Archive - Oct 25, 2009

Since the financial crisis last fall, currency markets have taken their cues mostly from stock markets. When stocks plunged in March of this year, investors rushed to the safety of U.S. government bonds, pushing the dollar index up to 89.62, the highest point this year. The value of the euro has risen by 79% in nine years since euro hit 0.84 in Oct. 2000. What's next for the U.S. Dollar, and its impact on the market?

Swine flu is killing teenagers more than any other age group. This sets up a big conflict with traditional users of ventilators. The experts have sorted this all out. Kind of.

We made every effort to keep the cheekiness of this missive, apart from very minor edits. By no means it is perfect, but it is definitely cheeky.

Cause at the end of the day, it's your choice whether to laugh or cry...

Mr. Soros is absolutely right, if they want to take risks, let them do it managing a hedge fund on their own, not within a bank. This way, they have skin in the game and their bets go wrong, they feel the pain.

Recently, Zero Hedge presented a snapshot analysis of the various securities that made up the triparty repo agreement involving JPM, Lehman and the Fed. We uncovered numerous bankrupt companies' equities that were being pledged as collateral for what ultimately was taxpayer exposure. To our surprise, this discovery is not an exception, and in fact in the days immediately preceding the collapse of Bear Stearns first, and subsequently, Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve established and refined a program that permitted banks to pledge virtually any security as collateral, including not just investment grade bonds and higher ranked securities, but also stocks of companies, the riskiest investment possible, and a guaranteed way for taxpayer capital to evaporate in the context of a disintegrating financial system, all with the purpose of bailing out Wall Street's major institutions. On two occasions last year: on March 16, 2008, and subsequently on September 14, 2008, the Federal Reserve first established what is known as the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), and subsequently amended it, so that the Fed, in becoming the lender of last resort, would allow any collateral, up to and including stocks, to be funded by the Federal Reserve's credit facility, in order to prevent the $4.5 trillion repo financing system from imploding. By doing so, the Federal Reserve effectively gave a Carte Blanche to primary dealers to purchase any and all equities they so desired, with such purchases immediately being funded by the US taxpayer, via the PDCF. In essence, this was equivalent to the Fed purchasing equities by itself through a Primary Dealer agent.

Readers who have been concerned with the moral hazard provided by the Fed's monetization of Treasury and Mortgage debt, should be doubly concerned by this Fed action which sent three key messages to Wall Street: i) it made sure that Primary Dealers would generate massive profits on risky assets as the Fed would provide the funding to acquire any and all stocks (keep in mind the cost of funding of the PDCF to primary dealers was negligible); ii) it tipped its hand as to the existence and modus operandi of the rumored "plunge protection team," iii) and it made clear that the much maligned, by none other than Chairman Bernanke, concept of "moral hazard" is the one and only systemically relevant doctrine as long as the Fed's Chairman is in control, and not subject to any auditing auspices. The fact that PDs used over $140 billion of taxpayer money within a few weeks of the program's expansion in September to fund what one can assume were exclusively equity purchases, demonstrates that the American financial system got the message.

August CRE trends continued their downward trends, with a bevy of trackers of CMBS performance, Moody's, Fitch, Realpoint and TREPP seeing substantial deterioration in September. According To TREPP the August delinquency rate was up to 4.35% from 4.03. Legacy rating agencies Moody's and Fitch indicated a comparable acceleration in delinquency trends, with September 60-delinquencies at 3.64% and 3.58%, up from 3.04% and 3.23% respectively. New CRE NRSRO Realpoint had an even higher September reading at 4.15% up from 3.47% in the previous month.

When I wrote about the obvious "win-win situation" that was Cash for Clunkers this past summer, amid the fact that right now cars are back-logged, piled-up, unable to get recycled in an efficient, timely manner- South Carolina is offering $3.9 million, their share of some $300 million in federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act being distributed as appliance rebates. Meet... "Cash for Appliances."