Saturday, November 29, 2008

 

Advice of the Day: Getting the connections

Understanding of the detailed connections, whilst unglamorous, is increasingly the key to anticipating the evolution of the crisis and preventing exposure to events. It is also where long-term reform efforts of the financial system should be directed. —Satyajit Das, author of Swaps/ Financial Derivatives Library – Third Edition, Credit Derivatives, CDOs and Structured Credit Products –Third Edition, Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives and co-author of In Search of the Pangolin: The Accidental Eco-Tourist, writing in "Global Financial System – Calling for the Plumber!"

And all this time I had been thinking Satyajit Das was a Hindu holy man. Silly me.

Related post
A note to my readers (11/26/08)

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

 

A note to my readers

I worry at times whether my readers concerned about the war and healthcare and ... well, survival ... will find anything of interest here. My focus over much of this year has been so single-mindedly on the economy, and more especially finance.

But this is not because I've suddenly developed a latter-day interest in, say, tranches of financial derivatives, but because such obscure matters have far more to do with stopping the war, reducing imperial outreach and creating an economy in the interest of the people than the recent U.S. election will ever have. Putting a President and Congress in place whose goals are virtually identical to the goals of the party going out of power is not a recipe for change. A collapse of the world economy is.

Our leaders know this—which is why they are working so feverishly and expending so many resources to preserve the status quo. They have finally acknowledged among themselves that some change is inevitable. The challenge for them is to minimize it. The challenge for the rest of us should be to maximize it.

What our leaders are trying to preserve is no different from what kings and aristocrats have always sought to preserve—privilege.

The Bush administration, justifying itself through the legal doctrine of "executive privilege," has vastly extended the power of the President and his minions within the executive branch. This is the privilege of unrestrained power.

The privilege sought by "the private sector" is the privilege of unrestrained rapacity. This is justified through the economic doctrines variously known as neoliberalism, free-market economics or economic libertarianism.

Whereas the privilege of the President is said to be derived from Constitutional law, the privilege of the privileged is said to be derived from some natural economic law that the priesthood of economists has discerned.

This is swiftly bringing us to a state that future historians (if there are to be any) may one day refer to as the "neofeudal period."

While our modern-day kings and aristocrats may bicker among themselves, they share an abiding interest that keeps them yoked in their labors—to assure that neither the levers of power nor the goods of the economy fall under the control of the people. Unfortunately, this is a great deal easier to do than you might suppose.

I would venture to say that in modern times—with the Orwellian, omnipresent media to distract and propagandize us and the omnipresent surveillance to monitor us—only economic or ecological catastrophe or all-out war can bring real change to 21st century society.

We may have arrived at just such an event. If so, there is no guarantee that the system that emerges will be any better, from the standpoint of human welfare, than what preceded it.

I am, however, convinced that positive change will require a greater popular understanding of finance, because it is here that we can best see what our rulers have been—and are—up to.

And that, by way of a rambling explanation, is what Simply Appalling has been about of late.

Related posts
A war we can't afford to win (1/24/07)
Good news about the economy (3/31/08)
The Depression Chronicles – 1: Bankruptcies (4/19/08)

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Monday, November 24, 2008

 

Lie of the Day: The financial system is stabilized

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was interviewed a week ago Thursday on the PBS NewsHour. He began with this whopper—

JIM LEHRER: Is it correct to say at this point, Mr. Secretary, that the $700 billion rescue plan has not worked?

HENRY PAULSON: Oh, I wouldn't say that at all. I would say quite the opposite, that what we've been able to do since that legislation has been passed is stabilize our financial system....

Of course he hadn't discussed this at the time with Vikram Pandit, chief executive officer of Citigroup, until recently the nation's largest bank.

Citigroup has dominated the news for the past couple of weeks because its stock has plunged into the near-worthless zone as it shed employees by the tens of thousands.

Once again the news media (and apparently the Secretary of the Treasury) seem to have been taken by surprise. How can this be?

Almost six months ago Pandit announced that Citigroup intended to (try to) sell off from $400 to $500 billion of assets. That's a half a trillion dollars and represented over 22% of the bank's total assets at the time. Not being an economist, a financier, an investor or an accountant, maybe I'm naÏve. But when the company stated in effect that it needed to convert a half-trillion in assets into cash, the only thing that amazed me was that there were no lines of investors waiting to dump the stock that day.

But look at this headline in Friday's NY Times: "Woes at Citigroup Began With Failed Bid for Wachovia." Citigroup's attempt to buy Wachovia came in September—just two months ago. The Times reporters must have been on assignment in Tibet during the events that preceded.

In September I wondered how a bank this deeply troubled could be attempting to buy Wachovia, which was breathing its last gasp. What Citigroup really wanted was Wachovia's consumer deposit money—which should have scared the bejesus out of the FDIC, which has to guarantee those deposits. Instead the FDIC was on the verge of taking on additional responsibilities to help facilitate the deal. Happily, Wells Fargo bought Wachovia from under the nose of Citigroup and let the FDIC off the hook.

Today's bailout

It is reported that since his appearance on the NewsHour Secretary Paulson did find time for a little powwow with Pandit. So yesterday the Treasury Department announced it was coming to Citigroup's rescue.

Here's the package as Eric Dash tells it—

Under the agreement, Citigroup and regulators will back up to $306 billion of largely residential and commercial real estate loans and certain other assets, which will remain on the bank’s balance sheet. Citigroup will shoulder losses on the first $29 billion of that portfolio.

Any remaining losses will be split between Citigroup and the government, with the bank absorbing 10 percent and the government absorbing 90 percent. The Treasury Department will use its bailout fund to assume up to $5 billion of losses. If necessary, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will bear the next $10 billion of losses. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve will guarantee any additional losses.

What a deal! But guarantees against further losses will not be enough. What Citigroup really needs is cash. So in addition to the $25 billion the Treasury has already put into Citigroup,

... the government is buying $20 billion of preferred stock in Citigroup. The preferred shares will pay an 8 percent dividend and will slightly erode the value of shares held by investors.

I'm not sure an extra $20 billion will cover the cost of executive manicures.

So with the bailout of Citigroup, has Paulson finally "stabilized" the financial system?

In the view of some, there is really no fundamental problem with the system. Today's bailout, like those that preceded it, is basically a psychotherapy session for depressed investors—

Job one is to continue to repair the psychology of this market, and the bailout or the help for Citigroup is an important part of that puzzle,” James Dunigan, managing executive for investments at PNC Wealth Management in Philadelphia, said on Bloomberg Television.

Once lenders, investors (and consumers) get their heads on right, all will be well.

But Mohamed El-Erian of Pimco holds a more appalling view—

... this is a crisis of the system, not a crisis within the system, but a crisis of the system.

And that's why it's global in nature, indiscriminate in impact, and consequential in outcome.

Let's face it, a helluva lot of money has just up and vanished. It was for the most part money that was generated in the financial system for the benefit of the financial system. But in any case, it isn't coming back soon, if ever.

James Bruges concludes that such concentrations of finance-generated wealth "must inevitably be corrected from time to time with revolution, wars or economic collapse."

Take your pick from the above. On this test multiple answers will be accepted.

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