By STEPHEN LABATON and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
WASHINGTON — Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday informed top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance giants, that the government is preparing a plan to seize the two companies and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.
The plan, effectively a government bailout, was outlined in separate meetings that the chief executives were summoned to attend on Friday at the office of the companies' new regulator. The executives were told that under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, and their shareholders virtually wiped out, but that the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.
It is not possible to calculate the cost of any government bailout, but the huge potential liabilities of the companies could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and make any rescue among the largest in United States history.
The drastic effort follows the bailout earlier this year of Bear Stearns, the investment bank, as government officials continue to grapple with how to stem the credit crisis and housing crisis that have hobbled the economy. With Bear Stearns, the government provided guarantees and the bulk of its assets were transferred to J.P. Morgan Chase, leaving shareholders with a nominal amount.
Under a conservatorship, most if not all of the remaining value of the common and preferred shares of Fannie and Freddie would be worth little or nothing, and any losses on mortgages they own or guarantee could be paid by taxpayers. A conservatorship would operate much like a pre-packaged bankruptcy, similar to what smaller companies use to clean up their books and then emerge with stronger balance sheets.
The officials said that the executives were told that the government had been planning to announce the decision as early as Sunday, before the Asian markets reopen.
For months, administration officials have grappled with the steady erosion of the books of the two mortgage finance giants. A fierce behind the scenes debate among policymakers has considered whether to seize the companies or let them work out their problems.
But the declining housing and financial markets have apparently now forced the administration's hand. With foreign governments growing increasingly skittish about holding billions of dollars in securities issued by the companies, no sign that their losses will abate any time soon, and the inability of the companies to raise new capital, the administration apparently decided it would be better to act now rather than closer to the presidential election in two months.
Just five weeks ago, President Bush signed a law to give the administration the authority to inject billions of dollars into the companies through investments or loans. In proposing the new legislation, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said that he had no plan to provide loans or investments, and that merely giving the government the authority to backstop the companies would provide a strong shot of confidence to the markets. But the thin capital reserves that have kept the two companies afloat have continued to erode as the housing market has steadily declined and the number of foreclosures has soared.
As their problems have deepened—and the marketplace has come to expect some sort of government rescue — both companies have found it difficult to raise new capital to absorb future losses. In recent weeks, Mr. Paulson has been reaching out to foreign governments that hold billions of dollars of Fannie and Freddie securities to reassure them that the United States stands behind the companies.
In issuing their quarterly financial statements last month, the two companies reported huge losses and predicted that home prices would fall more than previously projected.
The debt securities the companies issue to finance their operations are widely owned by foreign governments, pension funds, mutual funds and big companies.
Officials said the participants at the meetings included Mr. Paulson, Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, and James Lockhart, the head of both the old and new agency that regulates the companies. The companies were represented by Daniel H. Mudd, the chief executive of Fannie Mae, and Richard F. Syron, chief executive of Freddie Mac. Also participating was H. Rodgin Cohen, the chairman of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, who was representing Freddie.
Officials and executives briefed on the meetings said that Mr. Mudd and Mr. Syron were told that they would have to leave the companies.
Representatives of the two companies did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
The meetings reflected the reality that senior administration officials did not believe they had the luxury of waiting for some kind of financial tipping point, as happened with Bear Stearns, which was saved from insolvency last March by government intervention after its stock plummeted and lenders withheld their capital.
Instead, Mr. Paulson has struggled to navigate through three potentially conflicting goals—stabilizing the financial markets, making mortgages more widely available in a tightening credit environment, and protecting taxpayers from possibly enormous losses.
Publicly, administration officials have tried to bolster the companies because the nation's mortgage system relies on their continued ability to purchase mortgages from commercial lenders and pull the housing markets out of their slump.
But privately, senior officials have been critical of top executives at the companies, particularly Freddie Mac. They have raised concerns about major risks to taxpayers of a bailout of companies whose executives have received huge compensation packages. Mr. Syron, for instance, collected more than $38 million in compensation since he joined the company in 2003.
Although Mr. Syron promised regulators earlier this year that he would raise $5.5 billion from investors, he has repeatedly failed to make good on that promise — even as Fannie Mae raised more than $7 billion. Mr. Syron was slated to step down from the chief executive position last year, but that was delayed when his appointed successor, Eugene McQuade, chose to leave the company.
Freddie Mac has approached numerous people about the chief executive position, including Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express and Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock, both of whom said they did not want to be considered for the position.
Another contender has been David Vitale, a former banking executive, a former chief executive of the Chicago Board of Trade, and adviser to the Chicago public school superintendent. Mr. Vitale declined to comment on whether he had been offered or accepted a position at Freddie Mac.
With the possible removal of the top management and the board, it is no longer clear who would appoint the new management.
Mr. Paulson had hoped that merely having the authority to bail out the two companies, which Congress provided in its recent housing bill, would be enough to calm the markets, but if anything anxiety has been increasing. The clearest measure of that anxiety has been the gradually widening spread between interest rates on Fannie- or Freddie-backed mortgage securities and rates for Treasury securities, making home mortgages more expensive. The stock price of the companies has also plunged over the last year.
After stock markets closed on Friday, the shares of Fannie and Freddie plummeted. Fannie was trading around $5.50, down from $70 a year ago. Freddie was trading at about $4, down from about $65 a year ago.
With Fannie and Freddie guaranteeing about $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, and a big share of those securities held by central banks and investors around the world, Mr. Paulson appears to have decided that the stakes are too high to take any chances.
One challenge for Mr. Paulson is that the Treasury Department is required by the new law to obtain agreement from the boards of Fannie and Freddie on any kind of capital infusion, which means Mr. Paulson has to negotiate to some degree with the two mortgage companies.
The exception to that requirement is if the companies' regulator, Mr. Lockhart, determines that the companies are insolvent or deeply undercapitalized. In that event, the government would have the authority to change the companies' managements and go so far as to take the companies over.
Experts said that the longer the administration waited, the greater the potential risks and costs.
Charles Calomiris, a professor of economics at Columbia University's School of Business, said delaying a government rescue would only increase the risks and costs.
“The last thing you want to do is give a distressed borrower more time, because when people are in distress they tend to take a lot of risks,” Mr. Calomiris said. “You don't want zombie institutions floating around with time on their hands.”
Stephen Labaton reported from Washington and Andrew Ross Sorkin from New York. Edmund L. Andrews contributed reporting from Washington, and Eric Dash and Charles Duhigg from New York.
Showing posts with label gse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gse. Show all posts
6 September 2008
31 August 2008
Ponzi Finance Dynamics Still at Play:
Ponzi Finance Dynamics Still at Play:
Second quarter GDP expanded at a 3.3% pace, the strongest since Q3 2007’s 4.8%. Durable Goods Orders, Existing Home Sales, and the Chicago Purchasing Managers' index were all reported “stronger-than-expected”. And with commodity prices almost 20% off July highs – and crude oil notably unimpressive this week in the face of a major Gulf hurricane – the markets seem to lend support to the waning inflation viewpoint. The dollar rallied further this week. Meanwhile, despite today’s downdraft, Freddie Mac gained 60% this week and Fannie Mae advanced 37%. Monoline insures MBIA and Ambac surged 59% and 35%, respectively. MBIA saw its stock price more than double during August, to surpass $16. The Bank index jumped 3.1% this week and the Broker/Dealers rallied 4.0%. Homebuilding stocks were up 9%.
Investors are increasingly willing to accept that the worst of the Credit crisis has passed. Talk that the nation’s housing markets are bottoming becomes louder each week. And every day market participants seem more receptive to the “economic resiliency” thesis.
First of all, I am certainly of the view that the economy is much weaker than the headline 3.3% growth rate. At the minimum, I am skeptical that the 1.2% annualized increase in the GDP price index accurately captures what I believe is a significant inflationary component in current “output”. It is worth noting that the favored inflation gauge of Greenspan and the Fed, the PCE Deflator, was up 4.5% from a year earlier, the strongest year-over-year increase since 1991.
There is bountiful wishful thinking when it comes to our nation’s mortgage and housing crises. Granted, many of the burst Bubble markets – including some spectacular busts throughout California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona – have in some cases seemingly reached somewhat of a “clearing price”. Transaction volumes are up significantly in many of the locations with the greatest y-o-y price declines. I’ll suggest, however, that it is unwise to extrapolate trading dynamics in these burst markets to national housing trends more generally. I believe the vast majority of markets around the country are more aptly described as Bubbles leaking air, as opposed to the collapsed markets that garner the greatest media attention.
I’ll turn more constructive on home prices and housing markets generally when mortgage Credit Availability begins to loosen. It remains my view that Credit continues in a tightening dynamic. Notably, the growth in Fannie and Freddie’s Combined Books of Business slowed sharply to a 3.7% rate during July, the slowest pace in two years. And while there is nothing really in the works to compare to the abrupt Credit tightening that emanated from collapsing subprime and Alt-A securitization markets, I’ll argue today’s tighter Credit is a more subtle dynamic resulting from various types of lending institutions restricting, on the margin, loans to even prime Credits.
From the Wall Street firms down to the small community banks, tighter lending terms are leading to higher downpayments and less flexible payment terms for even high quality borrowers. And while the nature of this dynamic specifically does not lead to collapses for the relatively stable housing markets around the country, it nonetheless will definitely continue to pressure prices. And downward home prices will, over time, lead to only more lender nervousness and restraint.
And despite the lull, vulnerable housing markets remain acutely susceptible to any worsening in the GSE crisis. With MBS spreads having tightened somewhat during August, I’ll assume Fannie and Freddie resumed aggressive mortgage purchases in the marketplace after somewhat slowing their buying during July. Importantly, overall marketplace liquidity has deteriorated to the point where the GSEs must expand aggressively in order to forestall another major leg down in the ongoing housing crisis. As such, the marketplace of late is involved in a dangerous game of “chicken” with both the GSEs and Treasury. These days, any time the GSEs slow their marketplace buying of mortgage paper (back away from their “backstop bid”), spreads widen sharply and fears of a liquidity crisis – and forced Treasury bailout – intensify. So, I’ll assume the GSEs have resorted again to ballooning their exposure aggressively - recklessly.
There has been a lot of talk about the GSEs being “privatized.” As the thinking goes, Fannie and Freddie should be temporarily “nationalized,” recapitalized, split up and then released as responsible participants in the free marketplace – Credit providers no longer posing a risk to the American taxpayer. This all sounds wonderful in theory – yet is completely impractical in reality. I fully expect the GSEs to be nationalized. But I suspect the federal government will be running – and recapitalizing - these institutions for many years to come.
The private mortgage marketplace self-destructed, and now the entire “prime” mortgage/housing market is dependent upon ongoing cheap mortgage finance available only through American taxpayer backing and subsidies. The private sector simply cannot today – or at any time in the foreseeable future - provide the hundreds of billions of cheap ongoing new mortgage Credit necessary to forestall a systemic housing/economic/financial collapse. There will be no happy “recapitalize and privatize” ending to this saga. The bill to the taxpayer is now growing rapidly – along with GSE exposure – and will balloon into the trillions over the coming years and decades. And for how long the holders of GSE debt and MBS will be allowed such handsome returns at taxpayer expense is a quite intriguing question.
I also read and hear too much about the continued need for “Keynesian” stimulus. Regrettably, the system has been in non-stop government (fiscal and monetary) stimulus mode for years now. It may have been indirect at the time, but it is now apparent that GSE obligations should be included today right along with debt owed directly by the Treasury. And before all is said and done, the taxpayer will also be on the hook for enormous losses from various federal guarantees of deposits, student loans, pensions, and the like. The bottom line is that a whole range of direct and indirect federal guarantees – especially since the 2001/02 recession – have played an integral role in spurring Credit and Economic Bubbles. “Keynesian” ammunition - fired way too early and freely in order to sustain multiple Bubbles – has definitely buoyed the U.S. Bubble Economy, although such measures will have only limited effect down the road when they’re sorely needed.
Returning back to my initial paragraph, these days the economy and markets don’t appear all that bad - certainly nothing as nasty as we dour prognosticators have been forecasting. I’ll warn, however, that there are some very dangerous “Ponzi Finance” Dynamics Still very much At Play. The most obvious resides with the GSEs. And there are closely related Bubbles throughout the agency and Treasury bond arena. Meanwhile, a view has gained adherents that the U.S. economy is actually in much better shape than Europe and elsewhere. The reality that Europe is not buoyed by their own government-sponsored mortgage behemoths and that their economies are more manufacturing based (and thus vulnerable to cyclical downturns) are only short-term relative disadvantages.
Second quarter GDP expanded at a 3.3% pace, the strongest since Q3 2007’s 4.8%. Durable Goods Orders, Existing Home Sales, and the Chicago Purchasing Managers' index were all reported “stronger-than-expected”. And with commodity prices almost 20% off July highs – and crude oil notably unimpressive this week in the face of a major Gulf hurricane – the markets seem to lend support to the waning inflation viewpoint. The dollar rallied further this week. Meanwhile, despite today’s downdraft, Freddie Mac gained 60% this week and Fannie Mae advanced 37%. Monoline insures MBIA and Ambac surged 59% and 35%, respectively. MBIA saw its stock price more than double during August, to surpass $16. The Bank index jumped 3.1% this week and the Broker/Dealers rallied 4.0%. Homebuilding stocks were up 9%.
Investors are increasingly willing to accept that the worst of the Credit crisis has passed. Talk that the nation’s housing markets are bottoming becomes louder each week. And every day market participants seem more receptive to the “economic resiliency” thesis.
First of all, I am certainly of the view that the economy is much weaker than the headline 3.3% growth rate. At the minimum, I am skeptical that the 1.2% annualized increase in the GDP price index accurately captures what I believe is a significant inflationary component in current “output”. It is worth noting that the favored inflation gauge of Greenspan and the Fed, the PCE Deflator, was up 4.5% from a year earlier, the strongest year-over-year increase since 1991.
There is bountiful wishful thinking when it comes to our nation’s mortgage and housing crises. Granted, many of the burst Bubble markets – including some spectacular busts throughout California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona – have in some cases seemingly reached somewhat of a “clearing price”. Transaction volumes are up significantly in many of the locations with the greatest y-o-y price declines. I’ll suggest, however, that it is unwise to extrapolate trading dynamics in these burst markets to national housing trends more generally. I believe the vast majority of markets around the country are more aptly described as Bubbles leaking air, as opposed to the collapsed markets that garner the greatest media attention.
I’ll turn more constructive on home prices and housing markets generally when mortgage Credit Availability begins to loosen. It remains my view that Credit continues in a tightening dynamic. Notably, the growth in Fannie and Freddie’s Combined Books of Business slowed sharply to a 3.7% rate during July, the slowest pace in two years. And while there is nothing really in the works to compare to the abrupt Credit tightening that emanated from collapsing subprime and Alt-A securitization markets, I’ll argue today’s tighter Credit is a more subtle dynamic resulting from various types of lending institutions restricting, on the margin, loans to even prime Credits.
From the Wall Street firms down to the small community banks, tighter lending terms are leading to higher downpayments and less flexible payment terms for even high quality borrowers. And while the nature of this dynamic specifically does not lead to collapses for the relatively stable housing markets around the country, it nonetheless will definitely continue to pressure prices. And downward home prices will, over time, lead to only more lender nervousness and restraint.
And despite the lull, vulnerable housing markets remain acutely susceptible to any worsening in the GSE crisis. With MBS spreads having tightened somewhat during August, I’ll assume Fannie and Freddie resumed aggressive mortgage purchases in the marketplace after somewhat slowing their buying during July. Importantly, overall marketplace liquidity has deteriorated to the point where the GSEs must expand aggressively in order to forestall another major leg down in the ongoing housing crisis. As such, the marketplace of late is involved in a dangerous game of “chicken” with both the GSEs and Treasury. These days, any time the GSEs slow their marketplace buying of mortgage paper (back away from their “backstop bid”), spreads widen sharply and fears of a liquidity crisis – and forced Treasury bailout – intensify. So, I’ll assume the GSEs have resorted again to ballooning their exposure aggressively - recklessly.
There has been a lot of talk about the GSEs being “privatized.” As the thinking goes, Fannie and Freddie should be temporarily “nationalized,” recapitalized, split up and then released as responsible participants in the free marketplace – Credit providers no longer posing a risk to the American taxpayer. This all sounds wonderful in theory – yet is completely impractical in reality. I fully expect the GSEs to be nationalized. But I suspect the federal government will be running – and recapitalizing - these institutions for many years to come.
The private mortgage marketplace self-destructed, and now the entire “prime” mortgage/housing market is dependent upon ongoing cheap mortgage finance available only through American taxpayer backing and subsidies. The private sector simply cannot today – or at any time in the foreseeable future - provide the hundreds of billions of cheap ongoing new mortgage Credit necessary to forestall a systemic housing/economic/financial collapse. There will be no happy “recapitalize and privatize” ending to this saga. The bill to the taxpayer is now growing rapidly – along with GSE exposure – and will balloon into the trillions over the coming years and decades. And for how long the holders of GSE debt and MBS will be allowed such handsome returns at taxpayer expense is a quite intriguing question.
I also read and hear too much about the continued need for “Keynesian” stimulus. Regrettably, the system has been in non-stop government (fiscal and monetary) stimulus mode for years now. It may have been indirect at the time, but it is now apparent that GSE obligations should be included today right along with debt owed directly by the Treasury. And before all is said and done, the taxpayer will also be on the hook for enormous losses from various federal guarantees of deposits, student loans, pensions, and the like. The bottom line is that a whole range of direct and indirect federal guarantees – especially since the 2001/02 recession – have played an integral role in spurring Credit and Economic Bubbles. “Keynesian” ammunition - fired way too early and freely in order to sustain multiple Bubbles – has definitely buoyed the U.S. Bubble Economy, although such measures will have only limited effect down the road when they’re sorely needed.
Returning back to my initial paragraph, these days the economy and markets don’t appear all that bad - certainly nothing as nasty as we dour prognosticators have been forecasting. I’ll warn, however, that there are some very dangerous “Ponzi Finance” Dynamics Still very much At Play. The most obvious resides with the GSEs. And there are closely related Bubbles throughout the agency and Treasury bond arena. Meanwhile, a view has gained adherents that the U.S. economy is actually in much better shape than Europe and elsewhere. The reality that Europe is not buoyed by their own government-sponsored mortgage behemoths and that their economies are more manufacturing based (and thus vulnerable to cyclical downturns) are only short-term relative disadvantages.
20 July 2008
Swan Song for Fanny Mae
By MIKE WHITNEY
The Fed's emergency rescue plan for the financial markets is hopelessly flawed. It's a scattershot approach that doesn't address the real source of the problem; an unregulated, unsustainable structured finance system that emerged in full-force after 2000 and spawned a shadow banking system that creates trillions of dollars of credit without sufficient capital reserves. This is the heart of the problem and it needs to be debated openly. The present system doesn't work; it's as simple as that. It makes no sense to provide trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to shore up a system that is essentially dysfunctional. It's just throwing money down a rat-hole.
The Federal Reserve and US Treasury want a blank check to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two war-horses of the mortgage industry, that currently underwrite nearly 80 per cent of all new mortgages in the US. But by any objective standard both of these GSEs are already insolvent. Thus, the taxpayer is being asked to rescue a failed industry that has been used for private gain so that speculators will not have to suffer the losses. Even worse, Fannie and Freddie have written hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgages that have not yet defaulted, but will certainly default within the next two years. This is bound to batter the already faltering economy.
The bad paper held by Fannie and Freddie are mortgages that were made to unqualified applicants who are presently losing their homes in record numbers. Their loans were approved because there was no functioning regulatory body to oversee their issuance and because the mortgages were transformed into complex securities that were sold to credulous investors around the world. The ratings were fixed to meet the requirements of their employers, the investment banks, which marketed these exotic bonds to foreign banks, insurance companies and hedge funds. That puts Fannie and Freddie at the center of a system that needs radical surgery to eradicate the bad paper. If this doesn't happen in a timely fashion, then foreign investors will stop purchasing US debt and the dollar will crash. By creating a backstop for Fannie and Freddie, the Fed is linking US sovereign debt with mortgages and derivatives that are already known to be fraudulent. This is a big mistake. According to Merrill Lynch, the US is already facing a long-term "financing crisis" as the weakening US economy and sluggish consumer spending could signal an end to the $700 billion in foreign investment that covers America's current account deficit. By assuming the GSE's enormous debts, the Bush administration is just speeding this process along and inviting disaster.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been intentionally oblique about the implications of the proposed bailout. On Tuesday, he delivered a statement in front of the massive stone columns of the Department of the Treasury, a towering monolith that arouses feelings of confidence in rock-solid institutions. He made it clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have the "explicit" backing of the US government:
"First, as a liquidity backstop, the plan includes a temporary increase in the line of credit the GSEs have with Treasury. Treasury would determine the terms and conditions for accessing the line of credit and the amount to be drawn.
Second, to ensure the GSEs have access to sufficient capital to continue to serve their mission, the plan includes temporary authority for Treasury to purchase equity in either of the two GSEs if needed.
Third, to protect the financial system from systemic risk going forward, the plan strengthens the GSE regulatory reform legislation currently moving through Congress by giving the Federal Reserve a consultative role in the new GSE regulator's process for setting capital requirements and other prudential standards."
It was an impressive performance from a public relations point of view, but it didn't fool anyone on Wall Street. What Wall Street wants is details not blather. Paulson gave no specifics about how much money the government would provide or what the nature of the new relationship would be; conservatorship, recievorship, nationalization? What is it?
The truth is that Paulson was deliberately vague because he and friend Bernanke would like to have it both ways; they'd like to provide a liquidity backstop and an endless line of credit for the two GSE's without formally nationalizing them. That would avoid the further dilution of stock values while keeping the US government from taking another $5 trillion of mortgage debt onto their balance sheet. It is a delicate balancing act, but Paulson seems to think he carried it off. He's wrong, though, and volatility in the stock market proves it. Investors are clearly skittish about the new arrangement. They want to know the facts about the government's commitment. Paulson is discovering that deceiving investors is not as easy as duping the public about fictional WMD or Niger uranium. Sometimes even the dullest person can grasp the most complex matters when it comes to his own money.
Fannie and Freddie have been insolvent for ages, but it hasn't stopped lawmakers from pushing the envelope and loading more debt on their balance sheets. Here's how Barron's summed it up more than six months ago:
"Fannie's balance sheet is larded with soft assets and understated liabilities that would leave the company ill-equipped to weather a serious financial crisis. And spiraling mortgage defaults and falling home prices could bring a tsunami of credit losses over the next two years that will severely test Fannie's solvency.
But, if the truth be known, a considerable portion of Fannie's losses also came from speculative forays into higher-yielding but riskier mortgage products like subprime, Alt-A (a category between subprime and prime in credit quality) and dicey mortgages requiring monthly payments of interest only or less. For example, Fannie's $314 billion of Alt-A -- often called liar loans because borrowers provide little documentation -- accounted for 31.4% of the company's credit losses while making up just 11.9% of its $2.5 trillion single-family-home credit book. Fannie was clearly looking for love -- and market share -- in some of the wrong places."
Rampant speculation, risky investments, and Enron-type accounting; hardly the stuff of solid portfolios. That's why the two mortgage giants are stumbling headlong towards oblivion despite the Treasury's panicky relief operation. By last Friday Fannie's stock had fallen 47 per cent while Freddie was down 50 per cent. The public may still be in the dark about what is going on, but investors have a pretty good grip on the situation; they can see the great birds are already circling overhead and its just a matter of time before they descend on their prey. Paulson's attempts to muddy the water have amounted to nothing. The fact remains that the two biggest mortgage-lenders in the world are busted and last week's stock sell-off was tantamount to a run on the country's largest bank. Paulson's statement was really nothing more than a eulogy for the mortgage industry; a few heartfelt words over the rigid corpse of a close friend.
When the housing market started to tumble and Wall Street's "securitization" model froze-up, Fannie had to take the lion's share of the mortgages to keep the real estate market hobbling along. In a two year period, between the housing peak in 2005 and 2007, Fannie went from roughly 40 per cent of the market to about 80 per cent. The Congress even enlarged the size of the mortgages they could underwrite from $417,000 to over $700,000. The prospect of bankruptcy never diminished congress's generosity.
Fannie and Freddie currently own or underwrite roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. Basically, every home mortgage lender depends on them for financing. Their shares are owned by individual investors and banks around the world. Foreign investors have always believed that the GSE bonds were as risk-free as US government Treasuries. Now they are beginning to wonder. (Foreign central banks, led by China and Russia, hold at least $925 billion in U.S. agency debt, including bonds sold by Freddie and Fannie, according to official U.S. statistics)
Whatever happens to Fannie, the loss of investor confidence will send long term interest higher as investors demand bigger returns for the risk they're taking on GSE bonds. That'll put a straitjacket on home sales which are already flagging from soaring inventory and falling prices. Higher rates could bring the whole housing market to a standstill.
The Fed's cheap credit policy under Greenspan created an artificial demand for housing which ballooned into the biggest equity bubble in history. Low interest rates are a subsidy which naturally lead to speculation and asset-inflation. At a certain point, however, the endless debt-pyramiding reaches its apex and the whole mechanism switches into reverse. Now the economy has entered deleveraging-hell where everything is primal blackness and the gnashing of teeth, the flip-side of speculative rapture.
By some estimates, Freddie Mac has a negative net-worth of $17 billion. It's basically insolvent, although Paulson would like to see the charade go on a while longer. Investors purchased another $3 billion of the two GSEs last Monday, but the appetite for failing bonds is diminishing? What's certain is that the collapse of Fannie and Freddie would be a watershed event and a mortal blow to the US financial system. $5 trillion in shaky mortgage-debt can't be easily swept under the rug and ignored. Interest rates on everything would quickly rise; credit would become scarcer, economic growth would shrivel, unemployment would soar, and the dollar will plummet. As the two mortgage giants continue to get whipsawed by higher priced capital and waning investment, US government debt will likely to lose its much-vaunted triple A credit rating. On Friday, credit default swaps on government debt doubled, a sign that investors are losing confidence that the US will be able to manage its twin deficits or pay off its debts. It's the end of the road for Washington's free lunch throng and for a paper dollar that isn't backed by much of anything except music videos, fast food and smart-bombs.
PAULSON'S POWER GRAB
What Paulson is really wants is for congress to allow the Fed to regulate the financial system without congressional oversight. Paulson's so-called blueprint for financial regulation is a blatant power-grab meant to expand the authority of the banking oligarchy giving them unlimited power over the markets. Journalist Barry Grey sums it up like this in his article on "US Bailout of Mortgage Giants: The politics of plutocracy":
"The plan outlined by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would give him virtually unlimited and unilateral authority to pump tens of billions of dollars of public funds into the mortgage finance companies. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it would allow the companies to directly borrow Fed funds... The Democrats...now march in lockstep with the minority party to rush through laws demanded by Wall Street... The buying of legislators and their votes by corporate interests is carried out openly and shamelessly. Members of Frank’s House Financial Services Committee received over $18 million from financial services, insurance and real estate firms this year. Frank himself raised over $1.2 million, almost half of which came from finance and related industries...Senator Dodd’s top contributor in the 2003-2008 election cycle was Citigroup, followed by SAC Capital Partners. He raised $4.25 million from securities and investment firms.
Senator Schumer’s top contributor was likewise Citigroup. He raised $1.4 million from securities and investment firms, his most lucrative corporate sector."
The smell of political corruption is overpowering, and yet, the plan is moving forward regardless. Even if Paulson's plan worked in the short term, the damage would be enormous. It would place the country's regulatory powers and purse-strings in the hands of the same amoral banksters who created this mess to begin with. It is the fast-track to corporate feudalism on a nationwide scale.
PITFALLS FOR THE GSEs
The biggest problem facing Fannie and Freddie is that wary investors will not roll over the debt of the two companies which will precipitate a collapse. This is where it pays to have people who can be trusted in positions of power. Henry Paulson is the worst thing that ever happened to the US Treasury. Paulson is to finance capitalism what Rumsfeld is to military strategy. To say that Paulson is lacking in credibility is an understatement. Nothing he says can be taken at face-value. When Paulson says "the worst is behind us" or the "subprime crisis is contained" or the Bush administration "supports a strong dollar policy"; most people know it is a fabrication. Besides, Paulson is completely out of his depth in the present crisis. His appearances on TV, with the beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, and his foolish repetition of the same stale mantra is eroding confidence in the financial system and sending waves of panic rippling through Wall Street. Enough is enough. He needs to go.
If the administration was serious about changing direction they would dump Paulson and reinstate Paul Volcker. Whatever one thinks about Volcker, his presence would calm the markets and send a message that the adults were back in charge. But that won't happen. The Bush team still thinks they can finesse their way through the thicket of investor skepticism. That means that catastrophe is inevitable as more and more investors pick up their bets and head for the exits.
TIME IS RUNNING OUT
Whatever the administration decides to do; time is short and they have one chance to get it right. The Treasury needs to find a way to ring-fence the garbage bonds and pray that the investing public won't dump their holdings in a panic run on the market. Either way, it's a gamble and there's no guarantee of success. The Wall Street Journal outlined the doomsday scenario if Paulson's plan fails:
"Falling house prices and nonpaying homeowners cause the value of the trillions of dollars in outstanding debt held by these government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie and Freddie) to plunge. Many banks have balance sheets stuffed full of this paper. They face huge losses, which some can't survive. They and other investors, such as foreign central banks, then dump the GSE paper.
Fannie and Freddie would end up unable to lend, or at least to take up anything like their current 80% share of the U.S. mortgage market, further punishing the reeling housing market. This would add another twist to the spiral of falling prices, credit losses and failing lenders.
What should they do? First, devise a plan -- and fast. There is no time to dither." (Wall Street Journal)
If foreign banks and investors ditch their GSE debt; it will send shockwaves through the global economy. But if the Treasury provides unlimited funding for a sinking operation, it's likely to trigger a sell-off of the dollar. It's a lose-lose situation. For now, bond holders are sitting-tight even though the stock is tanking, but for how long? They've already been taken to the cleaners on hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed garbage; now there are rumors that the US government won't back agency debt. What kind of shabby shell-game is the US playing anyway?
New York Times:
“If people lose faith in Fannie and Freddie, then the whole system freezes up, and nobody can buy a house, and the entire housing market can crash,” said Paul Miller of the Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group in Arlington, Va. “There’s a fine line between having faith and losing it, and sometimes it’s unclear when it has disappeared. But when investors cross that line, bad things happen very quickly.”
And it affects more than the housing market, too. The bond and equities markets are handcuffed to real estate and they're already listing from the slowdown in investment. The Fed thought they could keep the whole mess from going sideways by opening up "auction facilities" where the banks could get low interest capital in exchange for their mortgage-backed junk. But the banks have curtailed their lending and there's bigger trouble ahead. Bridgewater Associates issued a warning last week that losses to the banking system would exceed $1.6 trillion, four times original estimates and enough to crash the entire banking system. So far, banks have only written down $450 billion, which means that they are only 25 per cent of the way through the current credit storm. Defaults are liable to skyrocket as hundreds of undercapitalized banks turn to a grossly underfunded FDIC ($52 billion in reserves) to cover the losses of their depositors. The prospect of a humongous taxpayer bailout seems nearly unavoidable.
What's most disturbing is that nothing has been done to restore the markets to a functional model. The Fed's strategy is still to try to keep the relatively new "structured finance" model (with all it's bizarre-named debt instruments and derivatives) in place even though it failed its first stress-test and has demonstrated that it cannot withstand even moderate downward movement in the market. The current model is kaput; there needs to be a Plan B or the Fed is just wasting its time.
Fannie's demise comes at a particularly difficult time for the banking system. According to a report by Paul Kasriel, Chief Economist at Northern Trust:
"The sharpest 13-week contraction in bank credit” since data were first available in 1973. Banks simply don’t have the capital on hand to avail “themselves of the cheap credit the Fed is offering to fund them at.”....This is what it means to be in a “credit crunch.” Banks have suffered hundreds of billions in losses, forcing them to pull credit out of the economy. Every time you read an article about banks cutting credit lines, exiting lending businesses, or eliminating mortgage products it represents more bank credit drying up." (Option Armageddon, "Understanding Bernanke")
Bank credit is drying up because the capital is being destroyed (from foreclosures and downgraded assets) faster than anytime in history. We are just now feeling the first stiff breezes from a Force-5 deflationary hurricane set to touch down in 2009. Fannie and Freddie are teetering towards insolvency while the country is entering the most vicious downward cycle since the Great Depression. Higher interest rates, negative home equity, mounting credit card debt, auto loan debt, commercial real estate debt and tightening lending standards will only curtail consumer spending more putting greater pressure on the dollar.
The Fed will have to be selective; not everything can be saved. Significant parts of the financial system will be reduced to ashes. It would be wiser to clear the brush away from as many of the solvent institutions as possible and prepare for the worst. Otherwise, the whole system is at risk of contagion. Hundreds of local and regional banks are expected to go under. (the average small bank has 67% of its assets in real estate) It can't be avoided. They are holding too much bad paper and no way to make up for the losses. They're following the same path as the 250 mortgage lenders that vaporised in the subprime meltdown. They couldn't be saved either.
The bigger investment banks are in trouble too. That's why the SEC has finally decided to act as a regulator and go after short-sellers:
"The Securities and Exchange Commission announced an emergency action aimed at reducing short-selling aimed at Wall Street brokerage firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and will immediately begin considering new rules to extend new requirements to the rest of the market."
The SEC never took an interest in naked shorting of stocks (or commodities speculators) while its fat-cat friends in the big brokerage houses were raking in billions. Now that many of these same institutions, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are in the crosshairs, SEC chief Christopher Cox is rushing to their rescue. It is utter duplicity, but it illustrates an important point; the system is cannibalizing itself just like Karl Marx predicted over 100 years ago. Unchecked greed is inevitably self-destructive.
A growing number of market analysts are beginning to notice the storm clouds forming on the horizon. The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months. The Bank of international Settlements (BIS) made a similarly ominous warning that the credit crisis could lead world economies into a crash on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The bank suggests that government officials and market analysts have not fully grasped the financial turmoil that could result from the mortgage crisis and its effects of the global economic system. The body points out that the Great Depression was not anticipated because people ignored the implicit danger of "complex credit instruments, a strong appetite for risk, rising levels of household debt and long-term imbalances in the world currency system."
Ron Paul (R-Texas) is one of the few members of congress who has shown that he has a grasp of the impending economic disaster now facing the country if corrective action is not taken swiftly. In a speech he gave last week on the floor of the House, he said:
"There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced...The financial crisis, still in its early stages, is apparent to everyone: gasoline prices over $4 a gallon; skyrocketing education and medical-care costs; the collapse of the housing bubble; the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble; stock markets plunging; unemployment rising;, massive underemployment; excessive government debt; and unmanageable personal debt. Little doubt exists as to whether we’ll get stagflation. The question that will soon be asked is: When will the stagflation become an inflationary depression? "
The troubles at Fannie and Freddie are symptomatic of more deeply rooted problems related to abusive lending and the unsustainable expansion of credit. We've now reached our debt limit and the bills must be repaid or written off. The Bush administration is hoping to reflate the bubble by (stealthily) recapitalizing the GSEs, but it won't be easy. As one blogger put it, we have reached "peak credit" and have nowhere to go except down.
Economist Michael Hudson summed it up like this:
"The reality is that Fannie, Freddie and the FHA gave a patina of confidence to irresponsible lending and outright fraud. This confidence game led them to guarantee some $5.3 trillion of mortgages, and to keep $1.6 trillion more on their own books to back the bonds they issued to institutional investors."
It was a scam of Biblical proportions and now it is all starting to unravel. Bush's "ownership society" was a cheap parlor trick engineered by the Fed's low interest rates to trigger massive speculation and shift wealth from one class to another. Now, the housing bubble has crashed and the excruciating reality of insolvency is beginning to sink in.
Michael Hudson, again:
"All one hears is a barrage of claims that the government must preserve the financial fictions of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac in order to 'save the market.' The usual hypocrisy is being brought to bear claiming that all this is necessary to 'save the middle class,' even as what is being saved are its debts, not its assets...The “way of life” that is being saved is not that of home ownership, but debt peonage to support the concentration of wealth at the top of the economic pyramid.
Mortgages are the major debts of most American families. In this role, real estate debt has become the basis for the commercial banking system, and hence the basis for the wealthiest 10 percent of the population who hold the bottom 90 percent in debt. That is what Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and “the market” are all about." (Michael Hudson; "Why the Bail Out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is Bad Economic Policy", counterpunch.org)
The housing boom never had anything to do with Bush's Utopian-sounding "ownership society". It was always just a swindle to enrich the banking establishment and divert middle class wealth to ruling class elites.
The Fed's emergency rescue plan for the financial markets is hopelessly flawed. It's a scattershot approach that doesn't address the real source of the problem; an unregulated, unsustainable structured finance system that emerged in full-force after 2000 and spawned a shadow banking system that creates trillions of dollars of credit without sufficient capital reserves. This is the heart of the problem and it needs to be debated openly. The present system doesn't work; it's as simple as that. It makes no sense to provide trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to shore up a system that is essentially dysfunctional. It's just throwing money down a rat-hole.
The Federal Reserve and US Treasury want a blank check to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two war-horses of the mortgage industry, that currently underwrite nearly 80 per cent of all new mortgages in the US. But by any objective standard both of these GSEs are already insolvent. Thus, the taxpayer is being asked to rescue a failed industry that has been used for private gain so that speculators will not have to suffer the losses. Even worse, Fannie and Freddie have written hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgages that have not yet defaulted, but will certainly default within the next two years. This is bound to batter the already faltering economy.
The bad paper held by Fannie and Freddie are mortgages that were made to unqualified applicants who are presently losing their homes in record numbers. Their loans were approved because there was no functioning regulatory body to oversee their issuance and because the mortgages were transformed into complex securities that were sold to credulous investors around the world. The ratings were fixed to meet the requirements of their employers, the investment banks, which marketed these exotic bonds to foreign banks, insurance companies and hedge funds. That puts Fannie and Freddie at the center of a system that needs radical surgery to eradicate the bad paper. If this doesn't happen in a timely fashion, then foreign investors will stop purchasing US debt and the dollar will crash. By creating a backstop for Fannie and Freddie, the Fed is linking US sovereign debt with mortgages and derivatives that are already known to be fraudulent. This is a big mistake. According to Merrill Lynch, the US is already facing a long-term "financing crisis" as the weakening US economy and sluggish consumer spending could signal an end to the $700 billion in foreign investment that covers America's current account deficit. By assuming the GSE's enormous debts, the Bush administration is just speeding this process along and inviting disaster.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been intentionally oblique about the implications of the proposed bailout. On Tuesday, he delivered a statement in front of the massive stone columns of the Department of the Treasury, a towering monolith that arouses feelings of confidence in rock-solid institutions. He made it clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have the "explicit" backing of the US government:
"First, as a liquidity backstop, the plan includes a temporary increase in the line of credit the GSEs have with Treasury. Treasury would determine the terms and conditions for accessing the line of credit and the amount to be drawn.
Second, to ensure the GSEs have access to sufficient capital to continue to serve their mission, the plan includes temporary authority for Treasury to purchase equity in either of the two GSEs if needed.
Third, to protect the financial system from systemic risk going forward, the plan strengthens the GSE regulatory reform legislation currently moving through Congress by giving the Federal Reserve a consultative role in the new GSE regulator's process for setting capital requirements and other prudential standards."
It was an impressive performance from a public relations point of view, but it didn't fool anyone on Wall Street. What Wall Street wants is details not blather. Paulson gave no specifics about how much money the government would provide or what the nature of the new relationship would be; conservatorship, recievorship, nationalization? What is it?
The truth is that Paulson was deliberately vague because he and friend Bernanke would like to have it both ways; they'd like to provide a liquidity backstop and an endless line of credit for the two GSE's without formally nationalizing them. That would avoid the further dilution of stock values while keeping the US government from taking another $5 trillion of mortgage debt onto their balance sheet. It is a delicate balancing act, but Paulson seems to think he carried it off. He's wrong, though, and volatility in the stock market proves it. Investors are clearly skittish about the new arrangement. They want to know the facts about the government's commitment. Paulson is discovering that deceiving investors is not as easy as duping the public about fictional WMD or Niger uranium. Sometimes even the dullest person can grasp the most complex matters when it comes to his own money.
Fannie and Freddie have been insolvent for ages, but it hasn't stopped lawmakers from pushing the envelope and loading more debt on their balance sheets. Here's how Barron's summed it up more than six months ago:
"Fannie's balance sheet is larded with soft assets and understated liabilities that would leave the company ill-equipped to weather a serious financial crisis. And spiraling mortgage defaults and falling home prices could bring a tsunami of credit losses over the next two years that will severely test Fannie's solvency.
But, if the truth be known, a considerable portion of Fannie's losses also came from speculative forays into higher-yielding but riskier mortgage products like subprime, Alt-A (a category between subprime and prime in credit quality) and dicey mortgages requiring monthly payments of interest only or less. For example, Fannie's $314 billion of Alt-A -- often called liar loans because borrowers provide little documentation -- accounted for 31.4% of the company's credit losses while making up just 11.9% of its $2.5 trillion single-family-home credit book. Fannie was clearly looking for love -- and market share -- in some of the wrong places."
Rampant speculation, risky investments, and Enron-type accounting; hardly the stuff of solid portfolios. That's why the two mortgage giants are stumbling headlong towards oblivion despite the Treasury's panicky relief operation. By last Friday Fannie's stock had fallen 47 per cent while Freddie was down 50 per cent. The public may still be in the dark about what is going on, but investors have a pretty good grip on the situation; they can see the great birds are already circling overhead and its just a matter of time before they descend on their prey. Paulson's attempts to muddy the water have amounted to nothing. The fact remains that the two biggest mortgage-lenders in the world are busted and last week's stock sell-off was tantamount to a run on the country's largest bank. Paulson's statement was really nothing more than a eulogy for the mortgage industry; a few heartfelt words over the rigid corpse of a close friend.
When the housing market started to tumble and Wall Street's "securitization" model froze-up, Fannie had to take the lion's share of the mortgages to keep the real estate market hobbling along. In a two year period, between the housing peak in 2005 and 2007, Fannie went from roughly 40 per cent of the market to about 80 per cent. The Congress even enlarged the size of the mortgages they could underwrite from $417,000 to over $700,000. The prospect of bankruptcy never diminished congress's generosity.
Fannie and Freddie currently own or underwrite roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. Basically, every home mortgage lender depends on them for financing. Their shares are owned by individual investors and banks around the world. Foreign investors have always believed that the GSE bonds were as risk-free as US government Treasuries. Now they are beginning to wonder. (Foreign central banks, led by China and Russia, hold at least $925 billion in U.S. agency debt, including bonds sold by Freddie and Fannie, according to official U.S. statistics)
Whatever happens to Fannie, the loss of investor confidence will send long term interest higher as investors demand bigger returns for the risk they're taking on GSE bonds. That'll put a straitjacket on home sales which are already flagging from soaring inventory and falling prices. Higher rates could bring the whole housing market to a standstill.
The Fed's cheap credit policy under Greenspan created an artificial demand for housing which ballooned into the biggest equity bubble in history. Low interest rates are a subsidy which naturally lead to speculation and asset-inflation. At a certain point, however, the endless debt-pyramiding reaches its apex and the whole mechanism switches into reverse. Now the economy has entered deleveraging-hell where everything is primal blackness and the gnashing of teeth, the flip-side of speculative rapture.
By some estimates, Freddie Mac has a negative net-worth of $17 billion. It's basically insolvent, although Paulson would like to see the charade go on a while longer. Investors purchased another $3 billion of the two GSEs last Monday, but the appetite for failing bonds is diminishing? What's certain is that the collapse of Fannie and Freddie would be a watershed event and a mortal blow to the US financial system. $5 trillion in shaky mortgage-debt can't be easily swept under the rug and ignored. Interest rates on everything would quickly rise; credit would become scarcer, economic growth would shrivel, unemployment would soar, and the dollar will plummet. As the two mortgage giants continue to get whipsawed by higher priced capital and waning investment, US government debt will likely to lose its much-vaunted triple A credit rating. On Friday, credit default swaps on government debt doubled, a sign that investors are losing confidence that the US will be able to manage its twin deficits or pay off its debts. It's the end of the road for Washington's free lunch throng and for a paper dollar that isn't backed by much of anything except music videos, fast food and smart-bombs.
PAULSON'S POWER GRAB
What Paulson is really wants is for congress to allow the Fed to regulate the financial system without congressional oversight. Paulson's so-called blueprint for financial regulation is a blatant power-grab meant to expand the authority of the banking oligarchy giving them unlimited power over the markets. Journalist Barry Grey sums it up like this in his article on "US Bailout of Mortgage Giants: The politics of plutocracy":
"The plan outlined by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would give him virtually unlimited and unilateral authority to pump tens of billions of dollars of public funds into the mortgage finance companies. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it would allow the companies to directly borrow Fed funds... The Democrats...now march in lockstep with the minority party to rush through laws demanded by Wall Street... The buying of legislators and their votes by corporate interests is carried out openly and shamelessly. Members of Frank’s House Financial Services Committee received over $18 million from financial services, insurance and real estate firms this year. Frank himself raised over $1.2 million, almost half of which came from finance and related industries...Senator Dodd’s top contributor in the 2003-2008 election cycle was Citigroup, followed by SAC Capital Partners. He raised $4.25 million from securities and investment firms.
Senator Schumer’s top contributor was likewise Citigroup. He raised $1.4 million from securities and investment firms, his most lucrative corporate sector."
The smell of political corruption is overpowering, and yet, the plan is moving forward regardless. Even if Paulson's plan worked in the short term, the damage would be enormous. It would place the country's regulatory powers and purse-strings in the hands of the same amoral banksters who created this mess to begin with. It is the fast-track to corporate feudalism on a nationwide scale.
PITFALLS FOR THE GSEs
The biggest problem facing Fannie and Freddie is that wary investors will not roll over the debt of the two companies which will precipitate a collapse. This is where it pays to have people who can be trusted in positions of power. Henry Paulson is the worst thing that ever happened to the US Treasury. Paulson is to finance capitalism what Rumsfeld is to military strategy. To say that Paulson is lacking in credibility is an understatement. Nothing he says can be taken at face-value. When Paulson says "the worst is behind us" or the "subprime crisis is contained" or the Bush administration "supports a strong dollar policy"; most people know it is a fabrication. Besides, Paulson is completely out of his depth in the present crisis. His appearances on TV, with the beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, and his foolish repetition of the same stale mantra is eroding confidence in the financial system and sending waves of panic rippling through Wall Street. Enough is enough. He needs to go.
If the administration was serious about changing direction they would dump Paulson and reinstate Paul Volcker. Whatever one thinks about Volcker, his presence would calm the markets and send a message that the adults were back in charge. But that won't happen. The Bush team still thinks they can finesse their way through the thicket of investor skepticism. That means that catastrophe is inevitable as more and more investors pick up their bets and head for the exits.
TIME IS RUNNING OUT
Whatever the administration decides to do; time is short and they have one chance to get it right. The Treasury needs to find a way to ring-fence the garbage bonds and pray that the investing public won't dump their holdings in a panic run on the market. Either way, it's a gamble and there's no guarantee of success. The Wall Street Journal outlined the doomsday scenario if Paulson's plan fails:
"Falling house prices and nonpaying homeowners cause the value of the trillions of dollars in outstanding debt held by these government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie and Freddie) to plunge. Many banks have balance sheets stuffed full of this paper. They face huge losses, which some can't survive. They and other investors, such as foreign central banks, then dump the GSE paper.
Fannie and Freddie would end up unable to lend, or at least to take up anything like their current 80% share of the U.S. mortgage market, further punishing the reeling housing market. This would add another twist to the spiral of falling prices, credit losses and failing lenders.
What should they do? First, devise a plan -- and fast. There is no time to dither." (Wall Street Journal)
If foreign banks and investors ditch their GSE debt; it will send shockwaves through the global economy. But if the Treasury provides unlimited funding for a sinking operation, it's likely to trigger a sell-off of the dollar. It's a lose-lose situation. For now, bond holders are sitting-tight even though the stock is tanking, but for how long? They've already been taken to the cleaners on hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed garbage; now there are rumors that the US government won't back agency debt. What kind of shabby shell-game is the US playing anyway?
New York Times:
“If people lose faith in Fannie and Freddie, then the whole system freezes up, and nobody can buy a house, and the entire housing market can crash,” said Paul Miller of the Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group in Arlington, Va. “There’s a fine line between having faith and losing it, and sometimes it’s unclear when it has disappeared. But when investors cross that line, bad things happen very quickly.”
And it affects more than the housing market, too. The bond and equities markets are handcuffed to real estate and they're already listing from the slowdown in investment. The Fed thought they could keep the whole mess from going sideways by opening up "auction facilities" where the banks could get low interest capital in exchange for their mortgage-backed junk. But the banks have curtailed their lending and there's bigger trouble ahead. Bridgewater Associates issued a warning last week that losses to the banking system would exceed $1.6 trillion, four times original estimates and enough to crash the entire banking system. So far, banks have only written down $450 billion, which means that they are only 25 per cent of the way through the current credit storm. Defaults are liable to skyrocket as hundreds of undercapitalized banks turn to a grossly underfunded FDIC ($52 billion in reserves) to cover the losses of their depositors. The prospect of a humongous taxpayer bailout seems nearly unavoidable.
What's most disturbing is that nothing has been done to restore the markets to a functional model. The Fed's strategy is still to try to keep the relatively new "structured finance" model (with all it's bizarre-named debt instruments and derivatives) in place even though it failed its first stress-test and has demonstrated that it cannot withstand even moderate downward movement in the market. The current model is kaput; there needs to be a Plan B or the Fed is just wasting its time.
Fannie's demise comes at a particularly difficult time for the banking system. According to a report by Paul Kasriel, Chief Economist at Northern Trust:
"The sharpest 13-week contraction in bank credit” since data were first available in 1973. Banks simply don’t have the capital on hand to avail “themselves of the cheap credit the Fed is offering to fund them at.”....This is what it means to be in a “credit crunch.” Banks have suffered hundreds of billions in losses, forcing them to pull credit out of the economy. Every time you read an article about banks cutting credit lines, exiting lending businesses, or eliminating mortgage products it represents more bank credit drying up." (Option Armageddon, "Understanding Bernanke")
Bank credit is drying up because the capital is being destroyed (from foreclosures and downgraded assets) faster than anytime in history. We are just now feeling the first stiff breezes from a Force-5 deflationary hurricane set to touch down in 2009. Fannie and Freddie are teetering towards insolvency while the country is entering the most vicious downward cycle since the Great Depression. Higher interest rates, negative home equity, mounting credit card debt, auto loan debt, commercial real estate debt and tightening lending standards will only curtail consumer spending more putting greater pressure on the dollar.
The Fed will have to be selective; not everything can be saved. Significant parts of the financial system will be reduced to ashes. It would be wiser to clear the brush away from as many of the solvent institutions as possible and prepare for the worst. Otherwise, the whole system is at risk of contagion. Hundreds of local and regional banks are expected to go under. (the average small bank has 67% of its assets in real estate) It can't be avoided. They are holding too much bad paper and no way to make up for the losses. They're following the same path as the 250 mortgage lenders that vaporised in the subprime meltdown. They couldn't be saved either.
The bigger investment banks are in trouble too. That's why the SEC has finally decided to act as a regulator and go after short-sellers:
"The Securities and Exchange Commission announced an emergency action aimed at reducing short-selling aimed at Wall Street brokerage firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and will immediately begin considering new rules to extend new requirements to the rest of the market."
The SEC never took an interest in naked shorting of stocks (or commodities speculators) while its fat-cat friends in the big brokerage houses were raking in billions. Now that many of these same institutions, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are in the crosshairs, SEC chief Christopher Cox is rushing to their rescue. It is utter duplicity, but it illustrates an important point; the system is cannibalizing itself just like Karl Marx predicted over 100 years ago. Unchecked greed is inevitably self-destructive.
A growing number of market analysts are beginning to notice the storm clouds forming on the horizon. The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets over the next three months. The Bank of international Settlements (BIS) made a similarly ominous warning that the credit crisis could lead world economies into a crash on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The bank suggests that government officials and market analysts have not fully grasped the financial turmoil that could result from the mortgage crisis and its effects of the global economic system. The body points out that the Great Depression was not anticipated because people ignored the implicit danger of "complex credit instruments, a strong appetite for risk, rising levels of household debt and long-term imbalances in the world currency system."
Ron Paul (R-Texas) is one of the few members of congress who has shown that he has a grasp of the impending economic disaster now facing the country if corrective action is not taken swiftly. In a speech he gave last week on the floor of the House, he said:
"There are reasons to believe this coming crisis is different and bigger than the world has ever experienced...The financial crisis, still in its early stages, is apparent to everyone: gasoline prices over $4 a gallon; skyrocketing education and medical-care costs; the collapse of the housing bubble; the bursting of the NASDAQ bubble; stock markets plunging; unemployment rising;, massive underemployment; excessive government debt; and unmanageable personal debt. Little doubt exists as to whether we’ll get stagflation. The question that will soon be asked is: When will the stagflation become an inflationary depression? "
The troubles at Fannie and Freddie are symptomatic of more deeply rooted problems related to abusive lending and the unsustainable expansion of credit. We've now reached our debt limit and the bills must be repaid or written off. The Bush administration is hoping to reflate the bubble by (stealthily) recapitalizing the GSEs, but it won't be easy. As one blogger put it, we have reached "peak credit" and have nowhere to go except down.
Economist Michael Hudson summed it up like this:
"The reality is that Fannie, Freddie and the FHA gave a patina of confidence to irresponsible lending and outright fraud. This confidence game led them to guarantee some $5.3 trillion of mortgages, and to keep $1.6 trillion more on their own books to back the bonds they issued to institutional investors."
It was a scam of Biblical proportions and now it is all starting to unravel. Bush's "ownership society" was a cheap parlor trick engineered by the Fed's low interest rates to trigger massive speculation and shift wealth from one class to another. Now, the housing bubble has crashed and the excruciating reality of insolvency is beginning to sink in.
Michael Hudson, again:
"All one hears is a barrage of claims that the government must preserve the financial fictions of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac in order to 'save the market.' The usual hypocrisy is being brought to bear claiming that all this is necessary to 'save the middle class,' even as what is being saved are its debts, not its assets...The “way of life” that is being saved is not that of home ownership, but debt peonage to support the concentration of wealth at the top of the economic pyramid.
Mortgages are the major debts of most American families. In this role, real estate debt has become the basis for the commercial banking system, and hence the basis for the wealthiest 10 percent of the population who hold the bottom 90 percent in debt. That is what Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and “the market” are all about." (Michael Hudson; "Why the Bail Out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is Bad Economic Policy", counterpunch.org)
The housing boom never had anything to do with Bush's Utopian-sounding "ownership society". It was always just a swindle to enrich the banking establishment and divert middle class wealth to ruling class elites.
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