m* - the long run equilibrium (elusive)

Envelope, Please

2009-03-24T19:13:00.003-04:00

Messrs Geithner, Bernanke, and yet another gentleman from the former investment bank Goldman Sachs, (Bill Dudley who replaced Geithner as President of the NY Fed), went before the House Financial Service Committee to answer questions about the AIG bailout today .

Notwithstanding the alternately inane, occasionally relevant but hopelessly mangled, or just downright painful questioning from House members typically out of their depth, ie: the usual, m* was rather looking forward to today's hearing. The opportunity to focus attention on the decision process behind one of the most extraordinary actions taken thus far in the crisis, the initial and now ongoing operation to keep AIG on life support, seems long overdue.

Mere hours after Lehman Brothers was inartfully "allowed" to file for bankruptcy (most market participants having been lulled into complacency by the extraordinary measure of a $40bn Fed loan to JPM to help smooth the passage of Bear Stearns into its long goodnight), the Fed and Treasury reversed course, again, and advanced AIG $85bn (for 80% of the firms equity) to meet collateral calls from its trading counterparties and prevent a bankruptcy.

The justification put forward at the time, that a "disorderly" bankruptcy risked unknown but assuredly catastrophic effects on the financial system and the economy, was the party line in today's hearing. And yet as the taxpayers' tab continues to mount, after multiple rounds of capital injection, extraordinary funding facilities, and last week's unveiling of the Fed's nuclear option, debt monetization, we have no further understanding of our financial saviors' analysis than a platitude about risk and catastrophe. For this we have unleashed trillions.

Surely, we the people deserve grittier stuff than that. Its our dime. It's pithy, sure, but m* wants to know where are the Powerpoint slides? Where are the charts? Surely there is a scratch-pad someplace with AIG's off balance sheet liabilities and the potential losses a potential bankruptcy might have entailed? A meeting agenda, a presentation, a back of an envelope?

Or have these gentlemen from the Fed, and now Treasury, led us down a course of treatment, founded on no more than a fear of an uncertain and painful future, that risks transforming our financial corpus beyond all recognition? If the analysis is correct, and the course of action appropriate, what is there to hide? Gentlemen, the envelope please.

Bonus Round

2009-03-19T19:56:00.015-04:00

Who can keep up with all the four-letter acronyms emanating from the organs of state capitalism these days? Like a bad winter bug, if you work at a "TARP Bank," TARP’s revenge made the rounds today. The House, in a spasm of populist retribution, passed legislation and the Senate considered legislation to punitively tax bonuses awarded to financial workers whose firms accepted TARP funds, willingly or unwillingly, and well, is anyone surprised? m* is not.

TARP was dumb money, perpetual capital at 5% interest plus a puny passel of warrants, as part of a dubious plan, details to be worked out later, for purchasing bad “assets” from banks. In reality it was a $700bn blank check from the Government, gifted in haste to a group of important banks whether they needed it or not, (later expanded to consumer credit firms and automakers) by an unlikely trio of ministers enthralled with the Street and their own savior complexes.

The Street played its part in the con when US markets conveniently swooned upon TARP's initial rejection, then having appropriately scared Congress into reversing its weak objections, rallied upon its passage. A self important Congress breathed a huge sigh of relief for having saved the stock market, and embarked on a surreal and nauseating string of self-congratulatory speeches for the record to empty floors of both houses from legislators with only the vaguest notions of mark-to-market, CDS, or FAS 157, touting their part for the folks back home in saving the nation from collapse.

Granted, after their near death experiences, the management of certain of those lucky (unlucky?) institutions might have been expected to behave more discreetly with the fruits of the fleecing, a bit more congruent with the act of charity dis-enfranchised and increasingly unemployed taxpayers had visited on them. But this is Wall Street folks. Greed and fear are reliably available. Forbearance has always been in short supply. And besides, wasn’t the premise that these institutions (and their bankers) were too valuable to lose?

But where Wall Street went wrong was not in taking the money and running. It was in embarrassing Congress. Having blithely signed over a large portion of the Treasury on a bill they didn’t understand to an industry they can’t comprehend, now "those same folks" (as big O. would say), reacting to public outcry over what amount to personal bailouts for financial employees, are mad as hell that the blank check they wrote was not spent how they wanted and that they didn't know. Wall Street traded securities for cash. Congress traded cash for praise. Wall Street pocketed the cash. Congress, having found praise fleeting, now wants the cash back. Bonus round.

The "L" Word

2008-03-10T21:48:00.004-04:00

Unless one is actually involved in the credit markets in an institutional way, one is unlikely to appreciate quite how much of the "L" thing, or leverage, is at work in the system. There seems to be a lack of appreciation on this point, particularly among those who inform or decide policy.

Recent characterizations of the credit markets as panicking "irrationally", or needing a "face-slap" moment to break the hold of a fearful mindset strike m* as uninformed about the dynamics of leverage. This is not a panic. To the contrary, the accelerating sell-offs in credit indicies and spreads reflect the most rational and serious behavior: de-leveraging.

Prior to last fall, institutional money was typically levered in loan markets at 10x, levered in asset-backed debt 20x, and brokerage firms doing the lending levered at 30x. By way of contrast, a typical equity hedge fund is levered only 2-3x. As holders of many no down payment to very low down payment sub-prime mortgages have found out, it takes only a hiccup in asset values to create negative equity (for a buy and hold investor) or technical insolvency (for a mark-to-market investor), whether one runs a loan fund, a mortgage fund, a brokerage house, or even a government chartered home mortgage lender (50x in case you were wondering).

Lulled into a false sense of security and extrapolating the trend, the Street gorged at the credit banquet. And it's Risk Management function, more a portfolio optimization scheme for maximizing profits at VaR-ious levels of statistical risk, proved its worth in last summer's quant meltdown - which is to say, not much.

In these conditions then, with asset values having more than hiccup'd, the need for cash and the resultant pressure on the prices of assets most held by the levered players is quite simple. Whether today's rumors of trouble at Bear Stearns "bear out" or not, the potential for a liquidity crisis at a well known name has never been higher. It is likely that this cycle sees major broker failures, or last ditch acquisitions of them on the brink (see BoA/Countrywide). Those who said the problem would be "contained" to the home mortgage sector may have been confused about how far that sector stretched - all the way to Wall Street.

Six Point Eight

2008-02-20T21:55:00.006-05:00

From the minutes of the Fed's Jan 30th meeting released today:

"The higher-than-expected rates of overall and core inflation since October, which were driven in part by the steep run-up in oil prices, had caused participants to revise up somewhat their projections for inflation in the near term. The central tendency of participants’ projections for core PCE inflation in 2008 was 2.0 to 2.2 percent, up from the 1.7 to 1.9 percent central tendency in October. However, core inflation was expected to moderate over the next two years, reflecting muted pressures on resources and fairly well-anchored inflation expectations. Overall PCE inflation was projected to decline from its current elevated rate over the coming year, largely reflecting the assumption that energy and food prices would flatten out. Thereafter, overall PCE inflation was projected to move largely in step with core PCE inflation."

Also today the BLS released it's CPI report showing inflation running at 4.3% over the last twelve months. Over the last three months, the all items index increased at a 6.8% annual rate. Yesterday, China reported it's CPI has also increased over the last three months at a 6.8% annual rate. It should be clear now, if it has not been for some time, that resource competition among the world's economies is fierce, and inflation pressures globally, especially in the case of food and energy, are approaching levels where inflation expectations become rather less "well-anchored."

Yesterday, the value of fiat money globally was reduced by 5% against the price of just about any commodity traded on organized markets. Crude breached $100, and items from palladium and platinum, to wheat and gold made all time highs anew. And yet in the foggy corridors of the Fed, where "muted pressures on resources" are "expected" and softer food and energy prices are "assumed" it seems the future course of monetary policy depends on the Fed's ability to pick the top in commodity prices, a decidedly naive and costly strategy.

The Fed is depending on a slowdown in domestic consumption from the over-levered consumer to relieve resource pressure globally and soon, while aggressively lowering rates in a desperate attempt to keep that same consumer's spending habit alive. The contradiction is clear. The question is then how many more six-point-eights can you stand? The chart below says not many.

Bloomberg: Spot Gold

Tipping Point

2007-11-01T20:31:00.000-04:00

It seems like only yesterday m* was receiving angst ridden calls and despairing messages from market participants of a certain disposition over the Fed's rate deliberations earlier this week. "I can't believe they are going to do this again!" many of them went - a lament all too familiar to readers with dollar savings and insufficient appetite for the likes of China H's, Google, and Gold, not to risk capital but to protect it!

When after four years of steady decline, the dollar plums new depths against third world scrip and plain old rocks and minerals every day for two months while the official story of benign inflation, strong dollar, and credit containment continues to go un-examined as long as something is moving higher somewhere, even m* is at risk of losing perspective on the proceedings.

Standing over the sink with a toothbrush yesterday, dazed perhaps by the carnage effected on the central store of value in the whole incredible system, m* mentally reviewed the long line of casualties who clung to their rational thought processes too long in the face of this paper bull and contemplated the unthinkable, capitulation.

Were it not for this astonishing and subversive little piece entitled "Inflation-Lessons From History" from Morgan Stanley's Joachim Fels, m* might still be there, brush in hand.

"Since the anchor of the gold standard has been lost, the price level has had only one direction: up. Deflation is virtually ruled out in our paper currency system, and risks to prices are almost entirely on the upside. This is because central banks have become very averse to deflation, and because they usually don't correct for upside one-off surprises for inflation."

Now that's hardly Fiat Money Inflation in France but for a sell-side monetary strategist (as well as a pretty good sport in the old Frankfurt office) it is pretty telling. It also is exactly what m* has been thinking to make sense of the current conditions. It's not just a profligate Fed. Or the inexorable forces of Globalization. Nor a sick Japan or even a scheming China. Though it is very much all of the above. The issue is greater than all of those. It is the matter of paper money.

Mr. Fels is of course too kind to Central Bankers (he knows quite a few) in presuming that they actually have a choice. In m*'s way of thinking, under fiat money, deflation is not merely "ruled out." It is simply impossible. Only inflation, or reflation are possible developments. Or, as m* heard from one wisened FX hand talking about Citigroup today, "Everyone is talking about the banks shrinking. Banks can not shrink. They can only get bigger!" The invisible hands of the system in an open economy with fiat money are too strong for any individual institution acting independently to resist. Unfettered credit creation and socialized monetization of that credit are inevitable. The idealized notion of a Central Bank soundly managing a money supply, resisting inflation and currency debasement is simply wrong.

Right on schedule The Big Picture this week went back to first principles:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth."

--John Maynard Keynes
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919. pp. 235-248.

What would he make of the AMT and 15% dividend and capital gains tax relative to ordinary income at 35% to 50% after state, local, social security and those non-tax taxes medicare, and medicaid?

m* has been off kilter for weeks wondering how long the disconnect between what was perceived and what was real could continue, (Keynes got that one too) - or how to suspend judgment long enough to participate with the crowd as the bear resignations flow in. The FT's John Dizard caved yesterday: "All Elements in Place for an Equity Bull Run." Alas it was not to be. And a good thing too.

The credit crunch is indeed back and it seems awfully hard to see how more cheap money is going to help (though of course it always helps). No the bigger issue is that the long run futility of efforts to reign in rising prices, to ignore the simple reality that the enormous economic orthodoxy is built to ignore, and the little understood but fundamentally important inflation expectations are on a collision course.

For those who have paid close attention, the tipping point for the housing bubble is well past. The tipping point for the credit bubble is recently past. The tipping point for the dollar collapse is an ongoing event. Today, markets got a glimmer of insight into what it all means. The containment story is slipping away. Faith in price stability is slipping away.

When the 99% of folks who expect and rely on a stable store of wealth as fair trade for their labors come to understand that they have been had, times will get very interesting indeed. m* thinks the scene this week signals that tipping point.

It's a new world.

Rolling Thunder

2007-10-25T22:53:00.000-04:00

The funny thing about the times we live in, and the institutions that, ahem, serve "us" is that when a stock market turn-around like the one on Wednesday is put down to rumors of a surprise rate cut, it's accepted without the bat of an eyelid. Never mind the train cars full of traders having heard how Europe was trading that day heading to the city early to face an anticipated tidal wave of sell orders. Never mind the tenuous nature of current v-shaped earnings expectations with "back to normal for '08" (as if the last 12 quarters have been anything but normal) looking more and more, well, nuts really. Never mind the chart picture that has PPT conspiracy watchers in a lather.

What should be no surprise is that the housing bubble continues to unwind. What also should be no surprise is that every dip in the market with just a hint of panic (and that's most of them now - since valuation was tossed aside for the greater fools of private equity, followed by shots of rate cut tequila) will be met with calls for more cuts. Soon enough m* thinks, even the existence of the PPT and its "interventions" will simply become accepted as fact, so cynical and so desperate for a bail out has the Street become. Public calls for the necessity of interventions will soon follow.

m* remembers well that Japan actually had a PPT during the unwind of that great bubble which served no one but the politicians who could claim to be "doing something" while owners of real estate and equities saw nominal prices decline 75% over the 90's. There are scant reasons to expect different this time.

But the Rolling Thunder in the title of todays post refers to something even more ominous and was sparked by todays utter meltdown (with tree in the forest effect) of the fantasy that the credit crisis of July and August ended with a 50bp freebie from the Fed and new equity highs.

On the surface, today's rumors of sub-prime write downs at AIG, the further erosion in Merrill Lynch (also on rumors of further writedowns - yes even with yesterdays announced $8bn writedowns), and the long overdue implosions of the "cya" facilitators who previously insured municipal debt and more recently took their thoroughly dubious business model into the structured credit space, are just echoes of the summer's difficulties, nothing much to worry about now that the Fed is on our side and earnings from the global boom will most certainly hold up . Except that developments in the credit space are continuing to unravel. FT: Mortgage bond index declines 30%.

To those former CDO manufacturers and buyers now picketing Moodys and clamoring for more Fed assistance m* asks, if the insurer of your structured CDO deal is levered 100x, is that really insurance? Forget the rating agencies, insuring structured credit deals is (was?) the ultimate "cya" business.

What's important about this, coinciding with the failure of the delaying action formerly known as MLEC - the SIV PPT, is the realisation on the street that while Merrill took an $8bn writedown, it's very likely they, like everyone else, are still holding the stuff. Moreover, to the extent they did sell some, its more likely they sold what they could (the higher quality paper with perhaps some transparency) and are left with a portfolio even heavier (on a relative basis) in the toxic unsellable stuff than before.

The July-August asset backed market crisis was actually very orderly - the market simply closed. The panic was real, the paper markdowns painful, but there was relatively little selling. It was obvious to everyone that selling would only hurt one's own remaining positions more. It was better to wait it out if possible rather than force the issue with prices in a market with no buyers.

However that situation was always going to be temporary, hence the proposed master SIV as a vehicle to delay the day of reckoning indefinitely. That moratorium is now over. Over the last few days, m* has heard of several deals that would "never never" be unwound before maturity now being shut down, their assets liquidated. The lenders need the cash. Debt is finding its way back to banks balance sheets. Asset backed commercial paper is coming due. Not much of it will be re-extended and the forced selling that the market successfully avoided in July-August is quietly spreading.

Ricardo Revisited

2007-10-08T22:09:00.000-04:00

After last week's bleeding heart post about the downside to our absolute acceptance of the concept of free trade, m* finally got around to opening up the October issue of The Atlantic, a magazine recently suffering from a summer-long bout of irrelevance, and worse - has anyone else had about enough of Robert D. Kaplan's context-free sycophantic martial worship?

However there were two very timely items directly connected with the free-trade (or not) discussion that m* heartily recommends. (A nominal subscription to read the articles is required). First up was a lively debate in the letters section on James Fallows' partly good, partly just bizarre, July/August essay on the terms of trade with China, "China Makes, the World Takes." Peter Navarro, author of the book "The Coming China Wars" counters Fallows' rosy piece by highlighting the darkside of the industrialization and globalization picture:

"China’s competitive advantage in world manufacturing markets is largely due to a web of illegal export subsidies, rampant counterfeiting and piracy, a grossly undervalued currency, and lax environmental and health and safety regulations. While they have benefited the American firms and other multinational companies that are offshoring to China, these mercantilist practices have put tens of millions of people out of work around the world—from the American Rust Belt to Mexican maquiladoras to the markets of Lesotho."

This may be a good place to also direct readers to an astonishing piece on the PIMCO website entitled "Renegade Economics: The Bretton Woods ll Fiction" where the authors take to task both the US and China for practicing "renegade economics" but in particular lay serious criticism on China for playing the competitive devaluation card (and getting away with it) for the better part of fifteen years. In their minds, much of the seeds of the current "savings glut/credit bubble" were sown in Chinese - as opposed to Japanese or US - monetary (and political) policy. Considering the relative importance of the China bid for the $700 billion of bonds in the Pimco portfolio, m* finds this an interesting position to advocate.

Back to the Atlantic, senior editor Clive Crook writes about the current backpedaling among prominent mainstream (well, orthodox anyway) economists on the benefits of free trade and that one true idea in all of economics, Ricardo's comparative advantage, in "Beyond Belief."

He writes, "For nearly 200 years, the principle of comparative advantage, and the ideas that flowed from it, divided the world into two camps: those with basic economic literacy; and the rest." Um, Clive? m* would like to mention that it's a pretty big world out there. He goes on to note that while challenges to the thesis on technical grounds have thus far been vanquished, notable members of the profession seem to have a problem reconciling it's conclusion with their own observation of the times.

How ironic, for that is essentially the problem with economics in a nutshell. The key that Crook misses in his glib recounting of contemporary research is not that theory is necessarily wrong, but that it often has little if anything to say about the "adjustment path" to being right. In other words, those economists whose shift is "both momentous and disturbing" are taking notice of an heretofore under-appreciated intermediate term, where the frictions of adjustment between equilibria occur. Since "in the long run we are all dead," this time-frame is therefore of importance to many people, likely even a few noted economists and senior editors.

For a serious exposition (with a humorous image) of "adjustment path" see Krugman's recent paper on the dollar and the potential for what he calls a "Wile E. Coyote moment."

Globalization's Red Skeptics

2007-10-04T20:54:00.000-04:00

For the dollar-crash pundits, one of the key drivers of the doomsday scenario where the US is suddenly cut off from the torrent of foreign capital necessary to fund it's negative savings economy (and a trillion dollar war habit) is a rather nebulously specified "rise in protectionism."

As every student of orthodox economics is taught, and the public debate on trade has accepted as fait accompli since what feels like the Reagan era, the goodness of free trade is as pure a thing as there is to be explained in economics. As the story goes, the principle of comparative advantage enlarges the economic pie for everybody. Furthermore the reduction of frictions and barriers to trade are touchstones of a modern, efficient, and open society.

However, a lot of economics is about the frictions, the sand in the gears, of theoretical purity. Ronald Coase, one of m*'s favorite old time economists, won the Noble prize for examining some of those frictions, transaction costs to be specific, and theorizing that enterprises organize themselves into corporations in order to minimize those transaction costs.

When it comes to the sacred cow of free trade however, the frictions created by globalization - the very real and serious impact on the economic well being of ordinary people, are the inconvenient truths rarely discussed openly by serious members of the profession, with some exceptions. As long as the pie is expanding, it is impolitic to ask whether and for whom the pie is shifting as well. Inequality is not a subject economics handles well, and this ideal, utterly inimicable to the economic well being of the US middle class, has somehow become the law of the land in economic thought.

Yet a strong case can be made that for adherence to an economic ideal, the manufacturing base in the US and a sense of purpose and security for a large mid-section of the population has been sacrificed. No doubt a young Chinese factory worker's life in an industrial complex resembling a city is better in many respects than the deep rural poverty that would have preceded it. And m* can well appreciate the benefits of "everyday low prices" in poor rural sections of the US as well. But those kinds of benefits do absolutely nothing to create investment or better long run prospects for our people, and our democracy.

What is surprising to m* is how little complaint there has been from the manufacturing regions of the country, as one industry after another has been packed up and shipped off overseas. Distracted by fighting the war on terror, and fooled about their prospects by the (now departed) housing bubble, the US's losers in globalization have been mostly silent. Now they are waking up.

The extraordinary article on the WSJ's front page today, Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade , signals a dramatic shift in opinion that brings the Red State voter in close alignment with many Blue State voters, and portends significant pressure on the unfettered free trade the owners of capital have enjoyed (with extraordinary sized profits as a share of GDP to show for it) while real wages for the average US worker have steadily declined. While pockets of dissatisfaction have surfaced before, a two to one margin of Republican voters now believe free trade is bad for the economy.

To be clear, m* is all for fair and open trade, and abhors tariffs, subsidies, and import quotas on principle. However, the system now in place, beginning with China's accession to the WTO in 2001, has been anything but fair and open. Heavily lobbied for by corporations seeking access to a vast and dirt-cheap labor pool as well as a billion person market, the accession allowing China to maintain a closed capital account and an inconvertible currency was a grave error of short-term profit seeking behavior. The 2001 agreement focused almost exclusively on microeconomic issues, market structures, and reducing trade controls, many of which, six years later, appear to have failed. Yet the macroeconomic "global imbalances" that have resulted from an unlevel monetary playing field, including massive trade deficits, distorted risk premiums, over-investment and consumption globally, and an explosion of debt in developed nations, will have serious consequences on US standards of living as the inevitable (and thoroughly underway) inflation and debasement of the dollar gather pace.

For the moralists' case, the Red's are coming around.

Conundrum, undone

2007-09-24T22:40:00.000-04:00

Now that markets have had a few trading days to digest the Fed's surprisingly aggressive move on rates, (and dropped into bit of a lull actually), and readers have maybe wondered about “turning points” and “watershed moments” for one thing or another, m* thought it would be good to share the one observation that in m*’s view really deserves attention.

It is that the bond market has finally woken up to all the reasons why it is overpriced.

Experience during the "benign inflationary environment," of the Greenspan era, using the usual, mmm…, interesting price indices of course, was that lower rates on the front end actually supported bond purchases on the back end. So while rate cuts might lead to a steeper yield curve, they did not lead to higher long term rates.

At the same time, and more vexing to just about everyone, higher rates on the front end did not translate into higher bond yields on the long end either, leading to flattish yield curves in most major economies. Nor did dramatic fluctuations in fiscal position seem to have an influence as they once did.

It was as though the long end had become entirely divorced from actions at the short end, fiscal positions, trade deficits, and very strong economic growth globally, thus defying a whole set of accepted economic principles. This “conundrum” has become part of the global financial landscape as a number of happy circumstances in price measures and capital flows have conspired over the last decade to hold inflationary expectations (or just the expression of them in the bond market) in check.

Globalization meant that US price measures experienced downward pressure from Asian imports of manufactured goods and concurrent pressure on wages as more and more manufacturing jobs were transferred overseas. At the same time, a measurement quirk meant that a shift in preference for home ownership over renting left the housing component of inflation indices (owner imputed rent) practically unchanged while home prices, which are not a part of the government’s inflation calculation, inflated at double digit rates nationwide. (Say what you want about the real estate bubble, but an increased preference for ownership is a pretty rational response to an inflationary environment).

Globalization also meant that US debt markets benefited from the Circle whereby the Japanese and Chinese Central Banks (and more recently the Central Banks flush with petro-profits) recycle dollars received for exports back into US interest rate markets. Meanwhile long periods of easy policy by the Fed (and generous easing during financial downdrafts) also did their part to dampen risk on the long end and attract an epidemic of participation in the carry trade and an insatiable demand for yield instruments.

In short, the risk premium, (where long term lenders demand some additional yield for assuming inflation risk) was squeezed out of bond yields.

However, that appears to be no longer. And as long anticipated, (if you’ve known m* a while), it is weakness in the dollar that is finally changing the tone of the interest rate picture.

While the global imbalances crowd has long been focused on the possibility for an abrupt spike in rates due to a cessation of purchases of bonds by the Central Banks of the nation’s major Asian trading partners, the catalyst for such a change has never been clear. Trade frictions, political crisis, or in the longer term, a greater demand for capital at home have all been possible culprits.

However the potential for the weaker dollar, to this point reflecting shifting allocations by Central Bank reserve managers (and US retail investors!), to augment the inflation concerns already afoot globally is now reaching a serious level. Remember that prior to the summer credit crisis, both the Fed and the ECB postures were most concerned with inflation pressures, while currently the Bank of China is actively and utterly ineffectively engaged in a battle with domestic inflation of its own. Expect bonds and the dollar to trade together from here on out.

The Circle: Chapter 1

2007-09-19T23:47:00.000-04:00

Readers of the last post concerning former Chairman Greenspan have been in touch. Concerned that m* has somehow lost an earlier grasp of things, or is finally going soft in the head, several have pointed out that the temperature of the water in the pot that the USD based financial system finds itself in is starting to climb decisively. The advances in gold, the Hang Seng, and the hard currencies over the last three days are loud testament to the radical and relentless pressure on the value of the world's major reserve currency now given fresh impetus by the Fed's recent rate cut decision.

Where to begin? First, consider the excellent essay and book review of Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence" in the WSJ by James Grant, of the eponymous Grant's Interest Rate Observer - a first class newsletter in style, information, and intelligence. Mr. Grant concisely deflates much of the irrational exuberance in the Chairman's commonly accepted legacy and offers a far weirder and more concerning picture of a man and a set of policies perhaps less sophisticated than we may have presumed. He writes:

"Sooner or later, the dollar will lose its luster and finally its value, as paper currencies always do. Striving to understand why people trusted it in the first place, historians will naturally reach for the memoirs of the foremost central banker of his day. But Mr. Greenspan's "The Age of Turbulence" will leave them just as confused as they ever were...."

"The fantastic irony of Mr. Greenspan's career path -- from gold-standard libertarian to federal interest-rate fixer -- seems hardly to have registered on Mr. Greenspan himself..."

"Having watched his mentor, Arthur Burns, struggle with the chairmanship, Mr. Greenspan notes, "it did not seem like a job I felt equipped to do; setting interest rates for an entire economy seemed to involve so much more than I knew."

Mr. Grant adds, "A deeper kind of libertarian might have added: 'Maybe nobody can know enough to set interest rates for an entire economy.' "

Mr. Grant's piece is a highly disturbing visit to a rare distortion free zone (think bubble vision) and m* highly recommends reading the entire essay.

One of the most confusing aspects of the Greenspan legacy, no less confusing even to "the Maestro" himself has been the so-called interest rate conundrum. If money has been too cheap and credit has been too plentiful, where are the wage and price inflation pressures and concomitant higher long term interest rates elementary economics would expect?

Mr. Greenspan initially ascribed the lack of price pressures to increased productivity, (a presumed permanent increase actually) brought on by, yes, that new fangled thing known as the internet.

Later, he and others caught on to the impact of globalization, a catch all for the productivity improvements (in a statistical sense) gained by beaming capital and knowhow (and environmentally and fiscally unencumbered means of production) to one billion new job aspirants in recently opened and underdeveloped countries for the manufacture of goods for export back to developed nations' markets.

With few domestic liquid assets available to them, the exporters' central banks have recycled their unprecedented trade surpluses back into the developed nations' financial markets, especially the government securities that set the domestic market price for borrowing (particularly mortgage borrowing) thereby sustaining a virtuous circle of low interest rates and import consumption and leading to a chicken and egg debate between "savings glut," a now official term, and "credit bubble."

The "savings glut" has become the socially acceptable explanation (as it avoids any taint of an extended disequilibrium and the messy unraveling such situations inevitably entail) and its proponents frequently thrive as successful sell-side economists, macroeconomic research directors, and even future Federal Reserve Chairmen.

An especially abstract and sadly for m* fascinating bunch of monetary economists (mostly) attribute the reduced risk premiums and stable inflation expectations to the stellar central banking of the last several years.

"The change in the behaviour of inflation over the last few decades cannot be explained at least in any great degree by changes in globalisation... By far the main thing is how central banks have behaved in terms of providing money growth and setting interest rates," says John Taylor, an influential monetary economist at Stanford, as quoted by Krishna Guha in the FT recently.

Ali G, John Taylor is in the Green room.

The "credit bubble" has become the touchstone for "the moralists," of which m* confesses to knowing a few, and rests its credulity on the mountain of counterfactual evidence for the rosy explanation offered by the other two, as so succinctly cataloged by Mr. Grant above.

Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economics professor, explains this conundrum with a subtlety that has been lost on most observers (and been a struggle to articulate for m* quite frankly) with his observation that China, far from being a blanket source of deflationary pressure, has in fact been changing relative prices. "Fed treads a fine line between perils" byKrishna Guha, FT What this means is that one can accept certain facts of the "savings glut" argument without succumbing to the entire (somewhat common-sense defying to m*) explanation of why it should continue.

Unfortunately, Rogoff's insight comes too late to prevent the Greenspan Fed's ultra-stimulative policy error of 2003-4 and the undeniable bubbly aftermath in credit and housing markets today.

Put, on.

2007-09-19T20:28:00.000-04:00

It has been a one-two punch for moral hazard this week as the UK Treasury pressured the BOE into backstopping the reckless business practice of the media savvy managers of a third tier UK mortgage lender (a deposit taking hedge fund in any analysis) and the Bernanke Fed, after much ado about nothing socialized the equity markets with a put very generously struck at all time highs.

Global strategists are now calling for the mother of all rallies into next year as the rate cycle turns and growth projections for next year go from weighting recession probabilities to discounting that altogether more equity friendly concept "the mid-cycle slow down" whatever that is. US markets responded appropriately and Asian markets hyper-appropriately, while the dollar made new lows against most alternatives. Moral hazard indeed.

Whatever one calls it, the concept most on m*'s mind is not growth or hazard so much as store-of-value. As a long term dollar bear, m* has been living with a workable definition in a relative sense but the cave-in this week, though hardly surprising, is an eye-opening step towards the precipice. m* is forming the conviction, at something deeper than an intellectual level finally, that the idea in an absolute sense can not exist in our current (fiat) money world.

Comments?

Begging off

2007-09-18T22:00:00.001-04:00

Between the Fed meeting and the Northern Rock m* readers have plenty of current events macroeconomic-wise to entertain themselves with for another day or two. Rest assured m* is working on some bigger picture ideas, well the main one or two really, in the background. Meanwhile, m*'s schedule and inbox are a bit tight at the moment and getting more-so. So, with all due apologies, it will be another day before the next post.

Musical Chairman

2007-09-16T19:57:00.000-04:00

Like his old boss, former President William Clinton, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan knows his way around a tune, both men sharing a well known love for jazz and playing the saxophone. Lately the former Chairman has been demonstrating a related talent for which he is also known, picking up a new tune when the music changes.

With his new book out in the US on Monday (m* readers in NYC can see the Chairman at the Union Square Barnes & Noble at 7pm) and front page appearances in the FT and the WSJ over the weekend, Greenspan has adapted to the new reality of the global credit environment he personally did much to foster rather well.

Speaking to the FT, Greenspan admits the housing market was in a bubble and that home price declines are likely to surprise to the downside. He also compared the yield pickup of asset-backed structured securities over treasuries to cocaine and the current commercial paper crunch to the '80's savings and loan "disaster".

As the recently departed Chairman after nineteen years of the institution charged with overseeing the health of the nation's banking system, price stability, and the path of economic progress, m* naturally wonders when exactly the Chairman came around to these conclusions?

Greenspan makes an odd celebrity. There is his age, beyond easy figuring but well into the wise old man category, the easily caricatured egghead visage with small eyes appearing behind enormous glasses, and that monotone warbling of un-intelligible but clearly highly intelligent verbiage. And he is an economist after all.

Bubble vision pumped him up of course, even while they made fun of his pending appearances with superhero antics and pre-game-show style briefcase analysis. But Greenspan more than anyone contributed to their mutual success, promoting and sustaining a bull market state of mind and an equity culture that swept the globe during his tenure.

Chairman Greenspan held the scepter of power among economic seers across nearly two decades and three presidential administrations, with a Chance the gardener-like talent for evading criticism and responsibility, while cultivating a public acceptance of the mystery of his wisdom and that of his institution.

Greenspan has always been the court's jester, adapting his performance to stay in the graces of whichever court is currently in power, as when he abandoned the successful fiscal conservatism of the Clinton/Rubin era for the budget busting Bush tax breaks for the wealthy, or filed away "Gold and Economic Freedom" to later preside over a succession of asset bubbles fueled by too cheap money and lax oversight.

Greenspan drank the Kool-aid of the internet’s new paradigm for productivity, and flinched in the face of post bubble deleveraging, fearing a Japan-style deflationary spiral was at hand. He missed the rampant speculation and rash lending that was driving up housing prices at unsustainable rates, and encouraged home loan borrowers to gamble with short term adjustable rates (and sub-prime mortgages) shortly before the housing peak and an impending rate hike cycle.

Greenspan may have gotten some of the basic calls dead wrong, or simply been working from a different set of priorities than many of his critics assume. But one thing he's always gotten correct was the importance to the role of setting the tone and massaging expectations. Greenspan understood that the true power of the Fed and its Chairman is far less than commonly perceived, and that inflated perception enabled him to wield far more power than he might have without it. That is why he was called “the Maestro.”

However the unraveling of his decisions and their long term impact on savers and the purchasing power of the currency brings to mind another image from film, that of the powerful wizard revealed to be just a fallible man behind a curtain with a distortion microphone and a sputtering smoke machine, his omnipotence an illusion. But ever the showman, Greenspan manages to somehow stay in the public consciousness long enough to sell a few books for his publisher.

It must have been a light weekend on the fashion-news front as the WSJ’s Weekend Edition led with what was technically a Greenspan "book review," making sure to tell us they did not speak to the Chairman but rather, almost blog-like, “bought a copy at a bookstore in the New York area.” Perhaps the new owner at the Journal was not happy at paying the Chairman’s speaking fee. Over at Pearson however, where they’ll no doubt be waiting for the paperback, someone got him on the horn and the quotes are juicy.

Message from Mervyn

2007-09-13T21:16:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, the argument for rate cuts to save the US from impending recessionary disaster of an unspecified nature was aired by it's most learned and esteemed advocate, Martin Feldstein, who repeated his narrowcast doom and gloom speech from the recent Jackson Hole conference in the mass market pages of the WSJ.

m* strongly disagreed with this view and held out the example of BOE's Mervyn King as a counterweight to the luminaries calling for easing. In typical fashion, King's voice during this period has thus far been conspicuous by it's absence, until today when King broke the silence with his first comments weeks into the current crisis in the money markets and structured debt markets. In a statement prepared for regularly scheduled testimony to the Treasury next week, King sends an eloquent, reasoned message to the markets about the hazards of short term, emotionally driven thinking and the responsibility of a central banker. The short of it is captured by headline-of-the-day award winner and frequent source Macro Man with "No Soup for You!"

TURMOIL IN FINANCIAL MARKETS: WHAT CAN CENTRAL BANKS DO?

Paper submitted to the Treasury Committee

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England

The recent turmoil in financial markets has increased uncertainty in the world economy.
Problems that surfaced first in the US sub-prime mortgage market are now visible more
widely. All those involved, whether banks, other financial institutions, regulators or
central banks, need to analyse carefully the causes of the recent turmoil and think through
the long-term consequences of any actions if they are to respond appropriately.

So in this note I shall try to answer two questions. First, what are the immediate causes
of the recent turmoil and what are its implications? Second, what can and should central
banks do to alleviate the problems? In due course we shall all have time for a more
detailed examination of this episode and the lessons to be learned from it.

1. What are the immediate causes of the recent turmoil and what are its implications?

Since the beginning of August, there have been sharp movements in financial markets:
prices of loans, and assets backed by loans, have fallen; prices of government securities
have risen; and interest rates on inter-bank lending have risen.

Rising default rates on sub-prime mortgages in the United States were the trigger for the
recent financial market turmoil. It is important, though, to put recent events in
perspective. The world economy has been strong for the past five years. Our own
economy has been growing at a steady rate for a considerable period. There are major
problems in the US housing market to which the authorities there are responding with
both macro and micro measures. But the losses from defaults so far remain small relative
to the capital of the banking system.

None of this is meant to say we should be complacent. But the source of the problems
lies not in the state of the world economy, but in a mis-pricing of risk in the financial
system. And it is on that set of issues that we need to focus to determine the remedies,
both short-term to address the current problems and long-term to prevent a recurrence.

Why have developments in one part of the US mortgage market proved so important for a
wide range of financial markets? Sub-prime mortgages are one type of loan that banks
have parcelled together into securities backed by the cash flows from those loans – a
process known as securitisation. Those securities have been sold by banks to investors.
They have also been sold to investment vehicles, many of which have been established
by the banks themselves. Many of these vehicles have financed their purchases by
issuing short-term commercial paper.

Securitisation of loans has separated the information held by loan originators from those
exposed to the risk of default – investors in asset-backed securities or commercial paper.
The unexpected losses sustained on assets backed by US sub-prime mortgages have
highlighted the potential costs to investors of uncertainty about the types of loans
underlying the assets they purchase. So for the time being the markets in these
instruments have either closed or become very illiquid. Vehicles financed by short-term
commercial paper are holding assets which can no longer be traded in liquid markets.
They now find that they have borrowed short to lend long – normally thought of as a
function of banks.

As a result of this maturity mismatch, vehicles set up by banks and others are now
finding it extremely difficult to obtain funding through asset-backed commercial paper.
The markets are now withdrawing short-term funding from such vehicles, a process not
unlike a bank run. Many investment vehicles have been forced to shorten the maturity of
their commercial paper, making their borrowing even more short-term and their maturity
mismatch even greater. Other vehicles have been unable to issue at all. For example,
since the beginning of August the value of asset backed commercial paper outstanding in
the US has fallen by almost 20%.

Some investment vehicles will need to be wound up. In many cases, however, the
sponsoring bank will have written a backup line to the vehicle, guaranteeing its funding.
Many of the securitised loans may now be re-priced, restructured or taken back by the
banks. A process is starting that will expand the balance sheet of the banking system.
But how far that process will go is hard to tell.

The vehicles can be taken back onto banks’ balance sheets. Banks as a whole are well
capitalised and should be able to do this. Moreover, the funds that were directed to assetbacked securities and commercial paper will now be available elsewhere. In the end, that funding will come back to the banking system, although between banks the distribution
will differ. So the adjustment period may be awkward and, during it, banks are placing a
premium on holding assets which can quickly be turned into cash.

The increase in demand for liquid assets during the adjustment period is one reason why,
in all the major economies, yields on liquid assets like government securities have fallen.
It also helps to explain why the compensation needed for banks to lend to other banks
over periods longer than overnight has risen and why the volume of inter-bank lending
has been increasingly concentrated at shorter maturities. Since the beginning of August,
the spread between interest rates for 3-month inter-bank lending and central bank interest
rates expected over that period has risen in all the major economies. At present, the
average spread is 110 basis points in sterling and 90 basis points in dollars. This is the
natural economic result of a change in the preferences of banks over the composition of
the assets they wish to hold on their balance sheets.

In addition, banks have raised their demand for reserves at central banks. Banks settle
payments with each other using central bank money and they hold reserves at the Bank of
England to manage their daily payment needs. Conditions in financial markets have
made their payment needs less predictable. As a result, banks have wanted to hold more
reserves. They have tried to fund those reserves by borrowing overnight from other
banks. Over the past month, interest rates on secured overnight borrowing have averaged
5.91% – 16 basis points above Bank Rate. That spread was wider than usual – since the
introduction of the current money market regime, it has averaged 3 basis points.

These changes in the distribution of assets across the financial sector, and banks’
preferences over different assets during the adjustment period, are likely to have
consequences for the wider economy through the interest rates for borrowing and lending
faced by households and companies. It is too soon, however, to quantify the impact on
the economy as a whole.

In the short term, some corporate loan rates will rise in line with inter-bank rates. Banks
that are unable to sell pools of loans that they had securitised, or who need to support offbalance sheet vehicles, may cut back on new lending. But banks whose potential funding
liabilities to vehicles or conduits are small as a proportion of their balance sheet may be
able to exploit profitable lending opportunities, which may not be as open to those banks
which are now hoarding liquidity. So there may be a redirection of borrowing from
within the banking system. This is part of a normal market adjustment.

Funds that had been invested in asset-backed commercial paper issued by vehicles and
conduits will find their way back to the financial system, perhaps directly through bank
deposits or indirectly via the corporate sector by purchases of corporate debt. It is
notable that yields on investment-grade corporate bonds are unchanged since the
beginning of August. And companies, including some financial institutions, have been
able to issue long-term debt.

Nevertheless, there has since mid-July been a widespread reassessment of the
compensation investors seek for bearing risk. Equity prices have fallen in all major
economies. Most of that adjustment took place in July – before the turmoil in credit
markets. The FTSE All-Share today is 6% below its level at the beginning of July. As
this re-pricing of risk passes through to borrowers, the supply of credit faced by
households and companies may tighten somewhat.

In summary, the turmoil in financial markets since the beginning of August stems from a
reluctance by investors to purchase financial instruments backed by loans. Liquidity in
asset-backed markets has dried up and a process of re-intermediation has begun, in which
banks move some way back towards their traditional role taking deposits and lending
them. That process is likely to be temporary but it may not be smooth. During that
process, demand for liquidity by the banking system has increased, leading to a
substantial rise in inter-bank rates.

2. What can and should central banks do to alleviate these problems?

Three distinct policy instruments can be deployed by central banks: interest rates, money
market operations, and other general liquidity support operations.

First, what role should monetary policy play in the present situation? The answer is to
protect the public from the consequences of the recent turmoil by continuing to maintain
economic stability. That is done by setting interest rates in order to meet the 2% target
for inflation. Interest rates are a flexible tool and can be adjusted quickly when
necessary. If, in the wake of a shock to the financial system, the terms on which the
financial system extends credit to the private sector become less favourable, then
borrowing and overall demand would weaken. Other things being equal, that would
lower the inflation outlook. Of course, other things are not equal. When the Monetary
Policy Committee meets each month it reviews all the evidence on the outlook on
inflation before reaching a judgment. The August Inflation Report implied that some
slowdown from recent strong rates of economic growth was needed to meet the inflation
target. The new element introduced by the recent turmoil is that effective borrowing
rates facing households and companies will rise somewhat. So, as we said in the August
Report, the Committee is monitoring credit conditions intensively. It is too soon to tell
how persistent and how large any change in credit conditions for household and corporate
borrowers will prove to be. A new Bank of England Credit Conditions Survey will be
available to the MPC at its next meeting.

Second, the central bank is responsible for the smooth functioning of the payment system
among banks – the short-term money markets and what is known as the high value
payment system. Central banks discharge that responsibility by providing reserves that
enable banks to settle among themselves. In the reform of our money market operations
a year ago, we made very clear, and this is a unique feature of the British system, that the
banking system as a whole will get the reserves that it itself requests. Each month, at the
beginning of what is known as the maintenance period, running from one MPC meeting
to the next, banks set their own reserve targets. They are not imposed. We then supply
the reserves that the banking system as a whole requests. The objective is to allow banks
to deal with their own day-to-day liquidity needs and, by supplying in aggregate the
banks’ demand for reserves, to keep the overnight interest rate close to Bank Rate set by
the Monetary Policy Committee. If any individual bank has misjudged its reserves target
and finds that on any day, due to unusually large payment flows, it needs additional
liquidity, then that is supplied against eligible collateral at a penalty rate. There is
automatic and guaranteed access to the standing facility in return for eligible collateral
and a penalty rate of 1% above Bank Rate. It should be clear that because standing
facilities are available at the borrower’s discretion and against eligible collateral, they are
quite distinct from what is known in other financial centres as “emergency liquidity
assistance”, and under the UK tripartite framework as lender of last resort arrangements,
where the central bank decides that there is a policy objective in lending to one or more
institutions. Reflecting these different aims, the collateral required is different.

The interest rate for secured overnight borrowing was, in August, unusually high relative
to Bank Rate, indicating that banks’ aggregate demand for central bank reserves had risen
since they set their reserves targets. For the current maintenance period, which began on
6 September, the reserves banks raised their target levels of reserves by 6%. That larger
quantity of reserves was supplied by the Bank of England in its open market operation on
6 September.

As expected, some pressure on interest rates for overnight borrowing was relieved. Last
week, we announced that, during the current maintenance period, we will make available
to banks additional reserves, up to 25% of the reserves target, if the secured overnight
rate remains higher than usual relative to Bank Rate. The reason for this is that there are
grounds for suspecting that banks may, at the start of the current maintenance period,
have underestimated their demand for reserves, and the additional reserves will help to
bring the overnight rate into line with Bank Rate. We will announce the terms of this
week’s operation on Thursday. Provision of central bank reserves, in exchange for highquality
collateral, cannot be expected to narrow the spreads between anticipated policy
rates and the rates at which commercial banks can borrow from each other at longer
maturities, and has not done so elsewhere.

So, third, is there a case for the provision of additional central bank liquidity against a
wider range of collateral and over longer periods in order to reduce market interest rates
at longer maturities? This is the most difficult issue facing central banks at present and
requires a balancing act between two different considerations. On the one hand, the
provision of greater short-term liquidity against illiquid collateral might ease the process
of taking the assets of vehicles back onto bank balance sheets and so reduce term market
interest rates. But, on the other hand, the provision of such liquidity support undermines
the efficient pricing of risk by providing ex post insurance for risky behaviour. That
encourages excessive risk-taking, and sows the seeds of a future financial crisis. So
central banks cannot sensibly entertain such operations merely to restore the status quo
ante. Rather, there must be strong grounds for believing that the absence of ex post
insurance would lead to economic costs on a scale sufficient to ignore the moral hazard in
the future. In this event, such operations would seek to ensure that the financial system
continues to function effectively.

As we move along a difficult adjustment path there are three reasons for being careful
about where to tread. First, the hoarding of liquidity is a finite process. When any
transfers of the assets of vehicles back onto banks’ balance sheets are complete, the
demand for additional liquidity, and the associated rise in LIBOR spreads, will fall back.
The fragility of sentiment at present means that the system is vulnerable to further shocks
and it is important to monitor financial conditions extremely closely. But the banking
system as a whole is strong enough to withstand the impact of taking onto the balance
sheet the assets of conduits and other vehicles.

Second, the private sector will gradually re-establish valuations of most asset backed
securities, thus allowing liquidity in those markets to build up. Indeed, there are market
incentives to speed up the process both of taking assets back onto balance sheets and to
re-open markets in securities that have closed. Already there are tentative steps in this
direction which will allow the price discovery process to restart. Strong institutions have
incentives to reveal their positions to obtain better access to funding. Some are tapping
long-term paper. And there are opportunities to make money for those who can assess
and value instruments and eventually repackage and reissue them. Difficult and timeconsuming though that process may be, it will also slowly reduce that part of the rise in
market rates which reflects counterparty risk.

Third, the moral hazard inherent in the provision of ex post insurance to institutions that
have engaged in risky or reckless lending is no abstract concept. The risks of the
potential maturity transformation undertaken by off-balance sheet vehicles were not fully
priced. The increase in maturity transformation implied by a change in the effective
liquidity in the markets for asset-backed securities was identified as a risk by a wide
range of official publications, including the Bank of England’s Financial Stability
Report, over several years. If central banks underwrite any maturity transformation that
threatens to damage the economy as a whole, it encourages the view that as long as a
bank takes the same sort of risks that other banks are taking then it is more likely that
their liquidity problems will be insured ex post by the central bank. The provision of
large liquidity facilities penalises those financial institutions that sat out the dance,
encourages herd behaviour and increases the intensity of future crises.

In addition, central banks, in their traditional lender of last resort (LOLR) role, can lend
“against good collateral at a penalty rate” to an individual bank facing temporary
liquidity problems, but that is otherwise regarded as solvent. The rationale would be that
the failure of such a bank would lead to serious economic damage, including to the
customers of the bank. The moral hazard of an increase in risk-taking resulting from the
provision of LOLR lending is reduced by making liquidity available only at a penalty
rate. Such operations in this country are covered by the tripartite arrangements set out in
the MOU between the Treasury, Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England.
Because they are made to individual institutions, they are flexible with respect to type of
collateral and term of the facility. LOLR operations remain in the armoury of all central
banks.

Conclusions

The path ahead is uncertain. There are strong private incentives to market players to
recognise early and transparently their exposures to off-balance sheet entities and to
accelerate the re-pricing of asset-backed securities. Policy actions must be supportive of
this process. Injections of liquidity in normal money market operations against high
quality collateral are unlikely by themselves to bring down the LIBOR spreads that
reflect a need for banks collectively to finance the expansion of their balance sheets. To
do that, general injections of liquidity against a wider range of collateral would be
necessary. But unless they were made available at an appropriate penalty rate, they
would encourage in future the very risk-taking that has led us to where we are. All
central banks are aware that there are circumstances in which action might be necessary
to prevent a major shock to the system as a whole. Balancing these considerations will
pose considerable challenges, and in present circumstances judging that balance is
something we do almost daily.

The key objectives remain, first, the continuous pursuit of the inflation target to maintain
economic stability and, second, ensuring that the financial system continues to function
effectively, including the proper pricing of risk. If risk continues to be under-priced, the
next period of turmoil will be on an even bigger scale. The current turmoil, which has at
its heart the earlier under-pricing of risk, has disturbed the unusual serenity of recent
years, but, managed properly, it should not threaten our long-run economic stability.

"Liquidity Now!"

2007-09-12T22:50:00.000-04:00

m* finally got around to Chris Giles' FT puff piece on Mervyn King, who is, as m* readers are well aware, the indomitable head of the BOE, a Villa fan, and a man for our times, monetarily speaking. It was timely because King and the BOE are standing pretty much alone with the view that there really is not much to be done for the problems in the credit markets (a view m* shared back here).

With the ECB across the channel shoveling as fast as it can (another $100bn this week), and the Fed across the pond kowtowing left and right, to mere Congressmen even, the dependency bred of the mommy(daddy?) state is threatening to turn ugly. It is taken on faith that the Fed can be counted on to handle any and all economic and financial problems the rest of us may collectively create (even with just the one or two blunt instruments they possess).

This is fairly depressing, psychologically and monetarily, as the dollar continues to sink against the major competitors (and gold continues to rise) just as certain skeptics and farsighted analysts predicted in 2003, while shorting 10's (at 3.5%) and the dollar against all comers. Fortunately for the moralists and those who travel with them, there is King, taking the heat, speaking truth to power (ok, maybe a bit much,) and holding firm for the reality based squad. It is getting tough though as the critics are starting to threaten him with history already, a la W.

For a view of what he is up against, look no further than today's WSJ Op-Ed piece by Martin Feldstein. The prominent economist's demand for "Liquidity Now" though it admittedly "cannot solve the credit market problems" would, in his opinion "help the economy: by stimulating demand for housing, autos, durables; by encouraging a more competitive dollar to stimulate increased net exports; by raising share prices to increase both business investment and consumer spending; and by freeing up spendable cash for homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages."

While that sounds just dandy, a textbook platform for election, with apparently no more consequences than another ratchet up in inflation that can always! be dealt with at a later and more convenient time, one has to wonder which planet Mr. Feldstein has spent the early part of the 21st century on? Why not dispense with all the transmission friction and just print money?

Is there yet more unsatisfied demand for autos and trucks and houses and washing machines than m* understands? Perhaps, if at some point in time the monthly financing of those items were to approach what Prof. Feldstein might argue a more reasonable level (free ?).

Prof. Feldstein seems to believe in a kind of perpetual economic motion machine, where a bit sand gets in the gears and the Fed can oil our way out from time to time. He seems to think that consumption fueled by debt is not the spending of future income today, that it can go on at the same pace, this most recent torrid pace, for ever. And whatever unfortunate circumstances bring about a slowdown in that pace, a recession in other words, is something to be avoided certainly, but that also always can be avoided, completely apart from the conditions that might have caused it to arise in the first place.

m* takes strong umbrage with this view. The Fed is not stepping on a gas pedal or pulling up on a brake on an economic car following a linear road of progress, as is often commonly imagined and former Chairman Greenspan's metaphor described. It is instead adjusting the size of the drag-chute on a one way natural proclivity to spend tomorrow's income today.

As Gerard Minack at Morgan Stanley highlighted today, the "Japanese problem" so feared at policy levels is often portrayed as one of (exogenous?) deflation depressing animal spirits. The real issue is deleveraging. Then, as now, the natural proclivity to borrow from the future ran until it exhausted the ability of current income to sustain it.

But "Liquidity Now!" is an argument against gravity, one more contribution to the literature of faith based reality. And Prof. Feldstein has no compunction about wishing to continue borrowing from the future, rewarding spenders over savers, and tearing asunder the heavily tattered fabric of civilized society's foundation on delayed gratification and rewards for work. Why?

No mood

2007-09-10T23:04:00.000-04:00

Apart from CNBC (it's not called bubble vision for nothing), it's stock centric viewers, and Chuck Schumer of course, m* has been getting a definite impression that the tone out there is increasingly in favor of a bit more suffering for the markets focused crowd. Recent comments from Fed governors, economists, and assorted letters to the editor type are very much on the side of letting the markets reap what was sown at this point.

This matters to m* only insofar as it contributes to handicapping the outcome of next week's Fed meeting. It is possible that the room the Fed desperately wants to move in a way that is not seen as caving in to pressure from stock touts and innumerate congressmen may be opening, just.

m* is quite certain that for all the high-powered research and great minds at work supporting the edifice we call central banking, what we have right now resembles nothing so much as a poker game at this point, with continued confidence in the Fed as the arbiter of the nation's economic health and the health of the USD at stake.

Then again, the prior Fed had a lot to do with setting the stage for where we are now, such that there may be nothing much the current one can do about it except try to manage the decline. m* is in this camp and while a muddle through is a possibility, the risks are most surely to the downside, that the current slow erosion picks up speed with. In that vein, gold and yen are still performing.

The always educational Calculated Risk site has a thorough tutorial on mortgage "origination" and it's myriad tentacles, suckers, and gaping maws. Needless to say, cheap capital (thanks Al), and greed make for a very corrupting cocktail - that should come as no surprise, but the perverse collective of moving parts that quickly evolved to enable the entirety of the enterprise may both enlighten and shock those still clinging to the "safe as houses" illusion.

Additional food for thought, highlighted on Economists' View, is a report of a new study on emotion in politics. The understanding that voters are frequently making emotion based choices as opposed to "rational" ones (from an economist's standpoint anyway) is now making waves. Todays item says there is evidence for brain based differences in outlook between voters described as conservative or liberal. It is an easy leap to explain red versus blue and mid-section versus coasts. Born or bred is what m* wants to know.

Press run

2007-09-07T11:28:00.000-04:00

Quant Jock:
For a personal look at one of the top quantitative traders and all-around renaissance man, see the WSJ lede today. Three point five billion dollars later, it is clear m* was seduced by the wrong crowd at Morgan Stanley in 1992.

Seattle Slumber:
For m*'s readers in the Pacific Northwest, a WSJ article on the travails at WaMu. Despite benefiting from one of the strongest regional growth economies, WaMu's lax lending standards are coming home to roost as the real estate bubble fades.

One and Done:
Bloomberg's notorious Fed watcher says what's been on m*'s mind too.

Soft Touch:
Raghuram Rajan makes his contribution in the FT to the Central Bank debate and comes across as the most reasonable man in the room thus far, thereby ensuring that probably no one will remember any of it come Monday.

Thats How Much:
How much liquidity do the ECB and the Fed need to give the banking system right now? How about 1 trillion for abcp and 300 billion for deal commitments. The FT's Lex column gives the brief overview that puts it all in perspective. (It's big, really big). No surprise then that banks raised $53bn through the debt markets last month, a record level for the month of August.

Now or later

2007-09-06T12:21:00.000-04:00

Placing their shared public bias towards higher rates on hold the BOE and ECB both took no action on rates at their regular meetings today, dutifully paying lip service as well as further billions in taxpayers' money (through the inflation tax), to the delicate nature of current conditions. Gold is breaking out above $700, having rallied 10% from the low of early July, and m* has to say that makes a lot of sense, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index, also a beneficiary of abundant liquidity, sits at 24,000, up 40% on the year in local terms.

In the "Now" column, yesterday's Fed Beige Book survey of regional economies showed little thus far in the way of impact beyond housing construction and financing from the current crunch in, uh, housing construction and financing. Atlanta Fed Governor Lockhart commented, "So far, I have not seen hard or soft data that provide conclusive signs that housing problems are spilling over into the broad economy..." And, "I would like to see inflation sustained at a somewhat lower rate -- with emphasis on `sustained.' If inflation is allowed to accelerate, bringing it back down will be costly and painful..."

Governor Lockhart is a non-voting member until 2009 and so faces less public pressure than others, or the ECB today for example, but one would think he has a pretty good vantage point on the economy in overdeveloped Atlanta. Is it possible Toll Brothers management does not have Lockhart's phone number?

Nonetheless, with equity markets having already baked in at least 25bp from the Fed for Sep 18th, the probability of the Fed coming up with anything less (thereby disappointing a technically irrelevant constituency that happens however to pull the levers of public opinion) has to be seen as very small.

Yet despite the seeming inevitability of something the Fed's maneuvers thus far demonstrate its great reluctance to do, the debate (excellent summary today by the FT's Krishna Guha) as to whether a rate cut will actually do anything for the animal spirits of the abcp market or consumer confidence comes down fairly clearly against in m*'s mind.

In the "later" column, where recession fears are getting a pretty good airing at the expense of inflation fears (and moralists moralizing on the morals of bailouts, credit bubbles, and profligate Central Banks etc.) a few prominent economists are starting to gather. Chief among them is Martin Feldstein, of Harvard, NBER, and high off the last word at the Jackson Hole confab last weekend, where he said the possibility of a recession, based on what is happening in home construction and home finance, may be strong enough for an anticipatory response now from policymakers even at the expense of higher inflation "later."

m* says, what's the rush?

Look at the problems in the market transmission mechanism. Are rate cuts going to bring transparency to bank's off-balance sheet financing of the asset backed commercial paper market (a trust problem)? Are they going to do much to stabilize bids in credit markets for structured home-finance paper of heretofore rated but now unknown quality (an information problem)? Will they do much for the dozens of bankrupt mortgage originators, levered speculative funds, and ill-informed, ignorant, or just greedy investors with losses (an insolvency problem)?

Look at the problem in the housing market transmission mechanism. Home builders and speculators created an excess supply of housing. Are rate cuts going to speed the absorption of houses on the market to the point where builders will have reason to build more? Are rate cuts going to bring back appreciating prices enabling the MEW for consumption cycle to start again?

No. Time may be money, but money is not time. These problems need time.

Rate cuts now will make it easier for banks to hold onto, or demand higher prices for, the $250bn pipeline of deal debt committed to (should policy seek to socialize the swallowing of that bubble). Will that help bring down interbank lending rates? Sure. But vulture investors seeking to relieve banks of this burden are eyeballing double digit returns - levered of course. Is that a cry for help, now?

Rate cuts now will lower the discount rate for equities, making headlines and boosting morale, particularly for the classes with no exposure to equities, but they are unlikely to enjoy renewed access to sub-prime credit as a result. Rate cuts will lower the cost of capital for prime borrowers, perhaps, but prime borrowers do not seem to be suffering at this point.

If things are going to be as bad as the fearful fear, rates are going to have to go low enough to start the bubble machine again. There is plenty of time for that, (remember those monetary policy lags too!). The Fed has done enough, and through it's liquidity injections, is doing enough, for now. Give it time.

If m* is looking for justice, and there may be just a little of it corrupting the analysis today, at least the short squeeze in Countrywide is now definitively done. Sorry BoA. Maybe $18 should have been the "bail in" price!

Admin

2007-09-05T22:09:00.000-04:00

The world just remembered today how those European banks are too SIV'd up to have any appetite for participating in any friendly inter-bank lending (let that darn Central Bank do it if they want!) with Libor agita all over the front pages. And housing figures in the US showed ah, the obvious. And equities sold off. So maybe the crisis is back on. Or the Beige book was not weak enough to absolutely positively guarantee the rate cut that's baked in.

Meanwhile, m* has added links to a few tasty items under the Reading heading, the KC Fed Central Bank Symposium papers are available now, and you can now subscribe to "the long run equilibrium" in your readers or by email.

That is all.

Contained mayhem

2007-09-04T16:31:00.000-04:00

Enjoying an early hint of fall weather here at m* gardens, the players are returning to the field for what ought to be an action packed second half. The first teams are back from the break and at full strength. Managers are pacing expectantly, latest playbooks in hand, rushed scouting videos fresh in their minds, the stage is set for ... what exactly?

Sure spreads on junk and (structured junk) are high, and loans to float them hard to come buy. But equities are back to pre-panic levels, high quality cp and debt is being sold in torrents, the dollar is still alive and kicking, and what? Still no rate cut? Hedge funds, real money buyers, and Buffet are lining up to buy the wreckage, and still waiting. What happened to the crisis?

Stephen Roach, apparently at the mercy of the Morgan Stanley mail pouch out there in Asia, rails against events today that seem months old to m* by now. And that was precisely the point behind Roach's promotion one half suspects. It's good to see him though on Bloomberg TV, fighting mad over Central Banks' "antiquated approach to monetary policy" (inflation targeting - antiquated?) that creates serial bubbles and "asset dependent real economies," "vulnerable to systemic risk" worldwide. Don't ever change Steve.

Like SR's bearishness, something else that never seems to change (they are connected no?) is the equity market's bullishness. Financial sector got you down bub? Worried over "book" value with all those rating dependent structured debt products and LBO commitments weighing on your balance sheets? Well look on the bright side bub. Global growth and decoupling will drive technology, industrials, and energy on to new highs, taking the market along with them. Or so the street mavens in the latest Barrons poll would have you believe. Throw in a rate cut or two plus the surge in foreign buying and a liquidity driven Q3 rally may not be as crazy as it sounds if it's not too late to even talk about it? Beyond the rebound, the path of least resistance seems to be higher still.

But what about all that recession talk, and the justification for those anticipated rate cuts? And what does that do to earnings forecasts? Isn't there a disconnect someplace? m* is going to go out on a limb here and say yes, but also maybe not, just not the way those mavens are thinking about it. First of all, recession probabilities aside for the moment, consider this chart from the excellent Gerard Minack of Morgan Stanley Australia, (he's obviously not dependent on the mail pouch). Here he presents real S&P earnings versus trend since 1980.

There is no question that earnings growth has been extraordinary during this period of rapid globalization but the peak-ness of those earnings (unless one believes that jazz from Lombard) is hard to ignore when presented in this fashion. Just once m* would like to hear, when bull-of-the-hour says equities are cheap on a p/e basis, if he/she is willing to buy the continuation of this deviation from trend. No really, it is different this time...

When one considers the extraordinary expansions over this period in credit (used to generate sales but also to re-purchase stock), and margins, reduction in corporate taxes, and the extraordinarily low reserves for bad debts (in the case of the not inconsiderable bank sector), it seems likely that corporate profits overall have benefited from an incredibly propitious period that, if recessionary fears are correct and tighter credit conditions are a fact, is now over.

The maybe not part? Inflation. How much faith does m* have in the CPI as an even approximate nominal price deflator? Not much. Deflated with a more real world price index, (oil, gold, renminbi, UK CPI?) those earnings may actually be much closer to trend than they appear.

But to m*'s thinking, earnings are only a part of the story. Purchasing power is the real issue. In a continuing environment of stealth inflation (or dollar devaluation if you prefer) US equities nominal earnings growth, dividend growth really, (of almost any rate) is a safety trade.

And as a foreign investor, keen to avoid overpriced US government debt in a deflating currency, purchasing equities of US companies producing things the rest of the world continues to show interest in buying makes a great deal of sense, slowdown or not. One can debate the relative skill (or lack thereof) of foreign investors' timing for sure, but the new players on the field - or soon to be anyway - have a timeframe measured in decades rather than quarters. Growth at a reasonable price can take a back seat to just maintaining purchasing power.

Think of it as the next stage in the vendor financing cycle, repossession.

Labor(Capital) Day

2007-08-30T11:55:00.000-04:00

Packed elbow to rib in a cacophonous six seat paint-can shaker implausibly airborne 800 feet above the ground, fighting for breath against senses of entitlement inflated to SUV size by a sham economy addicted to cheap debt, carrying a desperate need to out consume and out do rooted in a lifetime diet of spoon fed commercials and the easy calories of celebrity worship, mindless of nature's rigors or the rewards of patient cultivation of character or virtue, grimly wondering if their enemies below have surface-to-air or a surprise welcoming committee at the LZ - so begins the US holiday weekend for capitalism's winners according to Bloomberg News.

Fear not for m* however. For one thing, m* took the Rolls earlier in the week. (No shaking, forced intimacy, or cortisol floods and door to door, about the same). For another, while the clamoring masses of fake-tan attorneys, has-been movie stars, and assorted financial eel and remora are heading east, m*, ever the contrarian, will be heading back from whence they came to the wonderfully peaceful and empty late summer city.

While the holiday signals the official end to summer and the impending reality of m*'s packed fall agenda, idyllic thoughts of majestic mountain vistas, sparkling clear streams, sun drenched hikes, and yes, heated campfire discussions of monetary policy offer a temporary reprieve. m* is referring of course to the annual Kansas City Fed Symposium and central bankers' working holiday this weekend in Jackson Hole.

m* will not be attending of course, but in honor of the event and the final weekend of summer will be sitting down with two very recent papers from Michael Woodford, an occasional co-author with Chairman Bernanke and the esteemed intellectual godfather of inflation targeting and rule driven central bank decision-making now very much embedded in the thinking of current CB-ista. Why? Know thine enemy. It is Woodford of course who's work shows that monetary aggregates are largely irrelevant to the conduct of modern monetary policy, a viewpoint widely accepted among leading monetary economists today, implying of course that m* is not simply elusive but nonsensical too (and well, m* would have to agree!)

Of course, an effective inflation targeting policy requires an accurate and transparent measure of inflation. Dissenters to inflation targeting in the US frequently point to the vast discrepancy between government price indices and consumers' reported "sense" of inflation. No where is this more apparent than in the spread between the reality of rapidly rising home prices over the last ten years and the stagnant behavior of the much derided statistical construction, "owner equivalent rent."

As an illustration, consider the BOE. While the BOE follows an explicit inflations targeting mandate and thus adheres closely to many of the protocols expected in that regard, it also rather unusually includes direct asset prices (in particular home prices) into its price measures. The relevance of asset prices to measuring inflation is still open to debate in the academic world. But the BOE apparently believes that asset price levels do contain signaling information for inflation and an ability to influence the very important expectations component.

It may not be a coincidence then that Woodford believes the BOE comes closest to his idealized inflation targeting Central Bank. It is certainly no coincidence that the BOE has had m*'s vote for the hardest bank over the last three years - witness the performance of Sterling over that period. It will be interesting to see, now that inflation targeters are in charge in the US too and confronting a home finance crisis with larger potential ramifications, whether some greater recognition of the indicator that Greenspan pointedly ignored in price measures is warranted, particularly as popular sentiment views home price declines as analogous to a depressionary deflation. The announced theme of this weekend's symposium is housing, housing finance and monetary policy so this could be interesting.

Two papers by Woodford:

"How Important is Money in the Conduct of Monetary Policy?"

"Globalization and Monetary Control"

Meanwhile, Greg Ip in the WSJ "Bernanke Breaks Greenspan Mold" does a smashup job of burying former Fed Chairman Greenspan's crisis response approach of listening to the markets in relation to Chairman Bernanke's attempts to let the real economic data tell the story. Ip relates a quote from Greenspan during the deliberations on the 1998 LTCM crisis that shows dramatically how far apart the two philosophies for managing policy are.

"It would be wrong to say that the change in psychology is all ephemeral just because we have not seen it in the hard data yet," he told colleagues. "It is the change in value judgments that alters the real world."

In m*'s opinion, Greenspan saw his role as one of actively managing monetary policy, especially during times of crisis, through a forecast (using a very personal mosaic of indicators) of the animal spirits at work in the economy. Undoubtedly these forecasts were colored by his baptism in the 1987 crisis, and following this more intuitive policy, he fell back on the (appropriate) response to that crisis time and again. It is quite clear that in later crises, Greenspan gave the markets significant weight, really too much weight, in his assessments of future risk taking appetite in the economy and acted, erroneously, on those assessments.

It is the personal nature of those assessments, in the face of widespread evidence to the contrary (in particular the dramatic increases in mortgage debt and real estate values), the mistaken signals sent to the economy via inappropriate interest rate policy in response, and the long term consequences for the nation's standard of living as a result of the serial asset price bubbles, mal-investment and overconsumption, unprecedented explosion in debt, and inflation from a devalued dollar that incite Greenspan's critics, m* among them.

Bernanke, on the other hand and like Woodford, is an advocate of inflation targeting. Though he does not have that mandate at the US Central Bank, he has clearly discussed his desire to hew much more closely to the more mechanical adjustment mechanism such targeting espouses, with a healthy appreciation for expectations of course as befitting one of the foremost scholars on the Great Depression. Ironically, Greenspan's Vice Chairman, Alan Blinder, was also a proponent of for data-dependent incrementalist approach but he seems to have been less influential than one would have thought.

As has been widely reported during the current crisis, Bernanke has said while he will of course take whatever action necessary to preserve stability, he is attempting to hold off policy adjustments that effect the real economy as much as possible until data show a policy change is required. Not said but also clearly implied is that Bernanke supports an unwind in the degree of leverage promoted under his predecessor provided it can be done without dramatic effect on the real economy. While this may seem unresponsive to a vocal sector of the financial markets, it is a view widely shared, it seems to m*, in the central banking community globally.

The likelihood of success of that de-levering, whether success is even possible, even the actual definition of success are to m* still very much open questions. The problem is that it may be just one crisis too late to take that harder line. With a global system as leveraged as the current one, it's highly doubtful there is much less they can do than the inevitable blunt rate stimulus.

Happy Capital Day.

Moralists unwound

2007-08-28T11:16:00.000-04:00

So the New York Fed has "clarified" that it will accept ABCP with a credit wrapper from the borrowing member bank. This seems another reasoned step in a progression of maneuvers aimed at targeting the informational aspect of the sub-prime contagion. However, as addressed in this piece from VoxEu calling for just such a step prior to the move, it does open the door just a bit to that moral hazard issue very much on the mind of m* and perhaps readers too.

Why is that? What is this moral factor attached to our views on management of the economy?

It is not just m* or the narrow group of curmudgeons and crackpots that make up a small but consistently entertaining portion of the intellectual stew each week raising the moral stakes. Arguments for "tough love" on Fed policy and the economy seem to be appearing more frequently than in past financial rough patches. This week even The Economist, (admittedly advocates of the moralist view on US and UK home prices - less so on weapons of mass destruction and wars of choice), asks "Does America Need a Recession?"

Others go even further. A recent piece from Bernard Connolly that caught m*'s attention mentions with incredulity that "the Fed is wedded to the view that "normalization" without "liquidation" is possible." Liquidation is a very strong word for capital destruction on a large scale. As retribution for the excess of the explosive growth in credit over the last twenty five years, the correctness of a major recession, if not liquidation and depression, is an article of faith for holders of this view, many of them sympathetic to economic and political philosophies often collectively referred as the Austrian School.

Why is it that the financial landscape of this period and the Central Bank policies most associated with them (see Subprime crisis: Greenspan's Legacy for one exposition, or James Grant writing in the NYT for another - or, if those are too mild for you, this is as good a departure point as any), whether malicious, inept, or simply an error of "optimism about productivity," come in for such strong reprobation from this crowd?

Mark Thoma, an academic economist whose Economist's View is a frequent source, confronts what m* has taken to calling "the moralists" view in a straightforward piece that also asks "Do We Need a Recession?"

...Recessions, popped bubbles and the like do not have to be somebody's fault and, as such, we don't necessarily have to extract blood from anyone to avoid it happening again. Perfectly reasonable actions a priori - in the sense of responding to the economic incentives that are in place - can still lead to bad ex-post outcomes. The people acting in the economic environment didn't write the rules, they're simply maximizing given the rules that are in place, so why punish them?...

He refutes the Economist piece on three points: that the "creative destruction" at the heart of a dynamic economy is not dependent on recession, that over-investment in housing will be absorbed in time and so is a bringing forward of supply rather than wasted consumption, and lastly that arguing that the Fed should not attempt to stabilize because it would only encourage more speculation and greater moral hazard reflects a set of priorities that obviates the need for a Fed in the first place, (if m* got that part right).

Thoma also cites Paul Krugman (link from pkarchive.org) on "the hangover theory" which he calls "disastrously wrong headed."

"...Recessions are not necessary consequences of booms. They can and should be fought, not with austerity but with liberality--with policies that encourage people to spend more, not less. Nor is this merely an academic argument: The hangover theory can do real harm. Liquidationist views played an important role in the spread of the Great Depression--with Austrian theorists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter strenuously arguing, in the very depths of that depression, against any attempt to restore "sham" prosperity by expanding credit and the money supply....

"... nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present."

This is a thread m* will be returning to.

Just business

2007-08-26T11:24:00.000-04:00

Not clear why m* gets worked up about mortgage "lender" versus "originator?" This story in the Sunday NYT by GM (who else?) on the nature of Countrywide's business ought to straighten things out. While the linguistic nuance m* argues for is lost on the Times' team, (they repeatedly call the firm a lender) the story documents a litany of unscrupulous practices demonstrating what has been obvious to everyone: Origination is a dirty business. Why? Because the incentives for originators are utterly divorced from the suitability of the debt for the financial resources and sophistication of the borrower.

From "Inside the Countrywide Lending Spree" by Gretchen Morgenson:

ON its way to becoming the nation’s largest mortgage lender, the Countrywide Financial Corporation encouraged its sales force to court customers over the telephone with a seductive pitch that seldom varied. “I want to be sure you are getting the best loan possible,” the sales representatives would say.

But providing “the best loan possible” to customers wasn’t always the bank’s main goal, say some former employees. Instead, potential borrowers were often led to high-cost and sometimes unfavorable loans that resulted in richer commissions for Countrywide’s smooth-talking sales force, outsize fees to company affiliates providing services on the loans, and a roaring stock price that made Countrywide executives among the highest paid in America.

Countrywide’s entire operation, from its computer system to its incentive pay structure and financing arrangements, is intended to wring maximum profits out of the mortgage lending boom no matter what it costs borrowers, according to interviews with former employees and brokers who worked in different units of the company and internal documents they provided...

...“In terms of being unresponsive to what was happening, to sticking it out the longest, and continuing to justify the garbage they were selling, Countrywide was the worst lender,” said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “And anytime states tried to pass responsible lending laws, Countrywide was fighting it tooth and nail.”

Sound familiar? Received any phone calls from stock brokers lately? The securities industry is heavily regulated and securities brokers are registered, fingerprinted, and licensed in large part to prevent such abuses. The mortgage industry and its brokers are very lightly regulated and then on a state by state basis, (ie: weaker and more ah, impressionable, legislators). This is not news.

However, Wall Street had its hand deeply in the pie too. From looking the other way while continuing to buy the securities backed by pools of junk mortgages to investing directly in the originators that created them. This is not news either.

From the WSJ story "How Wall Street Stoked The Mortgage Meltdown" by Michael Hudson:

Twelve years ago, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sent a vice president to California to check out First Alliance Mortgage Co. Lehman was thinking about tapping into First Alliance's lucrative business of making "subprime" home loans to consumers with sketchy credit.

The vice president, Eric Hibbert, wrote a memo describing First Alliance as a financial "sweat shop" specializing in "high pressure sales for people who are in a weak state." At First Alliance, he said, employees leave their "ethics at the door."

The big Wall Street investment bank decided First Alliance wasn't breaking any laws. Lehman went on to lend the mortgage company roughly $500 million and helped sell more than $700 million in bonds backed by First Alliance customers' loans. But First Alliance later collapsed. Lehman landed in court, where a federal jury found the firm helped First Alliance defraud customers.

That hardly stopped them of course as they later acquired several originators to feed one of the Street's largest mortgage security underwriting and trading businesses. They had plenty of company too. Lehman shut down one of their mortgage origination firms this week but still maintains a presence in the business.

Loathe though m* would be to have anything in common with the current crop of politicos clamoring for socialization of the problem, m* suggests that if one insists on using "lender," do the right thing and precede it with "predatory."

Cheerios rising

2007-08-24T19:15:00.000-04:00

This caught m*'s attention.

Wheat hits record price as bad weather prompts inflation fears

By Javier Blas, Commodities Correspondent

Published: August 24 2007 03:00 | Last updated: August 24 2007 03:00

Wheat prices jumped to an all-time high yesterday as panicked buyers rushed into the market amid extremely tight supplies, raising fears of a global food inflation spike.

Canada, the world's second-largest wheat exporter, warned output might be almost 20 per cent below last year as adverse weather damaged the crop as it had done in Europe and Australia.

Japan and Taiwan, which depend on foreign wheat supplies, bought new cargoes in the international market while India launched a large tender to boost its inventories ahead of its peak demand season.

Gavin Maguire, analyst at Iowa Grain in Chicago, said the combination of disappointing production levels and strong demand was pushing up prices. "Wheat buyers are beginning to panic."

In Chicago, wheat for December delivery surged to an all-time high of $7.54 a bushel. Prices have jumped 110 per cent in the past 12 months and have risen threefold since 2000.

Food industry executives warned that meat, poultry and dairy prices would climb in the short term as farmers and processors passed on higher feed costs to consumers.

Alex Waugh, director-general of the UK Flour Milling Association, said the cost of wheat was at an unprecedented level: "Wheat costs for flour millers in the UK now stand some £500m higher than last year. This has yet to come through in wholesale or consumer prices."

The International Grains Council cut its estimate for the 2007-08 wheat crop to 607m tonnes while forecasting demand would reach 614m tonnes, resulting in a further stock drawdown. It said global wheat inventories were at their lowest since 1979.

James Gutman, of Goldman Sachs in London, said: "Buyers are scraping the bottom of the bushel of the inventories."

Additional reporting by Chris Flood in London

Quant factor

2007-08-24T18:11:00.000-04:00

After a bit of shadenfruede shared with a colleague and occasional quant manager earlier this week, m* finally got around to reading the investor letters of several quant funds, as neatly collected and summarized in numerous articles of late. Collectively, they sound like no one so much as the homebuilder ceo’s, blaming other companies for building too many homes and saying things will improve just as soon as the other guy leaves the business. m* thinks these guys are missing a factor or two.

Their strategy, also called statistical arbitrage, exploits various market inefficiencies well known in academic circles. Returns to small size, value, the January effect, momentum, and mean reversion form the theoretical basis for these strategies. However it was only with the onset of electronic trading systems and large commercial databases of regressions of stock returns on various risk factors that these strategies could be implemented on an efficient scale. The low cost of electronic trading made possible vast numbers of transactions, most earning mere pennies or fractions of pennies. The risk factor regressions made it possible to create long-short portfolios positioned to exploit the inefficiencies while remaining statistically neutral to a myriad of macroeconomic, industry, and company characteristic factors. The product has expanded into global equity markets and even into markets for currencies and interest rates.

Pre-2002 let’s say, before the serious explosion in hedge fund assets, and the no-volatility-four-year-without-so-much-as-one-10%-pullback-bull-market (have you been feeling very smart in your investing until recently?), quant funds were on the whole rather small, an under the radar presence, and far from being dominant participants in equity markets relative to large mutual funds and institutional investors. However they were very successful at generating consistent returns and this, along with the intrigue stemming from the intense secrecy that shrouded their intellectual property, made them must-have investments for asset allocators.

Of course success breeds imitators and with the basic principles in the public domain, there was little to stop two guys in a garage from programming up their own systems, proving it in backtesting, and raising investor capital, often from an existing hedge fund eager to expand into the space. Moreover, as the original operations matured, more and more employees with the requisite knowledge left to start their own firms which also found ready investors. The amount of capital employed in quant strategies mushroomed from a few billion to likely in excess of $100bn in equity capital today, levered 3x to 6x, and with their high frequency transactions magnifying their influence, a daily volume estimated to be more than half the overall equity market.

The natural question to ask of course is how much alpha is available to these strategies? At what point do they go from exploiting the over trading noise of other traders in the market to being the market themselves?

The answer, the quants would say, is in the results. When the strategy stops working, then you will know the point has been reached. Except of course, if you fail to account for the influence of your collective behavior on your results, you may not appreciate having reached that point until you are in fact well beyond it.

That is exactly what happened. When you have the CFO of Goldman Sachs talking about multiple 25 standard-deviation events and hedgefund managers publicly dissecting their daily performance data like FAA crash investigators while saying things like “a perfect storm of negative events” m* is pretty certain they lack (publicly anyway) an understanding of the true distributions or their true risk, not to mention any semblance of personal accountability or embarrassment.

They seem to have mistaken the collective reinforcing effect of their own behavior on the trend for continued success of the strategy. Over time, as capital flowed in the funds poured more money into the same long and short value strategies while actively dampening volatility with the mean reversion strategies, in effect self-validating their models from the past even while the real situation had changed.

In short this most sophisticated group of investors became just another group of levered momentum traders, creating their own temporary low volatility trend. Their alpha capture became beta follow, and they were none the wiser until the infinitely creative market disrupted their somnolence with levered losses that appeared in a flash accompanied by the insight “Oh, we’re trend followers and we’re short vol!”

Except of course that not one of the letters from these managers mentions that insight, nor any explanation that demonstrates an understanding and acceptance of the true nature of the fund's risk. m* finds this amusing because in all the writhing gymnastics blaming the other guy, the market, the universe, or those darn frustrating statistics, (anything to avoid taking responsibility), a simple declarative “Yes, well, the strategy is inherently short volatility, a bit of a trend formed, and these event do occur from time to time,” would be the most exculpatory and truthful explanation.

What now for these funds and the prognosis for the strategy? Beyond this week’s easily foreseeable rebound (as they lever up again and GS puts $3bn more to work on the small cap buy list) a double whammy of diminished single digit returns and higher returns volatility is in store. How so? Lower leverage. The true alpha here is vanishingly small hence the intense focus on transaction cost and the need for considerable leverage to earn returns. Higher exogenous volatility in the marketplace, from the turmoil in credit for example, necessitates running lower leverage. In addition, as the mean reversion strategies were essentially providing liquidity to the market, acting as market makers in effect, a reduction of leverage there will lead to still higher volatility. Finally, the recent sharp losses are the clearest and loudest signal possible to investors that the strategies may not work as expected from here on out. Expect inflows and self reinforcing trends to diminish and volatility of returns to increase accordingly.

The missing quant factor is an awareness of themselves.