Bulls, Bears & Bucks #65 : Vastgoed of straks in je ondergoed

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Op donderdag 3 december 2009 21:27 schreef knnth het volgende:
n00b-vragen

Je hoort continu dat er een aandelen- en commoditybubbel is, te danken aan het QE van de FED. Is dit omdat er goed dollars worden geleend en hiermee aandelen en commodities worden gekocht?
En wie zijn dan degenen die dit doen? Banken? Hedgefunds?
Wat moet ik verstaan onder commodities? Futuremarkt?

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De negatieve rente waartegen de dollars geleend kunnen worden wordt toch negatief genoemd omdat de dollar waarde verliest? ($1k schuld is E1k schuld maar een maand later is het nog maar E990 schuld)

Ik moet het hele plaatje nog zien, ik lees me als een gek in maar af en toe blijven er nog vragen hangen waarvoor waarschijnlijk heel voordehandliggende antwoorden zijn

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Where's The Breaking Point?

This is a serious question to all readers of The Market Ticker.

Where is your personal breaking point?

No, I'm not asking how far you have to be pushed before you "go postal" and commit random acts of violence. That's not a question to ask in polite company, even though for virtually everyone, there is such a point.

No, I'm asking how much abuse you have to have personally served upon you by the banksters and other scam artists in this country before you have had enough, and start doing unto the other guy - because he has done you.

As an example:

Banks no longer even pretend

The one silver lining is that the public is finally seeing how devious and untrustworthy credit card lenders truly are. When issuers limited themselves to beating up on folks with bad credit, it was too easy for the rest of us to dismiss their foul tactics as business as usual. Now that the schoolyard bullies are going after everyone, the need for putting restraints on the industry is ever more obvious.

Really?

We tried asking the government - that is, the law - to intervene. The Fed was supposed to be the guardian of the system, remember? The government and Fed both refused, bowing instead to the den of vipers and thieves.

It is therefore up to us as citizens to make a decision on our own as to whether we will allow such conduct to stand.

How many of you will, in response to "rate jack" letter announcing your credit card now carries a 29.9% interest rate, when you are not a deadbeat, choose to intentionally charge that card up to the rafters and then mail the bank a picture of your middle finger instead of a check?

How many of you will, when given a "trial" modification on your mortgage that the bank refuses to convert in good faith to a REAL modification plan, will simply stop paying entirely, but NOT leave the house - force 'em to file the foreclosure and eviction notice, and live for free in your home until they do? You will probably be able to stay in your house FOR A YEAR OR MORE, since the bank doesn't want to ADMIT to the extent of THEIR loss!

How many?

Is this sort of action, if you choose to engage in it, "honest and fair dealing"? Hell no. It might even expose you to a lawsuit, although it's damn hard to get blood from a stone and when you're unemployed exactly who do they think they're trying to fool with their threats of suing to collect their debt?

Is rate-jacking millions of credit card customers in bad faith knowing full well that the law is changing in February "honest and fair dealing"? No.

Is refusing to process your HAMP modification - and don't tell me they lost your paperwork when it was disclosed yesterday that not one permanent modification has been completed - "honest and fair dealing"? Hell no.

So explain this to me America.

Why are you dealing in good faith - and honestly - with a group of thugs who have demonstrated time and time again that they will screw you at every opportunity?

Why should you act with honor and integrity when they will not?

This isn't just my opinion. It's the opinion of a judge in NY too:

Inequitable. Unconscionable. Vexatious. Opprobrious.

These are just a few of the choice words a New York state judge used to describe the behavior of Indymac in a decision in which he wiped out the $292,500 sub-prime mortgage owed by a homeowner to the bank.

What are you afraid of? Being foreclosed on? You're already going to lose your house. May as well make the best of it while you can - why give them what you can, when you know where it ends? These people have proved they are dealing in bad faith to my satisfaction - have they not proved it to yours?

Yes, you should get accounting and legal advice before you do things like this. There can be consequences, even if only a ruined credit rating and pestering phone calls. In some cases, especially if you have lots of assets you haven't and can't shield, the risks could be material. So get that advice and figure out exactly how far you can go and what the consequences might be for you, in your personal situation.

The fact is that I can no longer, with a straight face, tell people they should "live to their obligations if they are able."

Not any more.

That implied part of the social contract only works when both sides of the bargain are acting in good faith in the main, and it is the rare exception to the rule when someone is behaving badly.

When you have a group of corporate oligarchs that will bankrupt you with wild abandon, selling you whatever they can get you to buy even though they know you can't possibly pay, then screw you in every possible way even when ordered not to by the government (while the government refuses to step up and start prosecuting these clowns, insisting instead that you just bend over and take it) it is my considered opinion that your obligation to behave honorably has been rendered void.

I'll change my opinion when the bankster executives have their bonuses clawed back all the way to 2003, they are locked up, and their businesses have been dispersed and closed.

Some sins, such as Catholic Priests playing "hide the sausage" with little boys in the Rectory, are in my opinion unforgivable.

What has gone on over the last several years when it comes to consumer abuse by financial institutions, and their utter refusal to repent and stop it, places them in this category.

As such The Market Ticker will no longer advocate that you do the honorable thing, as there is no honor among thieves.

It is my considered opinion from this day forward that you should therefore exploit every lawful and stretchy-lawful means at your disposal to screw any financial institution to the maximum lawful extent.

To do otherwise is to consent to their repetitive acts of violation, and I cannot call what I've seen over the last two years "financial sex".

I am compelled to call it what it is: financial rape.

Karl Denninger

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Inequitable. Unconscionable. Vexatious. Opprobrious.

These are just a few of the choice words a New York state judge used to describe the behavior of Indymac in a decision in which he wiped out the $292,500 sub-prime mortgage owed by a homeowner to the bank.

Indymac began foreclosure proceedings in 2004 on the home of defendant Dana Yano-Horoski in East Patchogue, New York.

Judge Jeffrey Spinner said that it became clear to the court at a September 2009 settlement conference -- one that had been postponed five times due to Indymac's failure to "cooperate" -- that Indymac "had no good faith intention whatsoever of resolving this matter in any manner other than complete and forcible devolution of title..."

The judge repeatedly stated that the homeowners were willing to work out a deal and could do so, and noted Indymac's repeated failure to make concessions, including the fact that they denied an offer by the defendants' daughter to purchase the home at fair market value with third-party financing.

The court found that Indymac's conduct was "wholly unsupportable at law or in equity, greatly egregious and so completely devoid of good faith that equity cannot be permitted on its behalf."

And thus, finding that if he just dismissed the foreclosure action he "cannot be assured that Plaintiff will not repeat this course of conduct," he concluded the most effective course of action would be to cancel the entire mortgage.

Skinner leads a foreclsoure unit created "to accommodate settlement conferences that have reached 2,400" in his county, according to the New York Law Journal.
Bron

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Op donderdag 3 december 2009 22:52 schreef LXIV het volgende:
Helaas is zoiets in Nederland geen optie, want wil je een lap grond kopen dan moet je ook een forse hypotheek hebben die alleen met HRA betaalbaar is, mag je niet zomaar jagen of houthakken in het bos, en zijn er zoveel belastingen en andere kosten dat je enige keuze is mee te draaien in de mallemolen.

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Op donderdag 3 december 2009 22:56 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Nu de banken een groot deel van hun steun (=belastinggeld) hebben terugbetaald is het een goed moment voor een nieuwe bankencrisis. Denk maar niet dat ze dit keer weer zo makkelijk een bailout krijgen. De burger heeft nog steeds pijn in zijn aars van die acties van vorig jaar.

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Op donderdag 3 december 2009 23:42 schreef piepeloi55 het volgende:

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De volgende stap is dan misschien massale nationalisatie van het bankwezen. Wanneer denk je eigenlijk dat er een eind komt aan de market to fantasy-boekhouding of in ieder geval dat banken (echte) verliezen gaan nemen?

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Op vrijdag 4 december 2009 07:28 schreef dvr het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

Volgens Denninger gaat in de financiėle markten het verhaal dat Japan van plan is om Amerikaanse obligaties te dumpen. Dat zou, als dat op grote schaal gebeurt, rampzalig kunnen zijn voor andere landen die Amerikaans schuldpapier hebben (China!), en vooral voor de Amerikaanse overheid zelf die dan op nieuwe obligaties flink meer rente zal moeten bieden om zijn tekorten nog gefinancierd te krijgen.

Japan kampt al een tijd met het probleem dat de yen veel duurder is geworden tov de dollar, zodat ze veel minder naar de VS kunnen exporteren. Door de VS tot hogere rente en dus een hogere dollar te dwingen, hopen ze hun export te versterken.

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Op vrijdag 4 december 2009 16:13 schreef zoost het volgende:
Als zelfs CNBC zegt: Jobs Report: 'Numbers Are Almost Too Good to Be True' Dan is enige twijfel gerechtvaardigd.

Volgens het Bureau of Labor Statistics komen de banen uit de volgende sectoren:

<snip>

Ik kan me daar helemaal niets bij voor stellen. ....Administrative and waste
services.....

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Op vrijdag 4 december 2009 16:13 schreef zoost het volgende:
Als zelfs CNBC zegt: Jobs Report: 'Numbers Are Almost Too Good to Be True' Dan is enige twijfel gerechtvaardigd.

Total change in non-farm payroll = - 11,000

* Private Sector = - 18,000
o Natural Resources & Mining = - 1,000
o Construction = - 27,000
o Manufacturing = - 41,000
+ Durable goods = - 33,000
+ Non-durable goods = - 8,000
o Services = + 58,000
+ Wholesale Trade = - 11,700
+ Retail Trade = - 14,500
+ Transportation & Warehousing = - 5,300
+ Utilities = - 2,400
+ Information & Media = - 17,000
+ Financial Svcs & Real Estate = - 10,000
+ Professional & Business Svcs = + 86,000
+ Education = + 11,100
+ Health Svcs = + 28,100
+ Leisure = - 11,000
* Government = + 7,000


Volgens het Bureau of Labor Statistics komen de banen uit de volgende sectoren:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm

Administrative and waste
services...................... 7,886.9 7,413.9 7,494.7 7,507.2 7,778.3 7,205.8 7,214.1 7,242.9 7,288.1 7,375.1 87.0
Administrative and support
services (1)................. 7,522.7 7,046.7 7,127.3 7,141.2 7,414.2 6,843.7 6,851.6 6,877.8 6,923.6 7,010.5 86.9
Employment services (1)...... 2,998.2 2,586.9 2,669.7 2,699.8 2,896.7 2,459.5 2,465.6 2,486.9 2,529.6 2,590.7 61.1
Temporary help services..... 2,214.8 1,851.6 1,923.2 1,952.5 2,128.5 1,745.2 1,748.4 1,765.6 1,809.7 1,862.1 52.4


Ik kan me daar helemaal niets bij voor stellen. ....Administrative and waste
services.....

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Op vrijdag 4 december 2009 16:13 schreef zoost het volgende:

Ik kan me daar helemaal niets bij voor stellen. ....Administrative and waste
services.....

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Worse Than Enron?
Wall Street’s big banks are playing dangerous new accounting games—and this time taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of billions. Nomi Prins uncovers a scandal in the making.

Enron was the financial scandal that kicked off the decade: a giant energy trading company that appeared to be doing brilliantly—until we finally noticed that it wasn’t. It’s largely been forgotten given the wreckage that followed, and that’s too bad: we may be repeating those mistakes, on a far larger scale.

Specifically, as the largest Wall Street banks return to profitability—in some cases, breaking records—they say everything is rosy. They’re lining up to pay back their TARP money and asking Washington to back off. But why are they doing so well? Remember that Enron got away with their illegalities so long because their financials were so complicated that not even the analysts paid to monitor the Houston-based trading giant could cogently explain how they were making so much money.

The nation’s biggest banks, plumped up on government capital and risk-infused trading profits, have been moving stuff around their balance sheets like a multi-billion dollar musical chairs game.

After two weeks sifting through over one thousand pages of SEC filings for the largest banks, I have the same concerns. While Washington ponders what to do, or not do, about reforming Wall Street, the nation’s biggest banks, plumped up on government capital and risk-infused trading profits, have been moving stuff around their balance sheets like a multi-billion dollar musical chairs game.

I was trying to answer the simple question that you'd think regulators should want to know: how much of each bank’s revenue is derived from trading (taking risk) vs. other businesses? And how can you compare it across the industry—so you can contain all that systemic risk? Only, there's no uniformity across books. And, given the complexity of these mega-merged firms, those questions aren’t easy to answer.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
for example, altered their year-end reporting dates, orphaning the month of December, thus making comparison to past quarterly statements more difficult. In the cases of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, the preferred tactic is re-classification and opaqueness. These moves make it virtually impossible to get an accurate, or consistent picture of banks ‘real money’ (from commercial or customer services) vs. their ‘play money’ (used for trading purposes, and most risky to the overall financial system, particularly since much of the required trading capital was federally subsidized).

Trading profitability, albeit inconsistent and volatile, is the quickest way back to the illusion of financial health, as these banks continue to take hits from their consumer-oriented businesses. But, appearance doesn’t equal stability, or necessarily, reality. Here’s how BofA, Citi and Wells Fargo play the game:

Bank of America
The firm reclassified its filing categories upon acquiring Merrill Lynch, but it doesn't break down the trading vs. investment banking revenues of Merrill. This either means the firm doesn’t truly know what's going on inside its new problem child, or doesn’t want to tell. (No wonder no one’s jumping for the upcoming CEO vacancy.) That said, despite the obvious information clouding, new acquisitions generally don’t have their activities broken out, which makes it a lot harder for regulators, shareholders, or we, taxpaying subsidizers, to know whether the merger was a success or not.

According to Scott Silvestri, Bank of America’s spokesman, “On our second quarter's earnings release, there was a note explaining why we changed reporting structure. But, with every quarter that passes, it's harder to unscramble the egg. It's been a merged entity since January 1, 2009.”

He added that “we have an earnings supplement. Every quarter, we put out a standalone Merrill 10-Q that shows its profitability.” True, but what’s the point of issuing a separate Merrill report, without delineating Merrill’s contribution in its main books so that you can clearly see how specific parts of Merrill’s business impact similar ones in the merged entity? Furthermore, we can’t even figure this out ourselves—the Merrill results in the 10-Q don’t map directly to those of BofA’s books. This all just creates more complexities for a bank that still floats on $63.1 billion in various government subsidies.

When it wants to, it appears that BofA can merge and then break out Merrill’s numbers. Under the "Global Wealth & Investment Management ” classification, we discover that Merrill contributed three-quarters of the $12 billion BofA took in over the first nine months of 2009. According to Silvestri, “The numbers of the old Merrill are there because the brand name was kept, vestiges of the old Merrill Lynch exist.”

Talk about semantics. Why not also break out the area where revenues tripled and trading account profits jumped significantly (from a $6 billion loss in 2008 to an almost $14 billion gain in 2009)? Something is clearly going on there: the best measure of trading risk, VaR (“value at risk” or a firm’s daily trading variation) doubled between 2008 and 2009. If I was the CEO, I’d want to see this critical comparison on my merged company filing.

Elsewhere, the sum of Bank of America’s quarterly figures doesn’t quite add up to the nine months totals. (A few hundred million of discrepancies between friends.) Another item "all other" is off by nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. And so on. The firm also declared, that it “may periodically reclassify business segment results based on modifications to its management reporting methodologies and changes in organizational alignment." In other words, whenever it feels like it. Comforting, isn’t it?

Citigroup
Another balance-sheet renovation, this time because of a sale (Smith Barney, which it offloaded to Morgan Stanley) rather than a purchase, and another trading miracle. Citigroup’s main trading arm, housed in what it calls the Institutional Clients Group (ICG), made $31.5 billion in net revenue for 2009, compared with a $7.8 billion loss in 2008. Its average daily value at risk jumped too, though “only” by 15 percent or so.

That’s a huge and extremely fast trading rebound for the main recipient of government subsidies (at $373.7 billion). But, there is no overall breakdown present in the summaries of Citigroup’s latest filings. And the sum of the trading totals doesn’t equal the parts, because the firm also noted that certain numbers deemed an “integral part of profitability” weren’t included in those computations, without giving any apparent reason. (After adding the missing number, it still didn’t add up.)

Again, it’s “just” a couple billion of discrepancies, but with books this massive at banks this big and risky, accuracy matters. Plus, such nuances make it extremely difficult to understand its books for regulators or the public.

Citigroup's Danielle Romero-Apsilos said that they periodically change reporting. "ICG existed, but after Smith Barney's joint venture with Morgan Stanley, we moved the private bank into the securities and banking reporting line in the ICG."

That describes the chain of events, but doesn’t get closer to determining trading related revenue. Romero-Apsilos said, “We don’t break up the financials specifically for those businesses. Over the years, we may have broken out different things."

Wells Fargo
Yet more innovative accounting maneuvers. For example, the innocuous sounding category, “wholesale banking” which provides traditional lending, finance and asset management services, was expanded (following the Wachovia acquisition that completed on December 31, 2008) to include more speculative activities like fixed-income and equity trading. But, those activities aren’t broken down in the firm’s SEC filing, making it difficult to determine which portion comes from trading vs. commercial or investment banking.

Wells Fargo spokesperson, Mary Eshet (who still has a Wachovia email address) confirmed there is no separate Wachovia 10-Q (like there is for Merrill Lynch), but that it wasn't the case that "Wells Fargo broke out trading related revenue previously either."

In fact, Wells just provides totals for their four main business segments, each of which increased sharply. Community banking rose from $33 billion in 2008 to an annualized $59 billion in 2009. Wholesale banking shot up from $8.2 billion in 2008 to $20 billion in annualized 2009. And, wealth, brokerage and retirement quadrupled from $2.7 billion in 2008 to $11.6 annualized for 2009. (The fourth segment is called ‘other.’) Yet, all these rosy numbers come with no specific breakdowns for their various trading business areas.

Separately, Wells states in its filing that its management accounting process is “dynamic” and, not “necessarily comparable with similar information for other financial services companies.” This statement should give lawmakers pause: if banks are so complex as to constantly fluctuate their own reporting, deciphering figures just before a crisis won’t exactly be a walk in the park.

With taxpayers now on the hook, we need an objective, consistent evaluation of bank balance sheets complete with probing questions about trading and speculative revenues, allowing for comparisons across the banking industry. This lack of transparency leaves room to misrepresent risk and trading revenue.

The long-term solution is bringing back Glass-Steagall. Being big doesn’t just risk bringing down a financial system—it means you can also more easily hide things. Remember the lesson from the Enron saga: when things look too good to be true, they usually are.

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en dat banken elkaar weer geld gaan lenen.

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Op maandag 7 december 2009 14:30 schreef knnth het volgende:
De zoveelste nagel aan de doodskist van de dollar.

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Op maandag 7 december 2009 14:50 schreef pberends het volgende:
Bos verlengt garantieregeling voor banken

Ik snap iets niet:
[..]

Waarom lenen banken aan elkaar? Waarom lenen ze hun eigen geld niet ?

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Op maandag 7 december 2009 19:26 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

[..]

te hoog risico.