Moral Hazard

He said nothing, but a lot was said. My thoughts.

Five months ago, Zero Hedge observed the nuances of the Federal Reserve's Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) and concluded that this artificial liquidity boosting construct was nothing more than yet another scam to allow banks to extract ever more money from taxpayers, with the complicit blessing of the Federal Reserve Board Of New York (as the original piece also provided an in-depth discussion of the triparty repo market which is now a parallel to the buzzword of the day in the form of Lehman's "Repo 105" off balance sheet contraption, it should serve as a useful refresher course to anyone who wishes to understand why while Repo 105 with its $50 billion in liability contingency may have been an issue, the true Repo market, with over $3 trillion of likely just as toxic assets, is where the real pain in the future will come from). The PDCF would allow assets of declining and even inexistent value to be pledged as collateral, thus making sure that taxpayer cash was funneled into sham institutions holding predominantly toxic assets, and whose viability was and is limited, yet still is backed by the Fed, which to this day continues to pour our money into them. Today, with a tip from the NYT's Eric Dash, we demonstrate just how grossly negligent the Federal Reserve was when it came to Lehman's abuse of the PDCF, and how the trail of slime of Lehman's increasingly obvious manipulation of its books goes to the very top of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and its then governor - a very much complicit Tim Geithner.

Summary of the week's bullish and bearish news, as well as general thoughts and technical observations

The recovery has been uneven around the globe. The US with heavy stimulus has returned rapidly to positive growth (whether we can sustain it is a completely different debate), Swiss real estate was never really affected by the quasi worldwide slide and GDP in Switzerland is expected to be between 1% and 1.5% for 2010, and Canada has not only returned to positive growth but it also has to consider slowing down a bubbly real estate market. Meanwhile Europe's leading rebounder Germany is not guarantied to post positive GDP for Q1, Greece is wondering wether debt refinancing and what it will take will lead to civil war, Spain's industrial output is still approximately 30% off of what it was in late 2007, and Japan is discussing extending QE. The least we can say is that the bottoming process is rather uneven based on where you live, and with rates at near 0% everywhere or almost, we look at what relative value opportunities may present themselves as central banks debate how to transition from QE to more "normalized" liquidity environment and finally towards higher rates. - Nic Lenoir

The government can always rescue the markets or interfere with contract law whenever it deems convenient with little or no apparent cost. (Investors believe this now and, worse still, the government believes it as well. We are probably doomed to a lasting legacy of government tampering with financial markets and the economy, which is likely to create the mother of all moral hazards. The government is blissfully unaware of the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”) - Seth Klarman

A vigilant reader points out that the biggest threat to markets these days is not moral hazard, which has been embraced by everyone and their grandmothers. It is that pesky "Amoral" version that is now raising eyebrows. To wit:

Put in a sentence.

------------(insert financial institution) exersised a great deal of amoral hazard when they collaborated with other funds to hasten the fall of __________ (pick a company or country) by shorting __________ (stock/cds/currency).

Because there surely would be no moral hazard be if there was no amoral hazard in the first place. Can we get rid of those pesky (efficient) markets altogether and just call for the Central Committee, aka the Fed, to run things with everyone's blessings? After all, they do so already.

Enacting a credible bankruptcy process to solve the too-big-to-fail problem, clarifying the Fed's umbrella supervision and financial stability roles, and enhancing market discipline are steps we must take to lower the probability of a future crisis. We could simplify the entire financial regulatory legislative initiative by focusing on these three key elements. We do not need huge new bureaucracies, or a complete restructuring of our regulatory agencies. - Charles Plosser

It is not often that one finds smoking gun reports which refute all claims, such as those by EuroStat and Angela Merkel, in which the offended parties plead ignorance of the fiscal inferno raging around them, kindled by lies, deceit, and blatant mutually-endorsed fraud, and instead, now facing themselves in the spotlight of public fury, put the blame solely on related party participants, such as, in a recent case, Greece and Goldman Sachs. Yet a 2001 report prepared by Gustavo Piga, in collaboration with the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Securities Market Association, not only fits that particular smoking gun description, but the report itself was damning enough of another country, a country which used precisely the same off-market swap arrangement to end up with an interest expense of LIBOR minus 16.77% (in essence the counteparty was paying Italy 16.77% of notional each year as a function of the swap mechanics), in that long ago year of 1995. The country - Italy (for confidentiality reasons referred to in the report as Country M), was at the time panned as the Enron of the European Union due to precisely this kind of off-balance sheet arrangement by the Counsel of Foreign Relations. The counterparty bank: unknown (at least in theory, since the swap was highly confidential, and was referred to as Counterpart N), but considering the critical similarities in the structuring of the swap contract to that used by Greece in 2001, and that ISMA cancelled Piga's press conference discussing his findings out of fear for the academic's life, we can easily venture some guesses as to which banks value their recurring counterparty arrangements more than human life.

Goldman's Alec Phillips provides some perspectives on why the recent announcement that the GSEs will purchase 120+ day delinquent loans will not be a major impact to either the overall MBS market or to the Fed's QE tactics when it comes to stabilizing the market. Furthermore, in addition to not being a material mitigant to the Fed's massive balance sheet holdings, some direct implications as pertains to end borrowers include a greater incentive to foreclose, a greater emphasis on non-modification strategies, and more aggressive modification efforts. Yet the major issue, the one addressed by the Fed's Hoenig yesterday when discussing the urgent need to commence selling Fed assets asap, will likely be completely sidestepped, in essence stressing the need to find a legacy replacement through to QE when it expires in just over a month.

Fleckenstein, Roubini, Rogoff, Eichengreen all sound off on the European debacle and more on the big, fat Greek swap.

Part 1 makes a case that an ideal way to catalyze job creation in the U.S. is to subsidize American consumers and producers of customized
education, and American operators of associated online markets. Part 1 concludes by speculating about the reasons that said subsidies are
absent from all talk of "jobs stimulus." From part 1: "A guess? In two words? Banks, children."

An informed view on the Greek fiscal crisis and a brilliant interview with Michael Hudson which exposes the reality on the global financial system and explains why we are sinking back into a new feudalism.

Here is a recent conversation (argument) that I, the not-famous Econophile, had with the famous Martin Wolf, the much lauded and highly awarded dean of economics writers and chief economics correspondent for the Financial Times. This time I take him on for what I thought was a pointless article about Germany and the Greeks. Win, lose, or draw?

"Mr. Volcker has argued for some time that the operations of commercial banks and investment banks should be separated. It was said in the US not so long ago that as long as Mr. Volcker (he is currently 82 years old) is alive, the 1930s-era Glass-Steagall Act—which split up commercial and investment banks—would not be repealed.

But the 1990s saw a gradual rollback of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, and in 1999 the Act was finally repealed. I suspect Mr. Volcker was not happy to see this happen.

In what may or may not have been a coincidence, it was around the time that Glass-Steagall was repealed that the US moved towards a system of financial capitalism and its financial sector began a dramatic expansion. This phase continued until the housing bubble collapsed." - Richard Koo

All eyes on the Vancouver games but there is a post-Olympics winter chill headed our way, and you'll be surprised to find out that all is not peachy in good old boring Canada...