Archive - 2009 - Story

Two months ago Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil brought up the very relevant topic of fair value divergences on bank balance sheets courtesy of SFAS 107 and lax accounting firm standards (some more lax than others). Zero Hedge immediately followed up on this theme and presented a comparative analysis of various bank asset shortfalls, speculating that certain accounting firms are doing their best to do an Arthur Andersen redux for Generation Bailout.

On October 15 we said: "Just what about the economic environment has given Citi auditors KPMG the flawed idea that the bank's loan can be easily offloaded with virtually no discount? And just how much managerial whispering has gone into this particular decision. If one assumes a comparable deterioration for the Citi loan book as for the other big 4 firms, and extrapolates the 2.8% getting worse by the average 1.5% decline, one would end up with a 4.2% Book-to-FV deterioration. On $602 billion of loan at Q2, this implies a major $25 billion haircut. Yet this much more realistic number is completely ignored courtesy of some very flexible interpretation of fair value accounting rules at KPMG. Maybe Citi and its accountants should take a hint from Regions Financial CEO Dowd Ritter who carries the FV of his $90.9 billion loan book value at a 25% discount." Today, finally, after a two month delay, these two articles seem to have finally made the inbox of the financial gurus at the Wall Street Journal, which, in an article named "Accounting for the bank's value gaps," says: "can investors count on consistency when it comes to bank accounting? As many banks struggle with piles of bad loans, it appears some auditors are being stricter than others when assessing their true value." Way to be on top of that ball WSJ/Mike Rapaport. Nonetheless, we are happy that this very critical topic, is finally starting to get the due and proper, if largely delayed and uncredited, attention it deserves.

As we pointed out two weeks ago, PIMCO has been preparing for 2010 by selling out its legacy "safe" MBS and Treasury holdings, and shifting largely to cash. Furthermore, the recent hirings of corporate and distressed asset managers indicates that the traditionally Treasury heavy asset manager is set to become the world's biggest fixed income hedge fund, focusing on IG, high yield and distressed investments. As PIMCO is a critical manager in numerous government bailout programs, we can only hope that the firms' Newport Beach Chinese Walls are better at keeping secrets than the characters in assorted O.C. legacy "reality" shows. The below presentation by PIMCO's Mark Kiesel indicates why PIMCO will soon be one of the primary actors in future official creditor committees in the upcoming wave of corporate bankruptcies (yes, shockingly assets do have to create cashflows for companies to avoid bankruptcy).

• And the government fails again at curbing excess executive pay at nationalized and bankrupt financial black holes: AIG GC Anastacia Kelly, whose prior experience includes bankrupt failures, WorldCon and Fannie Mae, to get millions after all (WSJ)
• Prepare for a Yemen invasion: The Peace Prize winner is setting the stage for the next war (Bloomberg and WSJ)
• War on Wall Street as Congress sees returning to Glass-Steagall, and not a moment too soon (Bloomberg)
• The Fed's latest gimmick to pretend it cares about withdrawing liquidity: Interest bearing term-deposits (NYFed)
• Prepare for a Keynesian hangover (WSJ)
• Turning to Buffett, Bogle and Buddha for wisdom on how to invest (MarketWatch)
• Robert Reich: Wall Street bailout - the great sideshow for 2009 (LA Times)

True, the decade is not really over, but no one called 1930 the "last year of the 20's," and given the reflective mood that seems to grip all of Western society whenever a year ending in "9" draws to a close, well, we thought we'd better embrace the trend now so that when some idiot with a pair of glow-in-the-dark "2010" glasses with holes in the zeros for his eyes tries to convince us to watch Roy Scheider over and over again in a celebratory, all-day, marathon screening of "2010," well, we can say we gave at the blog.

Instead, and in conjunction with your many suggestions, we took the opportunity to go back over Zero Hedge's posts and see what moved you, with an eye towards getting a sense of what Zero Hedge wants to read. The results were quite interesting. We thought readers would find it engaging both as a sort of "year in review" post, and, perhaps, in finding old material missed the first time around (or before the discovery of Zero Hedge).

Happens every year end. The fund managers dress up their portfolios with the "must own" stocks for the year end statement print in order to avoid getting sacked for picking the wrong plays in 2009.

For some reason Zero Hedge is prone to take a great deal of heat (both directly radiated and reflected) whenever we opine on the (rather obvious to us) prospect that interest rates might actually (quelle surprise) rise in this environment.  Today, rather than engage in "we told you so" gloating, or endure the repetitive pleadings of commentators that this or that Treasury auction was really a success if you just look a little deeper at the figures, we'll just quote Bloomberg quoting other fixed income observers on today's auction of two years, in an article "ambiguously" titled "U.S. 2-Year Yields Highest Since October After $44 Billion Sale."

What was once considered a pipe-dream could become reality: after decades of dictatorship, war and international sanctions, Iraq's massive oil reserves are set to be tapped proper and the country once known for two overflowing rivers could be crowned oil king.

Well, you sort of knew it was coming in some form or another.  That form happened to be the Banking Integrity Act of 2009.  Think of it as "Glass-Steagall II."

For the unwashed, and among other things, the original act created the FDIC and separated the practice of "investment banking" and "commercial banking."  The concept was intended to avoid the conflicts of interest that purportedly arose when the same Wall Street shark was responsible for both the growth of your long-term savings and the sale of securities (underwritten by self-same shark's bank, most likely).  It's effect was, as might be imagined, debatable.

Bloomberg reports today that the concept is, once again, making the rounds and points us to a document on Thomas.

The administration sure is learning how to take advantage of the Ritalin addicted, holiday sales overbonanza'ed (1% increase over last year's gruesome December performance surely must be terrific news) public. Not only did Obama hope the whole Fannie/Freddie BS would slip by unnoticed even as he paid the failed public servants over at the nationalized-in-perpetuity GSEs an insane amount of money, but this week the Cottonelle experts over at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue tried to sneak a $118 billion in coupons and another $57 billion in bills, a total of $175 billion pieces worth of one-ply bidet replacements, for the last weekly auctions of the "noughties" (yes, apparently that is the name to this most recent lost decade, set to end in a few days. But don't worry Ben Shalom will be around to make sure its bubblicious legacy persists for much, much longer).

For purists, we acknowledge that the decade does in fact not end until December 31, 2010, but we are sure the Senate will pass a provision in the final Financial Regulatory Reform bill adjusting the Gregorian calendar to seal all the "bad, bad financial stuff" deep under the rug of a past never to be repeated, with only hope, sweet smelling roses and manna from heaven remaining on deck.

• Morgan Stanley sees the 10 year at 5.5% in 2010, Goldman Sachs at 3.25% - someone's prop desk is going to get spanked (Bloomberg)
• Tanker freight rates to drop 25% as 26-mile long line of idled tankers runs out of fumes (Bloomberg)
• Deflationary side effects: Japan Finance Minister admitted to hospital (Bloomberg)
• Ferguson - The decade the world tilted east (FT)
• Summers - The man who blew up Harvard's portfolio, has set his sight on the US next (WSJ)
• Buffett doing the patriotic thing and firing 21,000 employees of companies that did not get taxpayer bailouts (Bloomberg)

• Nigeria quick to point out supposed would be bomber snuck into country. (Scammers? Sure. Bombers? Niger[ia], please!) [reuters]
• Mousavi's nephew reportedly killed in Iran.  [reuters]
• Gordon Brown sucks at economics.  ("The shadow [cabinet] knows.") [timesonline]
• 2009: South Korean group wins $40 billion UAE nuclear reactor deal.  (2011: South Korean group writes off $36 billion in UAE receivables) [reuters]
• French group reportedly overbid by $16 billion.  (French management contract stipulated that reactors could only work for 30 hours per week)

2010 will be a year of major transformations, punctuated by the following key escalating divergence: i) on one hand, the ongoing contraction of the US consumer will accelerate, because even as the stock market ramps ever higher (and on ever decreasing trade volume a 2,000 level on the S&P while completely incredulous, is attainable, but will benefit only a select few insiders who continue selling their stock at ridiculous valuations), household wealth will at best stagnate (as a reminder, an increase in interest rates "withdraws" much more household net worth, due to implied house price reduction, than any comparable boost to the S&P can offset), ii) on the other hand, China, which is faced with the ticking timebomb of continuing the status quo and hoping that US consumers can keep growing the global economy, or alternatively, looking inward at its own consumer class, and shifting away from its historical export-led model. The one unavoidable side effect of this prominent departure would be a renminbi appreciation, and a logical drop in the US currency, once the US-China peg if lifted (a theme opposed recently by SocGen analysts, who see the inverse as likely occurring). The main question for 2010 and beyond is whether this will be a gradual decline or a disorderly drop. And behind the scenes of all the bickering, jawboning and posturing, this is precisely what high level officials from both the US and China are currently negotiating. This will be one of the major themes that defines the next decade. Another phrase to describe this process is the gradual drift of US into a nation that is aware it is no longer the primary economic dynamo of global growth as China eagerly steps in to fill that spot.

• Son of Nigerian banker apparently tries to blow up Delta's EHAM -> KDTW.  (419 BLAM?) [reuters]
• Supposed Delta bomber apparently has al Qaeda ties.  (Explains why he was going to Detroit) [reuters]
• ...and has been known by U.S. officials as a terrorist associate for two years.  (Explains why he was going to Detroit) [AP]
• As they hit 5%, and when they think no one is listening, Freddie whispers that 30-year rates could climb to 6% in 2010. (Rahm: "No big thing.  Just sayin' is all.") [reuters]

One of the key observations of 2009 has been that Primary Dealers, courtesy of their access to the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, and, of course, to the Discount Window, are the critical cog in the Fed's plan to push markets ever higher. In a fashion, the banks that make up the PD community are the designated proxies of the Federal Reserve, allowing it to execute its trading strategy when its own traders at 33 Liberty are having a Starbucks break. As the PDs can pledge any worthless asset to the Fed, for which they get a dollar equivalent of 100 cents on the dollar, the PDs can leverage whatever toxic residuals they have on their balance sheet massively without even using explicit leverage, merely thanks to the Fed's lax standards in accepting practically any collateral. We have had occasional glimpses into what "assets" make up the tri-party repo system that is the backbone of the US financial system, but absent a full blown evaluation and transparency of the Federal Reserve, only the Fed (and specifically its New York branch) and Jamie Dimon really know the state of affairs when it comes to pledge collateral. However, there is some information that we can glean on the broader sense of risk within the Primary Dealer community, which is possible courtesy of the NY Fed's disclosure of the PD's transactions and net holdings by various asset classes. Our focus in this post are the Primary Dealers' transactions and holdings in US Treasuries.

Here is the only math you need to know as we all look at 2010: in 2009 US Dollar denominated fixed income supply, net of the Fed's Quantitative Easing operations, was $190 billion. In 2010 it will be $2,060 billion, an eleven fold increase. The Fed has three choices: 1) a QE 2 announcement soon, causing a plunge in already low Democrat popularity ahead of the mid-term elections; 2) interest rates skyrocketing, throwing the economy into a true tailspin; 3) the mother of all engineered equity crashes to return capital flow to risk-free assets. None of the three is a pleasant choice, however the Fed could only delay the inevitable hangover from the biggest private-to-public risk transfer in history for so long.