Bulls, Bears & Bucks #58: De recessie-expres dendert door

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Op dinsdag 2 juni 2009 22:24 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Ik vraag me echt af wat voor zin die cijfers van banken eigenlijk nog hebben met al die rare boekhoudregels tegenwoordig. Je kunt zo'n beetje elke winst fabriceren die je wilt hebben om de bonus te maximaliseren.

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Op dinsdag 2 juni 2009 22:24 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Ik vraag me echt af wat voor zin die cijfers van banken eigenlijk nog hebben met al die rare boekhoudregels tegenwoordig. Je kunt zo'n beetje elke winst fabriceren die je wilt hebben om de bonus te maximaliseren.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 00:01 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:

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Moah, je kunt altijd uit de boeken halen waar ze vaak de winst vandaan halen. Dat de meeste mensen hier niet de moeite voor willen nemen is toch wat anders. Het is meer dat het feit dat accounting vaak berust op verscheidene principes en dat banken daar verschillende methodes van gebruiken ( die in wezen het zelfde moeten aantonen maar dat doen ze natuurlijk niet )

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 15:25 schreef pberends het volgende:
Merkel haalt uit naar de Fed, BoE en ECB

Mooie opvolgster van Trichet dit.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 01:44 schreef SeLang het volgende:

Dat is toch lastig nu banken zelf mogen bepalen welke waarde ze op een bepaalde assets plakken. Dingen die $0,20 waard zijn mogen ze voor $1,00 in de boeken houden.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 15:25 schreef pberends het volgende:
Merkel haalt uit naar de Fed, BoE en ECB

Mooie opvolgster van Trichet dit.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 16:03 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Hoewel ik het wat dit betreft 100% eens ben met Merkel heeft ze gewoon dr bek te houden over monetair beleid, net als alle andere politici. Al vind ik het natuurlijk wel leuk dat ze op deze manier een tegengewicht biedt aan andere politici die hun bek niet houden.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 16:03 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Hoewel ik het wat dit betreft 100% eens ben met Merkel heeft ze gewoon dr bek te houden over monetair beleid, net als alle andere politici. Al vind ik het natuurlijk wel leuk dat ze op deze manier een tegengewicht biedt aan andere politici die hun bek niet houden.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 16:03 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Hoewel ik het wat dit betreft 100% eens ben met Merkel heeft ze gewoon dr bek te houden over monetair beleid, net als alle andere politici. Al vind ik het natuurlijk wel leuk dat ze op deze manier een tegengewicht biedt aan andere politici die hun bek niet houden.

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Schwarzenegger says day of reckoning is here
The state wallet is empty. The bank closed. Credit has dried up, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told lawmakers in a special Tuesday morning address at the Capitol. “California’s day of reckoning is here,” he said. With no action, the state could run out of cash in 14 days. Three months after the state budget was approved, California faces a $24 billion deficit.

Schwarzenegger has already proposed massive cuts to education, health care and prisons. Now he’s looking for structural reform to make government more efficient and stretch taxpayer dollars. He’s asked the State Board of Education, for example, to make textbooks available in digital formats — a move that could save millions. In 2004, the governor talked about blowing up boxes and consolidating agencies, but the initiatives never gained traction.

They’re back
Schwarzenegger is proposing once again to eliminate and consolidate more than a dozen state departments, boards and commissions. This includes the Waste Management Board, the Court Reporters Board, the Department of Boating and Waterways and the Inspection and Maintenance Review Committee.

Earlier this year, the state began consolidating information technology departments.

Now Schwarzenegger wants to consolidate departments that oversee financial institutions and merge tax collection operations. In July, state leaders will receive recommendations on how to modernize the tax code. “This will be a tremendous opportunity to make our revenues more reliable and less volatile and help the state avoid the boom and bust budgets that have brought us here today,” Schwarzenegger told lawmakers.

It’s not going to happen in 14 days, he said. But it could happen before the Legislature adjourns for summer recess on July 17.

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Bernanke: VS moet begrotingstekort aanpakken

Bernanke maakt zich zorgen om het begrotingstekort van de VS.

Vergrijzingslasten
De VS moeten beginnen met het aanpakken van het tekort op de begroting van de overheid. Anders dreigt Amerika in de toekomst te worden opgezadeld met vergrijzingslasten die het niet kan betalen.

Vertrouwen
Deze waarschuwing uitte de Amerikaanse centralebankpresident Ben Bernanke woensdag tegenover een begrotingscommissie van het Huis van Afgevaardigden. Volgens de bankpresident is het werken aan herstel van begrotingsevenwicht noodzakelijk om het vertrouwen van de financiële markten te houden.

Tekort 1,84 biljoen
Het begrotingstekort van de Amerikaanse overheid is sterk opgelopen door de steun aan de financiële sector en de stimuleringsplannen voor de economie. Dit jaar loopt het begrotingstekort op naar 1,84 biljoen dollar. Voor 2010 is een tekort van bijna 1,26 biljoen dollar voorzien.

Onhoudbaar
Economen hebben al gewaarschuwd dat het huidige begrotingsbeleid van de VS onhoudbaar is. Washington kan daardoor zijn kredietwaardigheid verliezen, met desastreuze gevolgen voor de Amerikaanse dollar en de wereldeconomie.

© RTLZ.nl

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 18:15 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Hear hear!
Helicopter Ben begint te ontdekken dat er toch grenzen zitten aan hoeveel geld je ongestraft kunt printen, net nu Obama de smaak te pakken krijgt.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 19:23 schreef JamesWarrenJones het volgende:

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Ik denk niet dat de burger dit uiteindelijk gaat pikken.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 20:12 schreef capricia het volgende:

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Eens hoor, maar ik zie zo weinig alternatieven voor bijv. mijzelf...hoe zou ik dit niet kunnen pikken? Ik heb toch eigenlijk geen keuze...

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 20:45 schreef pberends het volgende:
Rogers: Dow Jones naar de 100.000

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 20:45 schreef pberends het volgende:
Rogers: Dow Jones naar de 100.000

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Record High Yield Curve, Rising Mortgage Rates

by CalculatedRisk on 6/04/2009 03:23:00 PM
The difference in yields between Treasury two- and 10-year notes widened to a record again today ... The so-called yield curve steepened to 2.79 percentage points, surpassing the previous record of 2.75 percentage points set last week. The previous record was 2.74 on Aug. 13, 2003.

Usually a steep yield curve precedes a period of decent growth, but several analysts suggest the current ten year sell-off is due to concerns about increased Treasury issuance to finance the deficit. Whatever the reason, mortgage rates higher are moving higher, from Freddie Mac:

Freddie Mac (today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®) in which the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 5.29 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending June 4, 2009, up from last week when it averaged 4.91 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.09 percent.
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"30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates caught up to the recent rise in long-term bond yields this week to reach a 25-week high," said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist."

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Weer Britse minister opgestapt

Londen, 4 juni. De Britse minister van Arbeid en Pensioenen James Purnell is uit het kabinet gestap. Daarmee neemt de druk op premier Gordon Brown om af te treden verder toe.Purnell schrijft in een brief aan de Britse kranten The Sun en The Times dat Brown „aan de kant moet gaat”.

Binnen de Labour-fractie circuleerde gisteren al in beperkte kring een brief, waarin Brown wordt opgeroepen het premierschap en het partijleiderschap neer te leggen. In zijn brief schrijft Purnell dat hij niet het partijleiderschap ambieert, maar dat hij een debat wil uitlokken. Hij schrijft dat als Brown partijleider blijft, een overwinning van de Conservatieven bij de volgende verkiezingen „meer en niet minder waarschijnlijk” is.

Purnell is het derde kabinetslid die de afgelopen dagen heeft aangekondigd op te stappen. Brown zal kort na de Europese en lokale verkiezingen, die vandaag in Groot-Brittannië werden gehouden, een drastische herschikking van zijn kabinet aankondigen om zijn geteisterde regering nieuw elan te geven.

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Op vrijdag 5 juni 2009 01:31 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:
Hypotheekrentes stijgen dus en e werkloosheid stijgt steeds verder. Dat moet toch weer veel extra afschrijvingen gaan veroorzaken bij verstrekkers van hypotheken en aangrenzende afgeleiden. Ik ben benieuwd.

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Op woensdag 3 juni 2009 21:42 schreef henkway het volgende:

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Zoiets??
Maar de Europese beurzen zullen in een trieste deflatie wegzakken, tenzij we ook gaan printen

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Op vrijdag 5 juni 2009 09:54 schreef JamesWarrenJones het volgende:

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Dat is waarschijnlijk ook precies wat die Amerikanen willen: dat de rest van de wereld hun voorbeeld opvolgt.

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And we would all go down together
We said we'd all go down together
Yes we would all go down together

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ALL BUSINESS: Bond-market rout lifts mortgage cost
ALL BUSINESS: Bond-market rout boosts mortgage rates, undermining economic prospects
Rachel Beck, AP Business Writer
On Saturday June 6, 2009, 8:40 am EDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.


But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.

That's the Catch-22 threatening to make an awful housing market potentially worse and keep the economy stuck in a funk. Kick-starting the economy requires higher spending, but rising rates mean fewer Americans will be able to refinance their home loans. And some potential buyers will be shut out of the market by higher monthly payments they won't be able to afford.

To understand how this is all connected, you have to think like a bond trader. Inflation is their enemy because it means the purchasing power of the dollars they receive when bonds eventually are paid off will be diminished. The only question is by how much.

Yields on 10-year Treasury notes, a benchmark for home mortgages and other consumers loans, jumped from 2.5 percent in March around the time of the Fed announcement to as high as 3.7 percent in recent days as signs that efforts to stabilize the financial system and economy were starting to pay off. And 30-year mortgage rates jumped more than a quarter-point this week to 5.29 percent, the highest level since December, Freddie Mac reported.

"If the meltdown continues in the bond market, then mortgage yields will soon be at levels that choke off refinancing activity," said economist Ed Yardeni, who runs his own investment firm. "Even worse, they could abort any necessary recovery in home sales and prices."

Yardeni coined the term "bond vigilantes" in 1983 to describe how traders took matters into their own hands when they felt the Fed wasn't doing enough to fight inflation, which was running at an annual rate of more than 3 percent at that time.

So what has set off the vigilantes this spring, at a time when the consumer price index is down at an annual rate of 0.7 percent?

One explanation is that bond investors anticipate a greater supply of government debt being sold to fund federal spending. Investors are also increasingly fearful that the trillions of dollars the government will need to borrow in the coming years to finance the various stimulus programs will lead to a new bout of inflation.

The White House estimates that the government will rack up an unprecedented $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year -- more than four times last year's all-time high.

"The bond market is calling the Federal Reserve out," said Mike Larson, a real estate analyst at Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Fla. "Investors are saying that the Fed can't just print money out of thin air to finance a massive deficit."

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged Wednesday in congressional testimony that large budget deficits could threaten financial stability by eventually eroding investor confidence and endangering the economy's prospects for long-term health.

"Even as we take steps to address the recession and threats to financial stability, maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance," Bernanke told the House Budget Committee.

That kind of talk is meant to calm bond investors' nerves. It also shows the quandary faced by Bernanke and other federal officials. They need to hold down interest rates through massive government spending at the same time they have to deal with worries over how that spending could damage the economy over the long term.

After Fed policymakers this spring said they would buy billions of dollars of government debt and more than $1 trillion of mortgage securities, 30-year fixed mortgage rates fell to 4.78 percent in April, the lowest since Freddie Mac started surveying rates in 1971.

Sales of new and existing homes began to trend higher. Mortgage refinancings also jumped, allowing borrowers to lock in lower rates. Fee income from this activity helped lift profits at many battered banks and gave consumers more disposable income to spend, which helped lift their confidence about the economy's prospects. All that was good for the nation's businesses.

But now, surging mortgage rates are threatening to undermine all that. Seventy percent of refinancing activity could be knocked out as rates close in on 5.5 percent, according to Mark Hanson, a managing director at the independent research firm Field Check Group of Menlo Park, Calif.

That's because homeowners wouldn't get much of a benefit if a refinancing only reduces monthly payments a tiny bit while they are stuck paying closing costs that typically run about 2 percent of the loan amount.

Also, many homeowners who wanted to refinance didn't lock in the super-low rates in April when the refi boom took off. "Half the deals in the pipeline are dead," Hanson said. "People were applying to refinance to improve their situation, but now they are seeing it won't be much improved."

All this means that even though mortgage rates are still low by historical standards, many of the trends that seem to be pointing to economic recovery in recent months could be undone fast.

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Op zondag 7 juni 2009 15:49 schreef pberends het volgende:
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Op vrijdag 5 juni 2009 18:56 schreef pberends het volgende:

America is the biggest banana Republic , most Americans will leave to Canada

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Op zondag 7 juni 2009 23:18 schreef SeLang het volgende:
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Werkloosheid tov de 'stresstests'

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Op maandag 8 juni 2009 01:27 schreef capricia het volgende:

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is dat uk, usa of wat?

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Op maandag 8 juni 2009 01:44 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:
Is More Adverse ook het Most Adverse scenario?

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Op zondag 7 juni 2009 23:18 schreef SeLang het volgende:
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Werkloosheid tov de 'stresstests'

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Op maandag 8 juni 2009 01:49 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Het is het slechtste van de twee scenarios waarvan werd uitgegaan met de stresstests voor banken.

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Op maandag 8 juni 2009 10:22 schreef pberends het volgende:
http://www.veronicatv.nl/web/show/id=445551/langid=43

Docuprog Lauren Verslaat over foreclosures in de VS

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Op maandag 8 juni 2009 10:39 schreef simmu het volgende:

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die was vorige week op tv. ik heb het eerste stukkie zitten kijken, maar tis meer melodrama dan wat anders hoor.

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Op maandag 8 juni 2009 10:46 schreef pberends het volgende:

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Boeiend. Lauren Verster is een ontzettend lekker mokkel.

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Bank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Big banks in the U.S. say they’re on the mend. The five largest were profitable in the first quarter, rebounding from record losses for the industry in the fourth quarter. Share prices have jumped, with the KBW Bank Index doubling since March 6.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, after “stress testing” 19 banks on their ability to withstand a worsening economy, declared in early May that Americans can be confident in the banks’ stability and resilience. Wells Fargo & Co. and Morgan Stanley were among banks raising $43 billion in new capital since then through share sales.

“With our capital and assets, stressed as they have been, we can go back to focusing all our attention on managing our business and restoring value,” Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said after Geithner’s examinations were completed.

The revival may be short-lived. Analysts who have examined the quarterly profits and government tests say that accounting rule changes and rosy assumptions are making the institutions look healthier than they are.

The government probably wants to win time for the banks, keeping them alive as they struggle to earn their way out of the mess, says economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University in New York. The danger is that weak banks will remain reluctant to lend, hobbling President Barack Obama’s efforts to pull the economy out of recession.

‘Bogus’ Profit

Citigroup’s $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. “The big banks’ profits were totally bogus,” says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial companies. “The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They’re all part of a major effort to put lipstick on a pig.”

Further deterioration of loans will eventually force banks to recognize losses that their bookkeeping lets them ignore for now, says David Sherman, an accounting professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Janet Tavakoli, president of Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc. in Chicago, says the government stress scenarios underestimate how bad the economy may get.

The accounting rule changes that matter most for the banks came on April 2, when the Financial Accounting Standards Board gave companies greater latitude in how they establish the fair value of assets. Lawmakers, including Representative Paul Kanjorski, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, had complained that existing mark-to-market standards worsened the financial crisis.

Debt Valuation

Along with that change, FASB also let companies recognize losses on the value of some debt securities on their balance sheets without counting the writedowns against earnings. If banks plan to hold the debt until maturity, they can avoid hurting the bottom line.

At Citigroup, the recipient of $346 billion in fresh capital and asset guarantees from the government, about 25 percent of the quarterly net income came thanks to the debt securities rule change, the bank said.

Another $2.7 billion before taxes came from an accounting rule that lets a company record income when the value of its own debt falls. That reflects the possibility a company could buy back bonds at a discount, generating a profit. In reality, when a bank can’t fund such a transaction, the gain is an accounting quirk, Weiss says.

Citigroup also increased its loan loss reserves more slowly in the first quarter, adding $10 billion compared with $12 billion in the fourth quarter, even as more loans were going bad. Provisions for loan losses cut profits, so adding more to this reserve could have wiped out the quarterly earnings.

Wells Fargo

Without those accounting benefits, Citigroup would probably have posted a net loss of $2.5 billion in the quarter, Weiss estimates. In the five previous quarters, Citigroup lost more than $37 billion.

Wells Fargo also took advantage of the change in the mark- to-market rules. The new standards let Wells Fargo boost its capital $2.8 billion by reassessing the value of some $40 billion of bonds, the bank said in May. And the bank augmented net income by $334 million because of the effect of the rule on the value of debts held to maturity.

Wells Fargo spokeswoman Julia Tunis Bernard declined to comment, as did Citigroup’s Jon Diat.

The higher valuations Wells Fargo put on its securities probably won’t last, as defaults increase on home mortgages, credit cards and other consumer and corporate lending, Northeastern’s Sherman says.

Fed’s Optimism

“These changes will help the banks hide their losses or push them off to the future,” says Sherman, a former Securities and Exchange Commission researcher.

The Federal Reserve, which designed the stress tests, used a 21 percent to 28 percent loss rate for subprime mortgages as a worst-case assumption. Already, almost 40 percent of such loans are 30 days or more overdue, according to Tavakoli, who is the author of three primers on structured debt. Defaults might reach 55 percent, she predicts.

At the same time, the assumptions on how much banks can earn to offset their losses are inflated, partly because of the same accounting gimmicks employed in first-quarter profit reports, Weiss says.

“There’s a chance that it might work,” Columbia’s Stiglitz says of the government’s attempt to boost confidence. “If it does, then they’ll look like the brilliant general. But all these efforts also bank on the economy recovering and housing prices not falling too much further. Those are not safe assumptions.”

Indeed, while the government and accounting rule makers try to help the banks look their best, they may make the U.S. economy worse. As long as lenders are stuck with bad loans, they can’t provide new money to consumers or corporations to fuel a potential recovery. The banks may look pretty, but they’ll be zombies until they clean up their books.