Three years ago, the government in all its glory and sound central-planning decided to provide a fully-FDIC-backed facility to allow banks to raise capital at ultra-cheap cost of funds in the middle of the crisis. The Term-Loan-Guarantee-Program (TLGP) has not been far from our thoughts but the next month or so is going to be increasingly anxiety-inducing for the banks that took advantage of that bailout. By the end of June 2012 (i.e. the next six weeks) there is almost $60 billion of TLGP debt that matures for US banks (and will need to be refinanced we assume). This $60 billion has an average cost of funds of 0.3% (that is yield NOT spread) which when compared to the 3.5% - 4% cost of funds for mid-dated US financial debt currently (average CDS around 230bps) means a more than 10x increase in funding costs for this segment of their debt. Of course there are yield-hungry ETF-buyers to be satisfied (note LQD can soak this up and few retail investors realize just how exposed LQD - the investment-grade ETF - is to US financials) and so we expect them to get this off but it can only pressure spreads wider as supply dominates demand in this risk-averse market environment.
[3]
Data: Bloomberg