Het gevaar van een systeem-crash is nu groter dan ooit.

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The US and global financial crisis is becoming much more severe in spite of the Treasury rescue plan. The risk of a total systemic meltdown is now as high as ever

Nouriel Roubini Sep 29, 2008

It is obvious that the current financial crisis is becoming more severe in spite of the Treasury rescue plan (or maybe because of it as this plan it totally flawed). The severe strains in financial markets (money markets, credit markets, stock markets, CDS and derivative markets) are becoming more severe rather than less severe in spite of the nuclear option (after the Fannie and Freddie $200 billion bazooka bailout failed to restore confidence) of a $700 billion package: interbank spreads are widening (TED spread, swap spreads, Libo-OIS spread) and are at level never seen before; credit spreads (such as junk bond yield spreads relative to Treasuries are widening to new peaks; short-term Treasury yields are going back to near zero levels as there is flight to safety; CDS spread for financial institutions are rising to extreme levels (Morgan Stanley ones at 1200 last week) as the ban on shorting of financial stock has moved the pressures on financial firms to the CDS market; and stock markets around the world have reacted very negatively to this rescue package (US market are down about 3% this morning at their opening).

Let me explain now in more detail why we are now back to the risk of a total systemic financial meltdown…

It is no surprise as financial institutions in the US and around advanced economies are going bust: in the US the latest victims were WaMu (the largest US S&L) and today Wachovia (the sixth largest US bank); in the UK after Northern Rock and the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB you now have the bust and rescue of B&B; in Belgium you had Fortis going bust and being rescued over the weekend; in German HRE, a major financial institution is also near bust and in need of a government rescue. So this is not just a US financial crisis; it is a global financial crisis hitting institutions in the US, UK, Eurozone and other advanced economies (Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada etc.).

And the strains in financial markets – especially short term interbank markets - are becoming more severe in spite of the Fed and other central banks having literally injected about $300 billion of liquidity in the financial system last week alone including massive liquidity lending to Morgan and Goldman. In a solvency crisis and credit crisis that goes well beyond illiquidity no one is lending to counterparties as no one trusts any counterparty (even the safest ones) and everyone is hoarding the liquidity that is injected by central banks. And since this liquidity goes only to banks and major broker dealers the rest of the shadow banking system has not access to this liquidity as the credit transmission mechanisms is blocked.

After the bust of Bear and Lehman and the merger of Merrill with BofA I suggested that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs should also merge with a large financial institution that has a large base of insured deposits so as to avoid a run on their overnite liabilities. Instead Morgan and Goldman went for the cosmetic approach of converting into bank holding companies as a way to get further liquidity support – and regulation as banks – of the Fed and as a way to acquire safe deposits. But neither institution can create in a short time a franchise of branches and neither one has the time and resources to acquire smaller banks. * Thus, the gambit of converting into bank while not being banks yet has not worked and the run against them has accelerated in the last week: Morgan’s CDS spread went through the roof on Friday to over 1200 and the firm has already lost over a third of its hedge funds clients together with their highly profitable prime brokering business (this is really a kiss of death for Morgan); and the coming roll-off of the interbank lines to Morgan would seal its collapse. Even Goldman Sachs is under severe stress losing business, losing money, experiencing a severe widening of its CDS spreads and at risk of losing most of its values most of its lines of business (including trading) are now losing money.

Both institutions are highly recommended to stop dithering and playing for time as delay will be destructive: they should merge now with a large foreign financial institution as no US institution is sound enough and large enough to be a sound merger partner. If Mack and Blankfein don’t want to end up like Fuld they should do today a Thain and merge as fast as they can with another large commercial banks. Maybe Mitsubishi and a bunch of Japanese life insurers can take over Morgan; in Europe Barclays has its share of capital trouble and has just swallowed part of Lehman; while most other UK banks are too weak to take over Goldman. The only institution sound enough to swallow Goldman may be HSBC. Or maybe Nomura in Japan should make a bid for Goldman. Either way Mack and Blankfein should sell at a major discount of current price their firm before they end up like Bear and be offered in a few weeks a couple of bucks a share for their faltering operation. And the Fed and Treasury should tell them to hurry up as they are both much bigger than Bear or Lehman and their collapse would have severe systemic effects.

When investors don’t trust any more even venerable institutions such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs you know that the financial crisis is as severe as ever and the fear of collapse of counterparties does not spare anyone. When a nuclear option of a monster $700 billion rescue plan is not even able to rally stock markets (as they are all in free fall today) you know this is a global crisis of confidence in the financial system. We were literally close to a total meltdown of the system on Wednesday (and Thursday morning) two weeks ago when the $85 b bailout of AIG led to a 5% fall in US stock markets (instead of a rally). Then the US authorities went for the nuclear option of the $700 billion plan as a way to avoid the meltdown together with bans on short sales, a guarantee of money market funds and an injection of over $300 billion in the financial system. Now the prospect of this plan passing (but there is some lingering deal risk the votes in the House are not certain) -as well as the other massive policy actions taken to stop short selling “speculation” and support interbank markets and money market funds - is not sufficient to make the markets rally as there is a generalized loss of confidence in financial markets and in financial institutions that no policy action seem to be able to control.

The next step of this panic could become the mother of all bank runs, i.e. a run on the trillion dollar plus of the cross border short-term interbank liabilities of the US banking and financial system as foreign banks as starting to worry about the safety of their liquid exposures to US financial institutions; such a silent cross border bank run has already started as foreign banks are worried about the solvency of US banks and are starting to reduce their exposure. And if this run accelerates - as it may now - a total meltdown of the US financial system could occur. We are thus now in a generalized panic mode and back to the risk of a systemic meltdown of the entire financial system. And US and foreign policy authorities seem to be clueless about what needs to be done next. Maybe they should today start with a coordinated 100 bps reduction in policy rates in all the major economies in the world to show that they are starting to seriously recognize and address this rapidly worsening financial crisis.

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Op dinsdag 30 september 2008 04:34 schreef santax het volgende:
Ik heb deze copy paste net in een ander bericht gezien.

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House Votes 'No' on Paulson's Bailout -- But Is the Financial Meltdown Averted?

By Mike Whitney, CounterPunch. Posted September 29, 2008.

The fear on Capital Hill is palpable, especially among the Democrats who have led the effort to pass Paulson's boondoggle ASAP.

Today the US House rejected Treasury Secretary Paulson's $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Paulson said he has the votes, but Paulson was wrong. The House bucked the Paulson's claim that buying up the illiquid mortgage-backed assets from the nation's banks would be enough to save the financial system from an impending meltdown. The jury remains out on that question, too. Professor Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics, summed it up like this, "You're not resolving the two fundamental issues: You still have to recapitalize the banking system, and household debt is going to stay high". A large number of economists believe Roubini is right. The bill would not solve the underlying problems.

There is a crisis. The banking system is undercapitalized, the credit markets are frozen, and foreign creditors are beginning to slow their purchases of US debt. It's all bad. At the same time the number of casualties among the financial giants -- Bear Stearns, Indymac, AIG, Lehman, Washington Mutual -- continues to grow. Three more struggling European banks were added to the list of financial institutions that needed emergency government assistance this past weekend. It's no wonder Congress feels like they have to do something to stop the bleeding.

Before the stock market opened on Monday, the futures markets had slumped heavily into negative territory, while the TED spread, an indicator of stress in interbank lending, had widened to 3.19, a level that suggests another rocky week of trading ahead. Could this be another Black Monday?

Paulson's bill was designed to avert a system-wide crash by clearing the banks' balance sheets so they could resume extending credit to consumers and businesses. The hope was that massive infusion of capital would "turn back the clock" to the happy days of low interest speculation and bubble economics. Paulson is a "one trick pony" who firmly adheres to the belief that wealth creation depends on maximum leverage and an ever-weakening currency. But that world view is no longer applicable after reaching Peak Credit, where consumers are no longer able to make the interest payments on their loans and businesses and financial institutions are forced to curb their spending and dump their toxic assets at firesale prices. The system is deleveraging and nothing can stop it. Paulson has yet to accept the new reality.

Besides, there was no guarantee that the banks would use the money in the way that Paulson imagines. As one Wall Street veteran explained to me, "I don't see one penny of that $700 billion ending up helping the broader economy. I see it being used to prop up share prices so the insiders can salvage as much as possible when dumping their shares".

Indeed, the $700 billion is just part of a massive "pump and dump" scheme engineered with the tacit approval of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Once the banksters have offloaded their fraudulent securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they will do whatever they need to do pad the bottom line and drive their stocks up. That means they will shovel capital into hard assets, foreign currencies, gold, interest rate swaps, carry trade swindles, and Swiss bank accounts. The notion that they will recapitalize so they can provide loans to US consumers and businesses in a slumping economy is a pipedream.

The US is headed into its worst recession in 60 years. The housing market is crashing, securitzation is kaput, and the broader economy is drifting towards the reef. The banks are not going to waste their time trying to revive a moribund US market where consumers and businesses are already tapped out. No way; it's on to greener pastures. They'll move their capital wherever they think they can maximize their profits. In fact, a sizable portion of the $700 billion will likely be invested in commodities, which means that we'll see another round of hyperbolic speculation in food and energy futures pushing food and fuel prices into the stratosphere. Ironically, the taxpayers' largesse will be used against them, making a bad situation even worse.

Then again, if a rehabbed bill isn't passed, no one can predict with certainty what will happen. Here's how Tim Shipman summed it up in "Bailout Failure Will Cause US Crash", in the UK Telegraph:

"Officials close to Paulson are privately painting a far bleaker portrait of the fragility of the global economy than that advanced by President George W Bush in his televised address last week.

One Republican said that the message from government officials is that 'the economy is dropping into the john.' He added: 'We could see falls of 3,000 or 4,000 points on the Dow [the New York market that currently trades at around 11,000]. That could happen in just a couple of days.

'What's being put around behind the scenes is that we're looking at 1930s stuff. We're looking at catastrophe, huge, amazing catastrophe. Everybody is extraordinarily scared. It's going to be really, really nasty.'"

The fear on Capital Hill is palpable, especially among the Democrats who have led the effort to pass Paulson's boondoggle ASAP. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and fellow Democratic Party leaders, Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the blabbering blowhard from Massachusetts, Barney Frank, did everything in their power to sandbag dissenters, quash resistance, and rush the bill to a vote without the usual deliberation and debate. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) was one of many angry members of congress who lashed out at Pelosi's highhandedness. It's all caught on a one minute video:

Rep. Marcy Kaptur: "The normal legislative process that should accompany a monumental proposal to bail out Wall Street has been shelved. Yes, shelved! Only a few insiders are doing the dealing. These criminals have so much power they can shut down the normal legislative process of the highest lawmaking body in this land. All the committees that should be scanning every word that is being negotiated have been benched. And that means the American people have been benched. We are constitutionally sworn to protect this country against all enemies foreign and domestic, and yes, my friends, there are enemies….The people who are pushing this bill are the very same one's who are responsible for the implosion on Wall Street. They were fraudulent then; and they are fraudulent now.We should say No to this deal".

Republicans were equally furious at the way the Pelosi Politburo kept the rank and file out of loop as much as possible. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) summarized the feelings of a great many congressmen who felt they were being railroaded by Pelosi and Co: "We have seen no bill. We have been here debating talking points …House Republicans have been cut out of the process and derided by the leaders of the House Democrats as "unpatriotic" for not participating in supporting the bill. Mr. Speaker, I have been thrown out of more meetings in the last 24 hours than I ever thought possible as an elected official of 800,000 citizens of N. Texas….Since we didn't have hearings, since we didn't have markup, let's at least put this legislation up on the Internet for 24 hours and let the American people see what we have done in the dark of night. After all, I have never gotten more mail on a single issue than on this bill that is before us tonight."

Rep Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) gave the best speech of the day railing against the financial industry and defending the interests of working class Americans.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: "The $700 bailout bill is being driven by fear not fact. This is too much money, in too short of time, going to too few people, while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings…Why aren't we considering any other alternatives other than giving $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect the investors? Why aren't we directly helping homeowners with their debt burdens? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Isn't time for fundamental change to our debt-based monetary system so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the US Congress or the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs?"

There was greater opposition to the Paulson bill than any legislation in the last half century. The groundswell of public outrage has been unprecedented, and yet, Congress, completely insulated from the demands of their constituents, continues to blunder ahead following the same pro-industry script as their ideological twins in the White House. There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. Not surprisingly, neither Pelosi nor any of the Democratic leadership has even met with any of the more than 200 leading economists who have stated unequivocally that the bailout will not address the central problems that are wreaking havoc on the financial system. Instead, they have caved in to Bush's demagoguery and the spurious claims of G-Sax bagman Henry Paulson, a man who has misled the public on every issue related to the subprime/financial fiasco so far.

There are parts of Paulson's Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that every US taxpayer should understand, even though the media is keeping those facts obscured. In sections 128 and 132; the proposed bill would have suspend "mark to market" accounting. This means that the banks would no longer be required to assess the worth of their assets according to what similar assets fetched on the open market. For example, Merrill Lynch just sold $31 billion of mortgage-backed securities for $6 billion, which means that similar bonds should be similarly priced. Simple; right? The banks need to adjust the value of those assets on their balance sheet accordingly. This gives investors and depositors the ability to know whether their bank is in bad shape or not. But Paulson's bill lifted this requirement and allowed the banks to assign their own arbitrary value to these assets, which is the same old Enron-style accounting scam.

Paulson's bill also proposed the "Elimination of FASB 157 and 0% reserves". This is just as sketchy as it sounds. FASB or Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act reads:

"Federal Reserve Banks are authorized to pay banks interest on reserves under Section 201 of the Act. In addition, Section 202 permits the FRB to change the ratio of reserves a bank must maintain relative to its transaction accounts, allowing a zero reserve ratio if appropriate. Due to federal budgetary requirements, Section 203 provides that these legislative changes will not take effect until October 1, 2011."

It's all legal mumbo jumbo to conceal the fact that the banks can continue to operate with insufficient capital, which is why the system is currently blowing up. It all get's down to this: The reason the system is exploding is because the various financial institutions have been allowed -- via deregulation -- to act as banks and create as much credit as they choose without a sufficient capital base. When one reads about massive deleveraging, this relates directly to the fact that under-capitalized businesses were operating with too much debt in relationship to their capital. That's it in a nutshell; forget about the CDOs, the MBSs, the CDS and the whole alphabet soup of derivatives garbage. They were all inserted into the system so Wall Street landsharks could expand credit without supervision and balance trillions of dollars of debt on the back of a one dollar bill. This is why Paulson wants to suspend the rules which would bring credibility and trust back to the system. After all, that might impinge on Wall Street's ability to enrich itself at the public's expense.

Nouriel Roubini sites a study by Barry Eichengreen, "And Now the Great Depression", which points out why Paulson's $700 billion plan is likely to fail:

"Whenever there is a systemic banking crisis there is a need to recapitalize the banking/financial system to avoid an excessive and destructive credit contraction. But purchasing toxic/illiquid assets of the financial system is NOT the most effective and efficient way to recapitalize the banking system….

"A recent IMF study of 42 systemic banking crises across the world provides evidence of how different crises were resolved.

"First of all only in 32 of the 42 cases there was government financial intervention of any sort; in 10 cases systemic banking crises were resolved without any government financial intervention. Of the 32 cases where the government recapitalized the banking system only seven included a program of purchase of bad assets/loans (like the one proposed by the US Treasury). In 25 other cases there was no government purchase of such toxic assets. In 6 cases the government purchased preferred shares; in 4 cases the government purchased common shares; in 11 cases the government purchased subordinated debt; in 12 cases the government injected cash in the banks; in 2 cases credit was extended to the banks; and in 3 cases the government assumed bank liabilities. Even in cases where bad assets were purchased -- as in Chile -- dividends were suspended and all profits and recoveries had to be used to repurchase the bad assets. Of course in most cases multiple forms of government recapitalization of banks were used." (Nouriel Roubini's Global EonoMonitor.)

In short, it wouldn't work. Nor was it designed to work. The bill was just Paulson's way of carving a silver canoe for he and his brandy-drooling investor buddies so they can paddle away to some offshore haven while the rest of us drown in a bottomless ocean of debt.

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Breakdown Approaches Climax

Pardon the brief and jumpy style, laced with more emotion than usual. The events of the last few days have been remarkable, alarming, chaotic, and surreal. Gonna attend the Toronto gold show hosted by the Cambridge House this weekend. If you are there, grab my arm and say hello. Let me know your perspective on the brewing crisis.

HEART ATTACKS & BANK HOLIDAYS

The banking system breakdown is very far along, but still early. Remember USFed Chairman Bernanke stated over a year ago that the mortgage problem was contained. Try not to laugh. The bond crisis is absolute, broad, deep, and all-inclusive, enough to kill the USTreasurys after it kills the US banking system. The heart attack signals are with the LIBOR spreads over USTreasurys, the money market, the TED spread (Treasury versus EuroDollar), and short-term USTreasurys. Charts resemble heart attacks and EKG electro-cardiogram monitors. Many details appear in the October Hat Trick Letter report just posted. The bank runs have begun in earnest. Nevermind the big banks for a moment. The smaller ones are entering seizures. The small and medium sized cities are also entering seizures. Here are two stories, one about a city and another about the bank holiday coming.

This from a friend in Seattle: “I was talking to my neighbor last night. He is in finance in the county government, King County (Seattle). He said there are some very secretive budget talks being held, very hush, hush. Apparently, the county has lost around $200 million of taxpayer money in toxic paper investments, with huge implications on the budget. He says he is not privy to the details, but he is taking a 10-day vacation starting today, because he has nothing to do since everything is in flux.”

This from a friend in Atlanta with strong banking connections: “Reliable word that Bank of America branch managers just received a letter or memo from the USFed instructing them to perhaps be ready for a one-week universal shut-down of the banking system, including access to checking accounts, savings accounts and credit cards. Reliable word has it that BofA bank branches received a shipment of signs last week, reading “WE'RE SORRY, BUT DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND OUR CONTROL, WE CANNOT BE OPEN AT THIS TIME.”

So the banks are in need of a respite, a break, a holiday. They need to shore up their positions. Economists and bankers avoid revealing the consequences of extended absence of short-term credit supply. Imagine all the supply chain DELIVERY routes being interrupted for lack of short-term credit, certain to interrupt the supply of food, gasoline, building materials, basic household wares, simple hardware, and more. The short-term credit would certainly also disrupt payroll streams for companies, inventory supply for retail chains, durable goods purchases by consumers (like washing machines & refrigerators), the maintenance of basic machinery (like cars, trucks, computer, communications), even cash dispensed at ATMachines.

BAILOUT BILL PASSAGE

The Senate passed the Wall Street bailout bill, by a 3:1 majority. Some sweeteners like tax cuts and raising the limit to $250k on individual accounts for bank depositors helped. Some people might think that finally the banking system can at last receive some meaningful fixes. Call me a killjoy, but this will accomplish next to nothing as a banking system remedy. It is more a paper seal to Wall Street corruption than to ANY solution. If passed by the House, as is likely, it puts an epitaph on the American badge of legitimacy. A decade of fraud has been underwritten, sanctioned, and sealed. Even foreigners might smile at the new & improved bill. Their impaired bonds can participate in the redemption process. The only trouble is they might have to accept hot shiny USTreasury Bonds in return, of certain questionable value.

Still the bill must be viewed as a giant paper net to catch a giant locomotive train, one that derailed and then went over the mountainside cliff 500 meters above and is hurtling downward with acceleration. Gravity is a bitch, and so is momentum! One should not doubt for a second that it will do much to halt the downward trajectory. One should remember that debt solutions accomplish nothing in providing remedy for debt abuse and damage inflicted by broken debt contraptions. Nothing is fixed, only accounts have been shifted and names have been changed. THE BANKING SYSTEM PROCEEDS ALONG ITS OWN CLEARLY DEFINED PATHOGENESIS, with great momentum and power, which no human devices can interrupt. The next shock will be why the bill has not fixed the banking system as Mini-Fuhrer Paulson claimed it would. The other next shock is why Wall Street will need another $700 billion within a year. The other other next shock is how much the AIG and Fannie Mae “INVESTMENTS” a la nationalization will each cost the USGovt conglomerate an unexpected extra $trillion. The bailout yesterday enables Wall Street executives to retire more comfortably, even as some seek asylum or face exile.

The irony of the lifted depositor insurance is that big financial conglomerates can now raid the private accounts worth over $100k now, with government coverage in the bankruptcy courts. The October Hat Trick Letter contains some multi-sided evidence of USFed open license to use subsidiary accounts toward the aid of liquidity strains. What constantly leaves me shaking my head is how intelligent people continue to attribute fair spirited motives to the system, when it resembles a crime syndicate more each year. The reason why it resembles one is that it IS a crime syndicate operating under the USGovt roof. There are three crime syndicates operating under the USGovt roof, the others identified in the report this month. Each has had a profound financial effect on the nation, as in killing its host.

One can make a fine balanced and credible argument that the Fannie Mae bailout package represented an aggregate parallel of the simple Trenton New Jersey home loan fraud. The parallels are argued, with conclusion being the USGovt bailout was tantamount to abandonment by the mafia gangsters, who walked away from the $250k loan on the $50 crack house dilapidated property. Parallels are disturbing, as Wall Street and USGovt players fill out the example carried to the aggregate. The other Fannie Mae fraud is the simple bond certificate counterfeit, just plain paper printing without bother of Wall Street involvement. That fraud helped to run up the total Fannie Mae fraud past the $1 trillion mark. Given the sleazy guys who ran Fannie Mae, and all the protection run for it by politicians averse to reform, the fraud was quite easy. Who would want to question a shiny Fannie bond, a device which powered the great housing boom?

FDIC AS NEW I-BANK RAIDER

A new role seems to have come to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. They are the newest brokers on Wall Street, the new investment bankers, raiders true to the name. They do not protect depositors any more than Christopher Cox at the SEC protects stock investors. The FDIC has minimal funds, most likely co-mingled with the USTreasury anyway, just like the Social Security Trust Fund. The measly $45 billion lying around in the FDIC fund would not cover more than one or two decent sized banks, or one Washington Mutual or one Wachovia. So what does Sheila Bair do in response? She defends Wall Street, avoids liquidation by dead banks, and steers them to the JPMorgan chop shop and slaughterhouse. A great arbitrage results, as JPMorgan obtains bond assets for nothing, and can sell them to a stupid captive customer, us taxpayers.

In doing so, several things happen:

1. JPMorgan obtains the entire corporate asset kit & kaboodle for next to nothing
2. deposits are used to help the JPM asset ratios
3. bond assets can be sold to the USGovt bailout fund
4. senior bond holders for the dead banks are screwed, receiving a pittance
5. dangerous credit derivatives are placed in the JPM Garbage Can
6. the Wall Street Consolidation Plan continues.

The Big 3 Banks are JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America. Just how on earth can Citigroup even consider acquiring Wachovia? Buy it with what? Citigroup is insolvent. That does not stop the Wall Street firms from spreading their cancer. Besides, King Cox has a plan, to remove ‘Mark to Market’ asset accounting rules. Poof! The US banks are solvent again. Only trouble is they become Walking Zombies. Couple this desperate policy change with short stock restrictions, and the Third World Finances label fits even better, from lack of credibility. The new Wall Street I-Bank is on the scene. The modern FDIC might make Michael Milken proud, the junk bond king from Drexel Burnham. By the way, he only served two of his ten years in prison. Wall Street does have its privilege. The Wall Street investment bank model is dead & buried, with the door slamming shut by Goldman Sachs changing its coat to read bank holding company.

The group likely to initiate lawsuits is the senior bond holders to the broken banks. They should have entered an orderly procedure led by the FDIC. They face ruin when they should salvage something. The FDIC sets up banks to be raped. The label of pimp is too generous and connotes too much respect. To think that Sheila Bair at the FDIC is being praised for her leadership lately is enough to make a bond holder vomit. These mergers are nothing but disguised ‘Chop Shop’ rapes. At least the FDIC receives fees. JPMorgan donated $1.9 billion to the FDIC cause. By the time the dust clears after the locomotive crashes, three giant hollow monoliths were be standing, a tribute to Manhattan, in the Big 3 Banks. Their glass and aluminum fittings might be in much better shape than the World Trade Center though. It is doubtful that they possess any gold bullion in basement vaults. Let’s hope the third of these buildings does not suffer a structural sympathy, only to collapse.

LOOMING TIME BOMBS

Clearly they are AIG with its raft of Credit Default Swaps, and Fannie Mae with its raft of mortgages and their bonds. Fannie also has a scad of Interest Rate Swaps. As explained in past Hat Trick Letter reports, the quarterly bills payable to JMPorgan and Goldman Sachs might be considerable on these swaps. The USGovt swallowed two really big ugly hairy hungry tapeworms, that will possibly each cost an extra $1 trillion in unplanned expenses. Actually, my guess is the figure might be conservative. A year ago, when clowns like Bernanke and harlots on Wall Street were estimating the entire mortgage fiasco would result in $100 to $200 billion losses, my figure was $1.5 to $2.0 trillion. As the time bombs go off, they will do so in dribs & drabs, actually giant dribs & giant drabs. The costs will take esteemed senators in the august body of the USCongress off guard.

An interesting thought came to me tonight as the Senate Bailout Bill was written. Actually, more sinister than interesting. The Fannie bill, the AIG bill, and the Wall Street omnibus bill might have been greased by private bribes. Imagine the hefty $138 billion paid to JPMorgan by the USFed, ostensibly from counterfeit Dept of Treasury hotmoney, during the Lehman Brothers failure and confusion, approved by Bankruptcy Court judge James Peck in Manhattan, all executed in pre-dawn during the weekend. Sorry, wanted to paint the background accurately but succinctly. If the 74 senators were each given $2 million in a basic traditional bribe, located safely in a Cayman Island account, then the total cost to JPMorgan would only be $148 million, in the neighborhood of 1 part in 1000 on that disgusting under-the-table handout of $138 billion. It makes good business sense in a day and age when rules mean nothing, when preserving the system is paramount, especially when BS bylines can be spouted about helping the common man.

RUN ON BANKS, RUN ON BONDS

Those talking perpetual campaign managers known as USCongressional members, they like to talk about “the fact of the matter” a lot, as thought they have some innate ability to recognize facts. Here are some facts. A broad and deep run is occurring on US banks, small, medium, large. Banks rely upon deposits and bank equity (stocks and bonds) to supply themselves with capital. The bank runs strip banks from their ability to continue operations, at a time when their stocks have cratered. Stock price declines of over 70% and 80% are common, the norm, not the exception. Insolvency plus illiquidity means bankruptcy, without benefit of time extensions. As Meredith Whitney (the intrepid bank analyst from Oppenheimer) said in a recent interview, “There are a ton of regional banks that also face a similar predicament.” She correctly forecasted much bank distress, and expects a flood of FDIC activity to deal with failing banks.

Europeans have also lost respect for the US financial leadership, public statements having been made by the German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck to the effect that the United States has lost its geopolitical leadership mantle. A powerful reversal in investment flow endangers the US bond markets. Private flow of money resulted in the movement of $92.9 billion out of the US in July, after $46.8 billion entered the nation in June. A profound new trend is in place, whereby the three major continents of North America, Europe, and Asia are bringing home money. With a US budget deficit easily eclipsing the $1 trillion mark this coming year, demands for USTreasury sales will be left wanting, as USTBonds will be left on the table. The money printing machines will be the main recourse, as US$ monetary inflation will enter at least one and maybe two new gears in higher usage.

THE RISK LIES WITH HIGHER USTBOND YIELDS OFFERED, OR LOWER USDOLLAR EXCHANGE RATES

FORCED. Either way, foreign US$-based bondholders face big losses. The nationalization demands will quickly force the issue of USTreasury Bond default. Bear in mind that now 52.7% of USTreasury debt is held by foreigners, and that proportion is fast rising. At yearend 2007, a hefty $9.4 trillion in US$-based securities were in foreign hands, as in liquid assets, easily divested. Risk to foreigner reserve accounts grows. They recognize their risk of becoming bagholders of greatly damaged debt paper. Amidst this pressure and isolation, the US Federal Reserve might simply resign its contractor position with the USCongress. After all, their balance sheet is decimated. It is not unlimited. It does have creditors.

The gold price will respond, as the USDollar faces a trashing. On the other side of this storm, characterized paradoxically as a USDollar rally at a time of truly devastated fundamentals, the USDollar will get trashed. To this end, a shocking admission came from New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. He is a bit of a maverick, speaking his mind. He actually stated, “The next cause for concern in the battered US economy is whether there will be buyers abroad for the nation’s billions in debt.”

USDOLLAR AT RISK, USFED RATE CUTS SOON

The USDollar is at extreme high risk. Since its bounce in July, behavior is erratic, volatile, and fully dependent upon central banks and market rule changes. The US$ money supply had been steadily growing at a 15% growth rate, give or take. Expect it to surpass 20% soon, and the US$ to reflect the debased currency from a flood of supply. The United States will be the first nation to cut interest rates, from desperation financially and economically. Other nations will eventually follow, but not right away. The effect few talk about regarding the mammoth nationalization and bailouts underway is the powerful jump in price inflation, along with currency debasement. Both are inevitable, sure to lift the gold price in powerful steps. The isolation of the US in geopolitical circles, the utter shock at failed leadership witnessed the world over, the widely perceived national bankruptcy will translate into shunned USTreasury auctions and outright divestment of US$-based assets. The only buyers will be central banks. The USDollar is at very very very high risk of serious declines, exactly like the US stock markets.


A trump factor has entered the room. THE USDOLLAR & GOLD WILL SOON RESPOND TO THE FAILURE OF THE US FINANCIAL SYSTEM, WHICH COULD QUICKLY RESULT IN NATIONAL EMERGENCY, BANK HOLIDAY CLOSURES, AND TOTAL FRUSTRATION BY BANK LEADERS, AS NOTHING SUCCEEDS. The Wall Street bailout bill fixes nothing in bank system structure and integrity and function, as problems remain intact tragically. The United States controls the world reserve currency in the USDollar. In Hat Trick This late summer, my analysis stated that gold must make a difficult transition from an anti-US$ trade to a hedge against monetary inflation, a hedge against realized price inflation, and a hedge against geopolitical risk, even a national US banking collapse. Some movement has been made on the transition from the tunnel vision anti-US$ trade. One should keep focus on how the US official lending rate at 2.0% is more than 3% below the current suppressed Consumer Price Inflation rate. So money is actually free for those who can access that rate.

The USDollar increasingly is being defended by market interference mechanisms of the worst and most egregiously shameful order, such as a) restrictions to short financial stocks, even though they are insolvent and more illiquid by the week, b) calls to eliminate ‘Mark to Market’ accounting of bank assets, and c) the trusty Plunge Protection Team devices used to prop up stocks, bonds, and the US$ itself. The major currencies are all at risk actually. One contact with international connections recently wrote me, “The US$ will drop to 2.00 against the EUR not before long. And then the EUR will crash shortly thereafter.” Many fine analysts expect the USDollar to suffer a severe markdown as the recent US nationalizations and bailouts are fully digested. Their forecasts would coincide with the notion that the USTreasury Bond suffers a severe market interruption like a suspension or possible default, but then later the euro is victimized by new global gold-backed currencies. This is a very possible scenario.

quote:

IMF-topman: financieel systeem staat op instorten

WASHINGTON (AFN) - Zorgen over de gezondheid van internationale banken hebben het financiële systeem aan de rand van de afgrond gebracht. Dat heeft Dominiqu Strauss-Kahn, topman van het Internationaal Monetair Fonds (IMF), zaterdag gezegd.

Ondanks ongekende ingrepen, waaronder een gecoordineerde renteverlaging door de voornaamste centrale banken van de wereld, zullen de komende maanden extra maatregelen zijn om de kredietcrisis in de Verenigde Staten en in Europa een halt toe te roepen, aldus Strauss-Kahn.

“Vooruit kijkend, verwacht ik dat de omstandigheden op de kapitaalmarkt heel moeilijk zullen blijven, waardoor de economische groei wereldwijd onder druk zal staan.”

quote:

The Stark Choice Now Facing America

America, and Americans face a stark decision - and a choice that must be made now.

Not next month at the polls, not next week.

Today.

I have been writing on this subject, petitioning Congress, and both calling and faxing Congress - and you - for the last year and a half.

We now sit literally days away, with a high probability, of a credit market "dislocation" that will change American finance and decimate the stock market.

That is, worse - far worse - than what has happened thus far.

Try on for size 2-3,000 points down on the Dow from here. 25% more than has been lost thus far, more-or-less "all at once." The probability of this event is now in excess of 70% - within the next few days to two weeks.

The Politicians know this.

They were promised that the market would not blow up if they passed Paulson's and Bernanke's bill.

They were lied to, and the first "blowup" happened.

You, the people, were promised that passing this "stabilization" bill was the right thing to do too.

You were lied to.

Now we are sitting on the edge of the second blowup - "The Big One."

Among other things, today we learned that The Fed has lost control of the Effective Fed Funds Rate - their own overnight lending rate. They were forced to change their interest rate on reserves in order to try to get it back under control - and there is no reason to believe their efforts will be effective.

The truth is that our nation, and indeed the world, has too much debt for its ability to earn income and has had since 1968. As this became apparent to the people at The Federal Reserve and Treasury, in the 1980s starting with Alan Greenspan, interest rates were artificially kept low for a long period of time to encourage you and others to go into that debt - debt you and these firms cannot possibly repay.

This is why we had the crash in 1987, why LTCM blew up in the 1990s, why we had an Internet Bubble and now why we had a Housing Bubble.

All of these bubbles were intentionally created by The Fed, Treasury and Wall Street Banks to keep the charade alive that you could take on more and more debt and they could make more and more money.

We are now out of bubbles and ability to support bubbles, and America (and the world, in fact) is out of the ability to support more debt.

We are now borrowing money to cover up the fact that millions of Americans and tens of thousands of companies are bankrupt, and the banks and other institutions that loaned them money are likewise bankrupt, as the people who owe them that money can't and never will be able to pay.

The people who in turn loan America the money it needs to operate - over $2 billion a day - have become aware of this fact.

This is very bad, because nobody will loan money to someone forever when they have no reasonable belief that they will ever be paid back.

There are only two options remaining for America, and we as Americans, and our politicians, must choose one of these two paths.

Neither path is easy.

Neither path is pain-free.

The path that will lead us to where we can prosper involves a great deal of short-term pain. It involves forcing all of the bad debt - perhaps your mortgage, the bad corporate debt, the "Ponzi-Scheme" style debt that has been layered up one on top of another - out into the open and forcing it to default.

On purpose.

This means that if you are underwater on your home, you will lose it and your credit will be destroyed for a few years. It means you may have to file for bankruptcy. It means a great deal of short term pain if you are in this position. It means that companies that have taken on too much debt will be forced to either pay down what they can, or go bankrupt if they cannot.

This path will result in higher unemployment for a time, it will result in lower standards of living. You will not be able to spend money you do not have, and neither will our government. Both the government and we the people will be forced to live within our means.

The second path is for Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson our government and you to attempt to do what we have been doing.

That is, to borrow more money to pay the interest on money we have already borrowed. To refuse to accept that those who borrowed too much, and who can't pay, must declare that fact and face the potential bankruptcy that comes from being too far in debt and unable to make good on obligations.

This is now a critical matter for our nation, because our nation's political leaders have chosen to take the private debt of companies and individuals and attempt to guarantee it with the credit of the United States.

However, The United States is just as broke as we are individually - in fact, more so.

Treasury will have to issue three trillion dollars of new debt over the next 12 months in an attempt to make this work. But Treasury has been using very short-term debt - mostly four week and 13 week "bills", to fund the existing debt, because they are cheaper. As such the total amount of these auctions could easily reach five trillion dollars over the next 12 months.

Already, Treasury is issuing more than $100 billion dollars in this debt a week, on average, including new issues and rollovers. This is about double the total amount of debt that foreigners (or US interests) hold in total, and we have barely begun to actually issue the debt necessary to make the "TARP" operate.

We are, in effect, borrowing to pay interest. If you have ever tried to do this personally, you know that doing so almost always leads to bankruptcy.

It will for us as a nation if we don't stop it now.

Our choice as citizens is to either accept that those of us who have taken on too much debt will and must go bankrupt, declaring our insolvency and settling what we can, whether we are an individual, a corporation, or even our nation, or whether we will continue to attempt the charade of printing up more and more debt (or money) in an attempt to cover it up.

We are very close to the point where more debt causes the GDP - that is, the totality of our nation's output - to contract instead of expand.

At the point that line is crossed, our nation's monetary and economic system will fail with disastrous consequences.

This is, effectively, what happened in Iceland, and it came almost without warning. The price of everything they import tripled overnight.

We as a nation must choose, and we must do it now.

Nobody wants to accept that they cannot have a new car if they can't put down 10 to 20% of the purchase price, and that they can't "roll over" the old balance into the new loan, but that doesn't make it not true. It is, in fact, true.

Nobody wants to accept that they really need to put 20% down on a house and that houses can't sell for more than 3x incomes, on average, but it is in fact true.

Nobody wants to accept that having college cost $200,000 for four years is obscene and that allowing our kids to graduate with that sort of debt is outrageous, but it is in fact true.

Your 401k has already been turned into a 201k because our government has decided to lie about the fact that dozens if not hundreds of banks and tens of thousands of businesses, not to mention millions of individual Americans, maybe even you, are in fact broke.

Not everyone, however, is broke - but everyone's 401k, 403b and IRA is being decimated, and if we do not act now, we will all - the broke and the prudent - suffer the consequences of trying to lie about the financial state of our nation's banking system, our nation's companies and our nation's families.

We may be days away from an international credit incident originating outside of the United States. Foreign nations, banks, and businesses have "levered up", or taken more risk, than we have. They too have chosen to lie.

As money has flowed from "not guaranteed and possibly lying" firms' debt to that which is guaranteed by the government, the government has seen necessary to guarantee more and more liars, lest further firms and types of debt fail. As each type of debt becomes guaranteed it "sucks the money" from the non-guaranteed, and within weeks or days The Fed is obligated to guarantee yet another type of debt, lest it collapse too. We now have general corporate debt blowing out to wide levels, which will soon shut off all new corporate borrowing - even for sound companies - because there is no reason to buy their debt when you can buy guaranteed debt of some other type.

The Federal Reserve, starting with the "TAF", now has an entire alphabet soup of "facilities" to guarantee various debts, and the FDIC has increased its coverage. In recent weeks The Fed's facilities have even been extended overseas via "swap lines" and various other charades - it is no longer just United States interests being backstopped, it now includes foreign banks as well.

All of this is for one purpose - to cover the fact that many of these businesses are broke - that is, to cover up the lying.

But as each lie is covered up, the market calls the bluff and forces yet another coverup. The Fed is now creating new facilities to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars they do not have, effectively displacing private lending on a global scale, now operating with leverage of more than 40:1 - all so the lies do not have to be admitted to.

But with each new charade the spiral tightens at an increasing rate.

At some point the people who have lent all of these firms money will cease to be willing to do so because all debt will become equivalent to US Debt, and all of it will be considered "dangerous."

The people who loan us money - the oil producers, the Japanese and the Chinese - are able to do the same math I am.

They know the same facts I know, and you should know.

They know the same facts that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke know, but have not shared in an open and honest fashion with The American People - or with Congress.

We are on the cusp of this dislocation - and this realization - being forced upon us.

I believe Treasury has been attempting to "kick the can down the road" as is the usual pattern in Washington DC.

Unfortunately the can has filled up with cement and there is now a very high probability that instead of the can being able to be kicked down the road until next year after the elections the second-level dislocation - the "big one" - is going to happen within days.

It is my opinion that we must, at all costs, protect the borrowing ability of our government - the Treasury of The United States.

We must not use our government to protect the liars in American business, no matter whether they are banks, automakers, the local store owner or ordinary Americans.

If we are to get through the difficult economic times we are in and which lie ahead, we must guarantee that our government is able to borrow money at a competitive rate.

We must make sure that the government is not lumped in with the liars, lest the government's ability to borrow get cut off or become prohibitively expensive.

This decision to differentiate the government from the liars must be made now.

Our leaders must stand up and demand that Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson stop backstopping the bankrupt.

We must withdraw the TARP and not allow $70 billion dollars of borrowed money to go to pay bonuses at major Wall Street banks - $70 billion dollars we do not have.

We must not allow this money to be used to run mergers and other corporate "raids."

We must stop Ben Bernanke from expanding his "alphabet soup" of lending facilities, and force those who are in fact bankrupt into the open, where the free market's solution - bankruptcy - awaits.

We must force home prices down so that you can truly afford to buy a house, not keep prices artificially high so that the banks and other lenders don't lose money.

We must recognize and admit that the debt merchants - the banks - are opposed to doing the right thing not because their opposition is good for America and it is to everyone's benefit that they be protected, but because by forcing hidden defaults into the open some of them will go broke, and all of them will, in the future, have far less business to compete for.

Once the bad debt has been forced from the system then and only then should Congress step in, if necessary, and charter new banks. Spin them off to the public in IPOs with the money was going to be used for the TARP - but only after we have restored the ability of America to use credit once again by defaulting the bad debt that currently exists.

If we do not make this choice, and make it now, those who have the money we are borrowing - the Chinese, the Saudis, The Japanese and others - will make this decision for us.

They will come to the conclusion that they will never be paid back.

At this point our way of life will be irretrievably altered.

Your 401k, which is now a 201k, will become a 101k or even a 51k. The DOW could fall to below 5,000 and the S&P 500 to 500 or less, with 20 years or more of gains wiped out.

You have already seen nearly half of your money disappear.

You could see another half disappear - within days.

That is a 75% loss from October 2007 values, and before you scoff at it, look at a chart of the Nasdaq from 2000 to 2003. Our entire stock market and economy have become just as farcical as the Nasdaq was from 1995-1999. I ran a company in the Internet space in the 1990s - I saw it all, and most of the firms that failed during the Tech Wreck were more honest than the banks and mortgage lenders during the housing bubble and to this day!

The day for we, as Americans, to make this decision has arrived.

We must do so today, not after the election and not in January.

We must tell Congress now that it is critical for them to protect America's credit as a nation, not the credit of banks, business who have done imprudent things, and even ordinary Americans who have done imprudent things, whether those imprudent things were done intentionally or not.

We must make clear that we understand this will not be an easy decision, or a painless one - but it is a necessary decision, it is our decision, and it is the decision we demand they enforce as our elected representatives.

Congress must "grow a pair" and stand up for Americans, here and now, today, telling the world that these liquidity facilities will not be permitted to continue, that banks and other firms who have concealed the true state of their finances will be closed and their executives jailed if they do not immediately confess, and that house price "supports" will and must be withdrawn, including the provision of "low down payment" and "high debt-to-income" loan options.

Congress must direct Ben Bernanke to either withdraw his "alphabet soup" or Congress must revoke The Fed's charter and replace The Fed with a monetary authority that will tell the truth and act with full transparency.

Treasury must be directed to cease implementation of the TARP and return all funds not yet spent to the general fund. The short-term cash management debt that Treasury has issued must be allowed to run down and not be rolled over so that the radical expansion of issue in the Treasury market ceases and in fact is reversed.

We must choose America.

You have seen, today, another five percent decline in the stock market, despite the claims that "credit is improving."

That claim is a lie.

Credit is not improving - it is being replaced by The Fed being the only issuer and guarantor of credit - an impossible situation that is ruinous to our nation and its prospects.

We face an imminent collapse of both stock and credit markets if we do not act, and act today.

To Congress: Is there not one statesman or woman who will stand for America and her people, not for the bankers and fraudsters on Wall Street who have given you millions in campaign contributions?

To The People: You were promised a solution, and you didn't get it. Are you going to sit on your hands while our nation's economy implodes?

Those are your choices, and you must make them today.

Choose wisely.

(I hope I'm wrong, but fear I'm not.....)

quote:

Fiscal Cat 5 Hurricane Warning

You only think the Stock Market has been smashed.

Just wait until you see what will come next.

If you're playing "Buffett", following his claim (note: there is no penalty for lying on national television about what you're doing in your personal account) that he's buying here, there is a little ugly fact you need to be aware of.

That fact is treasury issuance.

See, to fund all this crap that Congress, Paulson and Bernanke have in the pipe (you know, the TARP, the newly-minted SIV that Ben announced this morning to buy commercial paper, etc) the treasury issue requirements will be north of three trillion dollars in this fiscal year.

Oh, and that's before Obama wins (and he will) and promises another $1 trillion worth of new spending without a nickel's worth of ability to fund it.

To put this in perspective the total amount of treasury securities owned by all foreigners at present is about $2.7 trillion.

Only a few months into this we're already requiring a crazy "tail", which is the amount of "goose" that has to be paid in order to get people to take down that debt. Its running around 20 basis points right now, and there was one disastrous auction that ran 40.

Historical norms are in the ~2-3 basis point area for off-the-run securities.

Now why does all this esoterica matter, you ask?

You've probably heard that the "IRX", or 13 week T-Bill, has come up in yield recently, and this is being touted as a clear sign that the credit markets are normalizing.

Not quite. Price and yield move in opposite directions, and when you issue a lot of short-term supply, the price goes down (supply and demand, natch), while yield goes up.


In fact, kinda like "straight up." Impressive eh?

But what's nasty here is that right now we're seeing a flight INTO longer-term bonds (the 10 in particular), which means the market is anticipating another stock panic, and with good reason.

See, Treasury has only two options here:

1. If they issue all in the short end of the curve (as they're doing now) they flatten the banks, as the entire point of a bank is to borrow in the short-term market and lend in the long term. When you compress the yield curve you destroy their capacity to make money off their ordinary business model.
2. If they issue in the long end of the curve (e.g. 10s and 30s) then the long end will skyrocket in yield. Anyone remember 18% mortgages? They could reappear. This, of course, will destroy what's left of the housing and consumer credit markets.

Now sure, The Fed can start printing money like mad and buy all these Ts, making their balance sheet expand like a balloon - or a bubble. And Bernanke, yesterday in his testimony, claimed that this didn't constitute "printing money" or "inflating the money supply."

He may be technically correct but in practice he's lying through his teeth, and unfortunately Congress is both too uninformed to call him on it and lacks the balls to stop him (which they can do through the threat of, if not actual, legislation.)

His production of money in exchange for Treasuries is nothing more than a sham sterilization action. He thinks this will go unnoticed by the markets, because he's swapping a dollar for an "illiquid" asset.

The problem is that this is only monetarily neutral if the asset is actually worth a dollar. If it is in fact worth 50 cents then he printed the other 50 cents, and devalued every other dollar in the world by the same amount.

The claim, of course, is that these assets are in fact "money good" but illiquid.

I call bullshit on that claim.

An asset is worth only what an uncoerced buyer and seller will transact at. This is first-semester economics, and Bernanke, who claims a PhD, is fully aware of that fact.

So he, like Treasury with their TARP, is effectively buying assets that are not worth what their face value indicates. In this case Bernanke gets around the inconvenient law that prohibits him from purchasing things (as opposed to "discounting a note", that is, lending) by setting up "private" SIVs run by JP Morgan/Chase (gee, Jamie Dimon, no conflict of interest there!) and then lending the funds to the SIV.

But wait - wasn't this Paulson's original SIV plan back in 2007?

It sure as hell was.

It went exactly nowhere because the banks came to the conclusion that they were being robbed; there was in fact no value equal to the claimed face in the instruments, and that plan died on the vine as a consequence.

Now, suddenly, it reappears for ABCP (asset backed commercial paper) to "liquefy" the commercial paper and money markets.

Horsecrap.

Bernanke is doing what Paulson tried and failed at in the "free" (coerced by arm-twisting by Paulson) market through executive fiat, and he is printing money to fund it. Exactly how much money he is printing (as opposed to lending) depends on the precise amount of overpayment that is being induced through these so-called "loans", but that it is happening is not open to question.

Why has this become necessary?

Ben and Hank produced a dislocation in this section of the marketplace by favoring other debt instruments with federal guarantees, thereby forcing money out of these instruments.

This in turn created major problems for money market funds who buy this paper as a routine matter of course in that when they needed to redeem deposits they suddenly found no buyers for the securities, as those people had fled to other instruments that Ben had guaranteed payment on!

As each new facility is rolled out by Ben and Hank a new area of debt becomes backstopped by the government in some fashion, thereby forcing money out of other instruments and causing those instruments to become distressed!

We are rapidly reaching the point where only The Fed and Treasury are providing any lending at all!

This is insanely dangerous to economic and monetary stability; all market discipline has been removed and now we're seeing in the credit markets that which began in the equity markets with Bear Stearns.

Ben and Hank are going to produce the bond market dislocation that I have been warning about since earlier this year if he is not stopped immediately.

The base gambit is cute - force all this new Treasury issue out into the market before the election and Inauguration, when Hank is going to be replaced with someone who might not be nearly as charitable as Hank is to issuing Treasuries like a drunken sailor, and pray that the bond market tolerates his game long enough for the issue he needs to fund this abortion to clear into the marketplace.

The ugly is that there was a small inversion in LIBOR a week or so ago. That's really bad, as LIBOR normally never inverts. As Ben has played his games of late the inversion disappeared from LIBOR but moved over into the intermediate area of the US Treasury Curve, where it is far more dangerous.

China, Japan and Saudi Arabia should bring the curtain down on this farce right damn now, because Treasuries are rapidly becoming no more secure than ordinary corporate debt and the buyers sure as hell aren't being compensated for that risk.

Treasury buyers are being robbed blind along with US investors who think they're "fleeing to safety."

Nonsense; as I showed yesterday the problem is that additional debt issue no longer renders much (if any) of a positive return on GDP - no matter who issues the debt - public or private.

The ugly little secret in that graph, if you study it a bit more, is what happens when interest rates spike higher. Go back and look specifically at the period surrounding 1980, when we had sky-high inflation. Notice that we didn't get back to trendline until bond rates came down - way down - as we started having supply absorbed by Japan, China and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s and into this decade.

There is a very real risk that this Treasury Issue could force GDP return on new debt below zero. If that happens then the stability of the monetary system disappears immediately and you will see instantaneous and very large fails in the Treasury marketplace.

The consequence of this event would be catastrophic. Ben would have only two choices - print raw money, which would immediately collapse the Treasury marketplace, or get Treasury and Congress to immediately reduce issue and spending to sustainable levels.

What would "sustainable levels" be? Given that issue is running $3 trillion year-on-year, this could result in an immediate and forced cut in all federal spending by fifty percent or more as the TARP and other program money will have been spent and cannot be recalled.

Yes, you read that right. Now go look at the Federal Budget and you will find that you could eliminate all discretionary programs and all of the military and not get there. This means that in order to attain stability we would have to immediately gut Medicare and Social Security by about 50%, cut our military budget dramatically, perhaps by 25% or more, and eliminate essentially all discretionary spending - all farm subsidies, the Department of Education, Unemployment Assistance and more.

Oh, and having done that, the long end of the curve would probably still spike to 10%, which means 13-14% mortgage rates. Cut the value of every house in America in half - again - from here.

The equity markets sense this. Not one equity trader in 1,000 understands it, but they all intuitively get that something is very wrong with what has been done recently, and that what's coming is going to be very bad - perhaps ruinously bad, especially in the corporate sector where corporate debt issue is a necessity to fund operations, and not just in the short-term commercial paper markets.

Running on free cash flow alone, most corporations would make 20% of what they make today - if that much. This, of course, collapses the "E" side of the balance sheet, which means that the "P" in P/E has to come down.

Way down.

Oh, and that assumes they can take down the debt without imploding, and many of these firms will not be able to do so.

If you were wondering where I got my S&P 500 target of 500 - or perhaps worse - this is part of the computation. Its not all of it by any means, but it certainly is part of it.

There is exactly one way to stop this idiocy, and that is for the bad debt that exists out there to be forced into default and thus cleared from the system. This will cause the debt to GDP level to come down. Clearing it back to the point where a 1:1 ratio or better exists between GDP and a dollar of debt may not be possible or reasonable, but if we don't stabilize this situation - and soon - we are running the risk of literally crossing the event horizon.

Congress must act now. The fuse is about to go inside the box and once it does, you can't snip it any more. It may, in fact, already done so.

Specifically, Congress must:

1. Force the immediate cessation and unwind of these "special facilities", including the so-called "money market" liquidity facilities. While its bad if money market funds break the buck and return only 98 cents, the fact remains that every one of these funds has a statement in the front of the prospectus that says "may lose value." If The Fed refuses to stop coddling its member banks and tampering with the credit markets then Congress must force this outcome via emergency legislation. We must stop forcing money in the debt markets out of various portions of the market and into the "guaranteed" ones by removing the guarantees, or we will wind up guaranteeing all of it - an impossible task, as there is some $53 trillion of private credit in the marketplace and we don't have the money! Bernanke is a trapped rat and his desperate actions are now threatening the sovereign debt of The United States.
2. Force a full stop on the insane pace of Treasury Issue. We cannot allow a bond market dislocation. If one occurs we will suffer an economic depression. Not might - WILL.
3. Repeal the EESA and force Fannie and Freddie's portfolios to unwind, effectively repealing the portion of the Housing Bill earlier this summer that dealt with them. If this bankrupts Fannie and Freddie and results in losses for the debt holders, so be it.
4. Enact policies (both literally and by "jawbone") that force the bad debt in the system out - through bankruptcy if necessary, through pay down if possible. This sounds cruel and painful. It is painful but necessary; the key here is to prevent a bond market dislocation, especially in the Treasury Market.
5. As part of #4, force housing prices down so that the median home price returns to 3x median income. This will produce a monstrous number of foreclosures but that is preferable to the alternative - an economic depression. Note that these people will not be homeless; there will be lots of empty houses to rent, and rental prices will collapse due to oversupply. In a couple of years these individuals will be able to repurchase either their home or a comparable one - with 20% down, 36% DTI and a 30 year fixed mortgage, as prices will return to levels where this will be possible. I understand this is politically difficult but it is necessary; a massive number of consumer bankruptcies sounds bad, but is in fact good, as clearing the bad debt from the system is necessary to prevent its collapse.
6. If the bad debt defaults cause the collapse of the large money-center banks, then Congress should consider the creation of five or ten new banks with an initial capital infusion of $20 billion each, IPOing each immediately and attaching an onerous coupon (e.g. 10%) to the initial capital to strongly encourage its replacement with private capitalization. This will provide a base lending support of $2 trillion into the economy. However - until #1-5 are undertaken the economy cannot absorb this capacity and therefore it is of no value until that bad debt has been defaulted.

Everyone is screaming about "increasing credit growth" - including Nouriel Roubini this morning on CNBC. What Nouriel and the rest who are calling for this sort of "tonic" are missing is that you can't increase credit growth into the market until the existing bad debt has been defaulted as the GDP contribution from additional debt load is dangerously close to going negative, and as it approaches zero you get no economic benefit from doing so.

Attempting to issue new credit (debt) into the market at this time is at best of no benefit and at worst counterproductive.

If that ratio goes negative then you are forced to issue new credit (debt) just to cover interest payments, at which point you no longer can get out of the mess without what amounts to a monetary and economic system collapse.

Those in the media who are chuckling at the folks stockpiling beans and rice will be begging for some of that stash if our government doesn't cut this crap out - and soon.

We may be literally days away from a second, far more serious credit and equity market dislocation, this time originating outside the United States.

We cannot prevent this second dislocation from occurring but it is absolutely essential that the government "ring fence" Treasury debt before it occurs.

Government debt must be protected at all costs or we will lose our ability to fund essential services including Social Security and Medicare.

If Congress fails to act (given that Treasury and The Fed have demonstrated they will tie our sovereign debt to the commercial credit markets to the greatest extent possible) and this second dislocation occurs the probability of an economic Depression rises to 80% or more and the odds of the 2003 market lows holding into 2009 and beyond are essentially zero.

As I see no evidence that Congress grasps the serious nature of this threat and has refused to listen to those of us that have gotten this right from the start, including Nouriel Roubini, myself, Anna Schwartz and hundreds of other commentators and economists, you must prepare for this outcome - and remember who's responsible if and when it occurs.

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Roubini Foresees Possible Market Shutdown

After the Fed, ECB,, Bank of England, and other central banks took unprecedented measures over the last month to restore liquidity and recapitalize banks, Nouriel Roubini sounded slightly less gloomy. He had deemed that the authorities has avoided a systemic financial meltdown, but a nasty, protracted recession was in the offing.

It appears that Roubini has reversed himself with his latest remarks He now says systemic risks are increasing due to hedge fund margin calls, redemptions, and liquidations, and the authorities may be forced to close financial markets. Note that this is not a new line of thought. During the turmoil of the last month, particularly the week of October 6, some professional investors were quietly discussing the possibility of short-term market closures.

Hundreds of hedge funds will fail and policy makers may need to shut financial markets for a week or more as the crisis forces investors to dump assets, New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini said.

``We've reached a situation of sheer panic,'' Roubini, who predicted the financial crisis in 2006, told a conference of hedge-fund managers in London today. ``There will be massive dumping of assets'' and ``hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust,'' he said....

``Systemic risk has become bigger and bigger,'' Roubini said at the Hedge 2008 conference. ``We're seeing the beginning of a run on a big chunk of the hedge funds,'' and ``don't be surprised if policy makers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days,'' he said.....

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi roiled international markets on Oct. 10, first saying world leaders were discussing shutting down global financial exchanges, and then saying he didn't mean it.

``In a fairly Darwinian manner, many hedge funds will simply disappear,'' Roman said, speaking at the same event as Roubini...

``Things are getting very ugly also in the emerging markets,'' Roubini said. ``The usual saying is when the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. Unfortunately, this time around the U.S. is not just sneezing, it has a severe case of chronic and persistent pneumonia. It's becoming a mess in emerging markets.''

Developing nations' borrowing costs jumped to the highest in six years today as Belarus joined Hungary, Ukraine and Pakistan in seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to help weather frozen money markets and a slump in commodities. Argentina risks defaulting for the second time this decade.

``There are about a dozen emerging markets that are now in severe financial trouble,'' Roubini said. ``Even a small country can have a systemic effect on the global economy,'' he added. ``There is not going to be enough IMF money to support them.''

Roubini, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Department, earlier this month said that the world's biggest economy will suffer its worst recession in 40 years.

``This is the worst financial crisis in the U.S., Europe and now emerging markets that we've seen in a long time,'' Roubini said. ``Things will get much worse before they get better. I fear the worst is ahead of us.''

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Op vrijdag 24 oktober 2008 16:35 schreef soylent het volgende:
Ah, een Roubini topic.. de doempredikant van deze tijd