecedented 9.6 percent in December, unemployment surged and households cut spending.

The drop in production eclipsed the previous record of 8.5 percent set only a month earlier, the Trade Ministry said today in Tokyo. The jobless rate soared to 4.4 percent from 3.9 percent, the biggest jump in 41 years.

Recessions in the U.S. and Europe and a slowdown in China have smothered demand for Japanese cars and electronics. Toshiba Corp., which is firing 4,500 workers, yesterday forecast a record annual loss and said it will delay building a chip factory. Honda Motor Co. this week widened production cuts.

“Japan’s economy is falling off a cliff,” said Junko Nishioka, an economist at RBS Securities Japan Ltd. in Tokyo. “There’s really nothing out there to drive growth.”

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average sank 3.4 percent at the morning close in Tokyo, led by Toshiba and Nintendo Co., which cut its profit forecast by a third yesterday. The Nikkei has fallen 10.1 percent this year, extending last year’s record 42 percent drop."

Fed Warns of Global Deflation

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“The Fed statement yesterday said its prediction of a “gradual recovery” in the U.S. economy later this year has “significant” risks of failing to materialize. At their meeting, central bank officials gave updated forecasts for gross domestic product, inflation and unemployment that will be released with meeting minutes on Feb. 18.

It sounds like the worry is not so much recession as it is depression,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. “We can only hope that the famous long and variable lags of monetary policy will eventually kick in.”

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

FT.com European companies

FT.com / Companies / European companies - Fiat to take 35% stake in Chrysler: "Fiat is to take a 35 per cent stake in Chrysler as part of a deal between the Italian and US automakers as they seek to weather the severe downturn in the automotive industry.

The two groups confirmed on Tuesday that they had signed a “non-binding term sheet to establish a global strategic alliance” that would see Turin-based Fiat acquire the stake in Chrysler in exchange for production and distribution assets."

FT.com / Companies - Newspapers turn into rich mens’ toys

FT.com / Companies - Newspapers turn into rich mens’ toys: "When Gannett, the owner of USA Today, told its employees last week that they would each have to take a week’s unpaid leave, it was “the crowning blow in making us look like the auto industry”, one former editor told Alan Mutter, the newspaper veteran and blogger.

Unlike Detroit, however, the newspaper industry is looking to wealthy individuals rather than government to bail it out."

FT.com / Companies - Google fails to export ad success to print

FT.com / Companies - Google fails to export ad success to print: "Google’s efforts to export its advertising success to the newspaper industry have ended in failure with the closure of its Google Print Ads service.

The Silicon Valley company said on Tuesday it had hoped to create a new revenue stream for the embattled newspaper industry and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, but admitted: “The product has not created the impact that we – or our partners – wanted.”"

Bloomberg.com: U.S.

Bloomberg.com: U.S.: "“The tragic history of financial crises is a history of failures by governments to act with the speed and force commensurate with the severity of the crisis,” Geithner said.

“If our policy response is tentative and incrementalist, if we do not demonstrate by our actions a clear and consistent commitment to do what is necessary to solve the problem, then we risk greater damage to living standards, to the economy's productive potential, and to the fabric of our financial system,” he said."

Monday, January 19, 2009

FT.com / World - Poll shows EU voters resistant on Afghan war

FT.com / World - Poll shows EU voters resistant on Afghan war: "Any attempt by Barack Obama to get European Union members of Nato to send more troops to Afghanistan will be strongly rebuffed by EU voters, according to a new opinion poll for the Financial Times.

As Mr Obama prepares to be sworn in as US president on Tuesday, a Harris poll for the FT shows that clear majorities of people in the UK, France, Italy and Germany believe that their governments must not send more forces to Afghanistan, irrespective of demands that the new American head of state might make."

Prepare to bury the fatally wounded big banks

FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Prepare to bury the fatally wounded big banks: "Friday’s bad news from Citigroup and Bank of America confirmed what many experts have long suspected: the subprime losses of 2007 were a bullet that fatally wounded the banks. Many lost so much money on toxic subprime mortgage-related derivatives that they have been essentially insolvent for more than a year. It has taken so long for these banks to fall only because of government support and some investors’ bottomless capacity for denial.

Consider Friday’s eye-popping figures. Bank of America recorded a $15.3bn (£10.4bn, €11.5bn) loss at Merrill Lynch, which it owns. Citigroup announced a total 2008 loss of $18.7bn, nearly half of which came from the fourth quarter. Even in the context of this crisis, these losses are epic."

FT.com / Europe - Spain loses triple A rating

FT.com / Europe - Spain loses triple A rating: "Spain lost its triple A credit rating from Standard & Poor’s on Monday when the ratings agency downgraded the country’s long-term sovereign debt because of its deteriorating public finances.

S&P lowered its rating by one notch to double A plus, arguing that the global economic crisis had highlighted “structural weaknesses” in the Spanish economy that were inconsistent with triple A, the highest rating."

Brown accuses RBS of ‘irresponsible risks’

FT.com / UK - Brown accuses RBS of ‘irresponsible risks’: "Gordon Brown on Monday unveiled a second bank rescue package including powers for the Bank of England to lend up to £50bn directly to businesses, as he accused the Royal Bank of Scotland of taking ”irresponsible risks” as the bank’s shares collapsed.

His comments came as RBS on Monday warned it could report an annual loss of up to £28bn, following the mis-timed acquisition of ABN Amro, the Dutch lender it acquired as part of a €71bn (£63bn) hostile break-up bid in 2007."

Why are the banks in crisis again?

FT.com / Columnists / Tony Jackson - Why are the banks in crisis again?: "The ugly downward lurch of US and European banks in the past 10 days is unsettling, if not wholly unexpected. What is behind it? And where do we go from here?

One likely answer to the first question is that with year-end window dressing out of the way, the banks are starting to confront reality. Citigroup has switched abruptly from defending its conglomerate structure to breaking it up. Barclays has stopped talking about hiring investment bankers and is firing 2,100 instead.

And so forth. In essence, the banks are staring down the twin barrels of a shotgun. The old problems of rancid assets remain, and the new ones of recession are kicking in.

As a result, the system looks like it will stay glued up for a while. The recent fall in interbank rates might suggest otherwise but as Richard Portes of the London Business School points out, they are not the whole story.

In Europe, he puts the amount parked by the banks with the European Central Bank at well over €300bn. They are losing money on those deposits. But that is evidently preferable to risking the cash by putting it to work."

Why are the banks in crisis again?

FT.com / Columnists / Tony Jackson - Why are the banks in crisis again?: "Karen Olney, European strategist with Merrill Lynch, sees the threat differently. Investors, she says, already assume government is the only answer. Their worry is that, as lending risk increasingly becomes sovereign risk, the burden will act as a brake on the whole economy.

The scale of that threat is indicated by a chilling little exercise from Merrill’s bank analysts. This involved measuring European bank assets as a proportion of Europe’s gross domestic product over the years.

The analysts then made the arbitrary but not unreasonable assumption that the ratio should revert to the pre-credit bubble levels of 2002-03. That would apparently mean European banks shrinking their assets – in effect, their loans – by €5,500bn. The reduction so far has been €800bn, leaving €4,700bn to go.

If nothing else, this seems further proof that banking will emerge at the other end of all this changed beyond recognition. I have floated before now the notion that the industry might have been caught up in a 25-year supercycle. That now looks less fanciful by the day."

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Key report on financial reform

Paul Volcker, former head of the Federal Reser...

Image via WikipediaImage via WikipediaImage via Wikipedia From The Economist - An important new report on regulating the financial industry released Thursday (Jan 15) should play a crucial role in shaping the financial reform agenda.

The Group of Thirty’s “Financial Reform: A Framework for Financial Stability” is important both because of the concreteness of its 18 recommendations and because of who was involved. The authors were led by Paul Volcker, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and Jean-Claude Trichet, (president of the European Central Bank).

Banks:

banks deemed systemically important would face restrictions—in the form of “strict” capital requirements—on high-risk proprietary activities, that is bets made using their own money
strongly encourage investment banking arms of banks to focus on client businesses, such as merger advice, rather than trading
separating these needed because they seem “unmanageable in financial conglomerates"
also require raising the level at which banks are well-capitalised

Non-bank financial institutions:

pools of private capital that live on borrowed money should have to register with a regulator and produce regular reports, disclosing things such as leverage and performance.
biggest of them would even be subject to capital and liquidity standards.
bank-like regulation for money-market funds
legislation in America to set up a mechanism for dealing with non-bank failures

Other key issues:

Central banks should be more involved in supervising banks—but to safeguard integrity the role of chief firefighter should be played by others once trouble ignites. Central bankers “need to be more concerned about financial stability, but less involved in crises,”
formal system of regulation for over-the-counter derivatives, such as the type of credit swaps that sank American International Group
urges regulators to force banks to hold on to a significant portion of credit risk when they package loans into securities and sell them on, in order to curb reckless underwriting of mortgages and other debt.
calls for a rethink of certain accounting principles that may exacerbate downturns through pro-cyclicality, including the practice of marking assets to the current market value;

The other important message is that a global crisis requires a global fix. Mr Volcker was typically modest, insisting it was more an agenda for discussion than a hard-and-fast blueprint. But, given his closeness to Mr Obama, it is hardly far-fetched to imagine much of it becoming official policy. All that talk of the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s just took a step towards reality.
"

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The Darkest Hour

Image by artemuestra via FlickrFrom economy.com, Marc Zandi gives his upbeat look ahead to the national economy in 2008. Among the highlights:

The coming year will be the worst in decades for the U.S. economy as millions of jobs are lost across nearly all industries, occupations and regions.

Although the crisis began with excesses in the financial system, it was exacerbated by policy missteps that led to financial panic.

Despite their past errors, only concerted action by policymakers can end the panic and prevent the forecast from turning darker.

Even if the recession ends this year, recovery will be slow, with GDP not reaching its pre-recession peak until late 2010.

The current episode, while painful, could lead to needed reform of the financial and regulatory system.

This will likely be the worst year for the U.S. economy since the end of the 1930s. The recession that began 13 months ago will plague much of 2009, particularly during the first half of the year.

Real GDP is expected to fall 3% peak to trough, and close to 5 million jobs will be lost. The unemployment rate will surge to 9%. The drop in manufacturing will be especially severe, but the hallmark of this downturn will be its breadth across industries, occupations and regions. More than 300 of the nation's 381 metropolitan areas will be in recession; unlike in past recessions, which were regionally concentrated, there is no obvious place to move for better prospects in this downturn.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Worldwide Bankruptcy Wave About to Hit

The Eiffel Tower and La Défense business distr...

Image via WikipediaA recently released report by Paris-based Euler Hermes, the world's largest credit insurer, concludes that Europe and the U.S. will experience a significant increase in business failures in 2009.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Lawyer Accused of Stealing Millions

Park Avenue in the Upper East Side, 2004

Image via WikipediaNYTimes.com: "Federal authorities have been tracking what they describe as a brazen swindle of some of New York’s savviest investors by one of New York’s more accomplished lawyers. Mr. Dreier has been charged with multiple frauds in the United States and a related crime in Canada, and is being held without bail in Manhattan.

In court last week, prosecutors said their count so far put the money missing at $380 million, most of it lost by hedge funds and other investors who had bought promissory notes that were flat-out fictions.

In recent days, Dreier L.L.P., the Park Avenue law firm that Mr. Dreier founded, has been plunged into chaos. At least $35 million in escrow that was to have been held by the firm seems to be missing, the authorities say, and nearly all of its 250 lawyers are now looking for work."

Thursday, December 11, 2008

CFOs are pessimistic

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According to a new study by Duke University and CFO Magazine.

Executives say they expect the recession to last for another year. They also say that earnings, capital spending and employment all will drop in 2009.

Duke says that this quarter’s study, which asked 1,275 CFOs around the world about their expectations for the economy, finds CFOs at their most pessimistic in the survey’s more than 12-year history. Some 81 percent of U.S. CFOs are more pessimistic about the economy now than they were a quarter ago, and almost 60 percent say the U.S. economy won’t recover until the fourth quarter of 2009 or later – with 39 percent saying recovery won’t start until 2010.

CFOs say employment should fall by 5 percent in the U.S. and Europe in 2009. Capital spending will fall by 10 percent in all regions.

Banks on Life Support

Photo of Bank of America ATM Machine by Brian ...

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The coming tidal wave of consumers falling behind on their credit cards and other debt will keep banks in sorry shape for the next year or more, Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC Wednesday.

“The big banks are going to be on life support for at least 18 months, if not 36 months,” she said. “The big banks will not fail, but the big banks will not grow, in my opinion, for at least another two years.”

Her remarks underscore recent comments by the nation’s top bankers. Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis says he anticipates the credit card industry will experience record losses. Lewis’ predecessor Hugh McColl recently told the San Francisco Business Times that it will take time for the economy to work its way through unwinding the credit bubble. And when he says time, he’s talking years, not months.

“Individuals are over-leveraged,” he said, adding that he’s speaking as an industry observer and not on behalf of BofA (NYSE: BAC).

Monday, December 8, 2008

Fed-style QE is Printing Money

Historical chart of the U.S. federal funds rate.

Image via WikipediaBarclays Capital lays out a primer for what the Fed is really doing for monetary policy. The Fed can't drop interest rates below 0%, but there are other weapons in the Fed arsenal. Barclays Capital in their most recent Weekly Market Monitor talks in depth about the current Fed policy called Quantitative Easing. (See Help! What is Quantitative Easing?)

"Without making a formal announcement, the Fed has already moved to a policy that is effectively QE. While its policy objective is still the fed funds rate, the Fed's balance sheet has more than doubled over the past three months to over $2 Trillion as it has expanded its emergency lending programs, foreign currency swap lines, and open market purchases. When the Fed began creating new lending facilities last year, it financed them by selling Treasuries, thereby keeping its balance sheet from expanding.

A few months ago, the Fed ran low on Treasuries it could sell and began to expand its
balance sheet; however, it sought to soak up or sterilize this expansion through the use of a special Treasury bill program. The Treasury sold bills and deposited the proceeds in its account with the Fed, and the Fed used the proceeds to extend loans to banks based on illiquid collateral. While the Fed's balance sheet was being grossed up, the Treasury was soaking up cash through bill issuance and systemwide liquidity was unchanged.

The Treasury program is being wound down and the expansion of Fed programs is being
financed through increases in excess bank reserves. In this case, the Fed is extending the same collateralized loans, generating excess reserves, and grossing up its balance sheet without sterilizing the transaction through the Treasury facility. Thus, the Fed is currently "printing money" and the over-provision of reserves to the banking system is far beyond what would be required to meet the FOMC's target funds rate."

Help! What is Quantitative Easing?

1903 stock certificate of the Baltimore and Oh...

Image via WikipediaA great Weekly Economic Monitor from Barclays Capital this week. (If you don't get it, start building a relathipship with the Barclays team. Their research is the best.)

Quantitative easing (QE) is the name given to a three-part monetary policy program implemented by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) from March 2001 to March 2006. At the outset of the program, the BOJ believed that economic conditions warranted monetary easing as drastic as is unlikely to be taken under ordinary circumstances, and therefore made the following changes to its policy strategy:

1. A switch in the operational objective of monetary policy the policy instrument from an overnight interest rate to current account balances(bank reserves plus deposits of non-bank financial intermediaries at the central bank).

2. A reduction in the overnight interest rate to zero.

3. A commitment to maintain the new procedures until y/y CPI inflation registers stably at zero percent or higher.

Virtually all developed-world central banks conduct monetary policy in the same way: by adjusting the supply of bank reserves balances in accounts commercial banks maintain at the central bank in order to target a specific short-term interest rate. The amount of reserves supplied is a passive variable in this process. Banks demand a certain quantity of reserves to meet reserve requirements plus an additional, much smaller, amount of precautionary reserves. The central bank simply meets the amount of reserves demanded at the targeted interest rate. As a result, the total amount of reserves in the banking system is, in a normal environment, very close to the level of required reserves (i.e there are very little excess reserves).

Fed Has Already Adopted Quantitative Easing

Image via WikipediaPer the latest Market Watch from Barclays Capital:

"In recent weeks, there has been a rather odd debate over whether the Fed will adopt Japanese-style quantitative easing: that is, flood the banking system with reserves to induce more lending. In our minds, the Fed has already gone well beyond anything the Japanese ever did. It has already dramatically expanded bank reserves, and unlike the Japanese, it has used these funds to intervene aggressively in many parts of the capital markets. This is quantitative easing on steroids.

If our baseline forecast is correct, it could mean a broad-based shift in the capital markets as a variety of risk aversion trades unwind. Once the markets believe policy-makers are succeeding in containing the capital markets and economic crisis, we would expect a rally in risky assets such as credit spreads and equities; a bear steepener in the treasury market, as the Fed holds down the short end and budget deficit concerns push up the long end; a weakening of the dollar as safe-haven inflows ease; and a rally in commodity markets as investors price in an eventual recovery in global demand."

Is Deflation a Risk in 2009?

According to the Barclays Capital Weekly Economic Monitor, there "is little immed

FRANKFURT, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 14: Ben Bernank...

iate risk of deflation."
The report goes on to say that although headline inflation will fall into negative territory (yr to yr) heading into fall 2009, this is primarily due to falling in energy prices. Once energy prices "find a bottom, inflation will naturally rise back to the level of core inflation. This is a case of a big fall in one relative price, not a broad-based deflation."

The report goes on to say that the real risk of deflation comes in 2010. If the unemployment rate does not come down quickly from the presumed 8% peak, core inflation will drop steadily and could pierce the lower end of the 1-2% Bernanke bands in 2010. This risk argues for continued very accommodative monetary policy for a long time to come. Presumably, the Fed will want to exit from its aggressive market interventions as quickly as the capital markets safely allow. These programs distort the capital markets, put tax dollars at risk, and should be phased out as soon as it is safe.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Morgan Stanley Ups Stake in Struggling General Growth

NEW YORK - DECEMBER 19: Traffic flows down Bro...

Image by Getty ImagesMorgan Stanley has become the second investor to take a large stake in General Growth Properties Inc., the struggling mall operator headquartered in Chicago. Morgan Stanley bought more than 13.6 million shares, upping its stake in the company from 3 percent to 5.1 percent.

General Growth’s stock price closed yesterday at 94 cents. At mid-morning today, it had risen to $1.35. Last month, Pershing Square Capital Management, a New York City-based hedge fund managed by William Ackman, bought just over 20 million shares or a 7.5 percent stake in GGP.

The Morgan Stanley move followed an agreement, reported Monday by CPN, between General Growth and a six-lender consortium to extend the maturity date for $900 million in mortgage loans on two of three General Growth malls in Las Vegas. In an attempt to raise cash, the mall operator has put both of those properties, the Fashion Show and Palazzo malls, up for sale, along with a third Las Vegas center, Grand Canal Shoppes. General Growth owes approximately $27 billion, a debt load created to finance acquisitions, including its $12.6 billion acquisition of the Rouse Co. in 2004.

See article: Morgan Stanley Ups Stake in Struggling General Growth

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Let Home Prices Fall

Cultivated tulip - Floriade 2005, Canberra

Image via The sooner prices are allowed to naturally fall to normal, post-bubble levels, and the sooner that houses become affordable, the sooner the economy can heal itself and start growing instead of contracting.

By way of analogy, imagine a reprise of the Dutch tulip mania of 1637. Say the price of tulip bulbs has grown handsomely in the last few years, and impressive fortunes were made by early speculators.

Bidding wars erupt, with the winners hoping to resell them the bulbs at a handsome profit months or years later. Cable TV hosts proclaim that a golden age of prosperity has dawned. Prized bulbs change hands for $1 million each, and skeptics are reviled as doomsayers.

Eventually this boom leads to a bust, as new buyers become scarce, and the price of tulip bulbs suffers a dizzying fall down to $10 each. Speculators complain to Congress. Politicians pledge to use tax dollars to purchase bulbs for $1,000 or $10,000, invoking phrases like 'stability' and 'liquidity crisis,' or offering taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to speculators.

This would sound silly for tulips, but it's close to what's happening for houses. All this will do is slow -- and not arrest -- the process of prices falling. Not eve"

Let Home Prices Fall, Declan McCullagh Says Further Government Intervention Will Do More Harm Than Good - CBS News

Friday, February 13, 2009

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Monday, February 9, 2009

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Friday, January 30, 2009

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Monday, January 19, 2009

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Friday, December 19, 2008

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Monday, December 8, 2008

Friday, December 5, 2008

Thursday, December 4, 2008

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