TARP

The EU is getting closer to having two actual alternatives for EFSF on the table. Partial Protection Certificate (PPC) - the goal of which is to reduce coupons on bond issues - and Co-Investment Funds (CIF) which create a levered vehicle for purchasing/supporting secondary bonds. CIF’s seem to have a better chance of working, though they will require not only cheap EFSF money at the first loss part of the capital structure, but also some “dumb” money at the senior part of the capital structure.  If they get enough of that, they can create some compelling value for “mezz” investors. This is not TALF.  TALF was a much better deal for outside investors.  The range of assets the investor could choose from was broad.  Most fund managers believed they were “cheap” but couldn’t come up with the capital to invest, or handle the downside. TALF was a great opportunity.  CIF’s may create some interesting opportunities, and are at the very least flexible enough, that investors could have a discussion, but they are nowhere near as appealing as TALF was.

While everyone's attention today will be focused on Europe and the market's kneejerk reaction, America will announce its advance Q3 GDP print which is expected to show a modest bounce from recent lows.

Fresh from the European Council presses comes the complete 3 whopping page statement to bailout the Eurozone (not to be confused with Hank Paulson's 3 page TARP termsheet). There is nothing at all here, but for those who need a paperweight, feel free to print 200 copies and staple them together or something.

A very small initial rally has given way to more significant selling now as credit and equity markets pull back, EUR drops, and Bunds have rallied 1-2bps. Selling the news makes some sense but is hardly confidence-inspiring...especially given subordinated financials decompression.

Is Dick Fuld running this show? The Eurozone bailout, now being referred to as Euro TARP, is doomed to fail.  While nothing has been officially announced the markets are rallying broadly on the back of a news article published by CNBC on Monday.  The details are lacking as to the actual structure but speculation is already running rampant across the financial markets as to what it might look like.  What is presumed is that Euro TARP will follow the proposal originally proffered by Tim Geithner on his European trip recently.  That proposal had been widely dismissed by the G20 as they couldn't come to terms on any type of structure.   The current idea outlined by CNBC will bypass the G20 entirely and allow the European Investment Bank (EIB), a bank owned by the member states of the European Union, to take money from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and capitalize a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that it will create. The SPV will then issue bonds to investors and use the proceeds to purchase sovereign debt of distressed European states, which will hopefully alleviate the pressure on the distressed states (PIIGS) and the European banks that already own their sovereign debt. If alarm bells aren't already going off they will be in just moment as you get the gist of the rest of this disastrous plan.

With Bank of America investors finally realizing it is game over for the company as a going concern, at this point there are just two options for Brian Moynihan: the spin off of CFC as a bad bank, backstopped by the Fed, or, well, Chapter 11, which for a bank is essentially liquidation (and with CDS trading up 50 bps to 260 a bankruptcy seems increasingly inevitable). It also means that another TARP is on the way. And once America realizes that another several trillion have to be put into its insolvent banking sector, it will get quite violent. The biggest irony: it is AIG which takes down the financial system for the second time after its lawsuit against BAC filed last night kills Bank of America.

The best analogy I have heard so far about today's European Solution is that EFSF is being asked to do a lot of what TARP did for the U.S. I cannot disagree with that assessment. The EU is clearly pushing it well beyond it's original design. The question that remains to be answered is, who would fund the EFSF? There are stories that EFSF might buy assets from the ECB at cost. It is clearly going to lend to countries at rates that are massively off-market. It may buy debt in the open market? It may recapitalize banks? I am not sure it can have such a broad mandate and get the rating it needs or to get outside investors. What private investor would have lent to TARP? I think for this program to work, Germany and France will have to suck it up, skip the whole CDO methodology and just fund the EFSF directly. TARP only worked (or got the money it needed and was flexible enough) because the U.S. government gave the treasury carte blanche to do what they wanted.

Merry Christmas, from the US Financial Oligarchy Infrastructure, to the US Taxpayer

I bet that either you, or someone that you may know, weren't privvy to the TARP 2.0 tax payer funded bailout right under your noses, and the government released the evidence buried in one of over a dozen spreadsheets featuring over 70,000 transactions, with the incriminating one featuring over 340,000 cells and over 10,000 transactions. We at BoomBustBlog suppose they thought no one would be good enough at Excel to ferret it out, or maybe they believed we were all just numb over hearing a trillion here, a trillion there. You know, after a while it starts to add up to real money.

And here come the US taxpayers to bail out the world's biggest and most toxic bank. Reuters reports that Bank of Countrywide Lynch has sued the FDIC, and is demanding $1.75 billion from US taxpayers to recoup investor losses over a rather interesting spin on foreclosure gate. Bank of America, as trustee for failed Taylor Bean's Ocala Funding Unit, is angry that the FDIC has denied claims by Ocala noteholders to recover from Colonial Bank and an
Illinois lender also in receivership, Platinum Community Bank. The FDIC had previously served as received for Alabama's Colonial BancGroup and Taylor Bean which Zero Hedge wrote about last year. In its lawsuit BofA said Ocala used proceeds from note sales to Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas to buy Taylor Bean mortgages, but is no longer able to repay noteholders. Yet, as Reuters reports, here is the kicker: "Bank of America accused executives at Taylor Bean, Colonial and Platinum of having fraudulently schemed to "double- and triple-pledge mortgages and steal assets" to hide their faltering conditions as the housing market declined." Ironically, this is precisely what some are accusing BofA itself of having done. And to a much greater degree.

The saga of Park Avenue Bank's Charles Antonucci is over. The bank president who on March 15 was arrested on charges of engaging in a broad range of illegal conduct that
contributed, in part, to the bank's demise, but most importantly to stealing $11 million from TARP. Well, tonight the FBI has just announced that Antonucci has formally admitted to and pled guilty to securities fraud relating
to his attempt to fraudulently obtain more than $11
million worth of taxpayer rescue funds from the Troubled Asset
Relief Program ("TARP"), bank bribery, embezzlement of bank
funds, and participating in a $37.5 million scheme that left an
Oklahoma insurance company in receivership. Then again, this is what every other CEO in America is guilty of every single day. Which means that only thing Antonucci really pled guilty to was being a stupid enough to keep Park Avenue Bank Too Small To Succeed. As we all know the TBTF curtain is the only alibi all the other criminals in the industry resort to when the congressional theater convenes. Moral of the story: unless you can threaten the world with collapse, you will go to jail. And the penalty for this magnitude of stupidity is death: "Antonucci, 59, faces a maximum sentence of 135 years in
prison on the charges to which he pled guilty. He is scheduled
to be sentenced by the U.S. District Judge Naomi Buchwald on
April 8, 2011." So one down, and only about a million more to go... But not before they all collect the $144 billion in bonuses they have worked so to destroy shareholder value for this entire year (or so we can dream).

The Treasury Department has asked NASA to redesign their standard message henceforth to be sent on all unmanned space vehicles. Here is an exclusive sneak preview for your consideration.

Now that the High Frequency Signing (HFS, not to be confused with HFT) scandal is mainstream, and virtually every single foreclosure in the US in the past several years is under question, with the impact on mortgage servicers (who just happen to be the TBTF banks) could be just as dire as the fallout from the credit crunch, it appears that the get out of jail card for the banking syndicate has once again materialized, this time in the form of bill HR3808: Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2009, sponsored by Republican representative Robert Aderholt. The bill, it turns out, has passed both congress and senate, and is now quietly awaiting for Obama's signature to be enacted into law. In summary, the bill requires all federal and state courts to recognize notarizations made in other states. That's the theoretical definition: the practical one - the legislation, if enacted, could protect bank and mortgage processors from liability for false or improperly prepared documents. In other words, with one simple signature Obama has the capacity to prevent tens of billions in damages to banks from legal fees, MBS deficiency claims, unwound sales, and to formally make what started this whole mess: Court Fraud perpetrated by banks, a legal act, and to finally trample over the constitution. Will Obama do it? Potentially - the banking lobby certainly has enough power over him and his superiors, the members of the FOMC. On the other hand, the populist revolt that will surely follow the enactment of such a law will certainly end any dreams of a second term, and potentially of a completed first one. The drama is now on: will Obama openly side on behalf of the bankers (without a "blame the republicans" fall back this time) or of the foreclosure "victims" (granted, the bulk of whom are deadbeat homeowners who should never have owned a home to begin with). We doubt a decision will be reached before the midterms, although quite a bit now hangs in the balance.

Bernanke and his friends in the Treasury seem to be pulling a fast one on the world, inflating US assets and deflating US liabilities through a falling dollar, while giving the US companies a chance to fund themselves cheaply. The only ones who are harmed are not voters or, if they are, they don’t have many votes. However, those who own the most US assets and will be financing the US in the future can not be pleased by this. It might be that the Eurozone is short-sighted allowing the euro to rise (see A Race to Two Bottoms, September 23), but the US is not thinking about the long term either. This is a very short term game. If the economy does go into a recession next year, as we expect, equities will decline anyway, and the government’s escape will only be temporary. TARP II will need to be rolled out alongside QE II and many will be left with a sour taste in their mouths. - John Taylor

There is a reason why many countries institute mandatory retirement age: it is so that when dementia strikes, and people spout any damn thing that comes to mind, only the nearest four walls are subject to their insanity. Alas, when it comes to Berkshire Hathaway, no such luck. And while we have extensively discussed Warren Buffett's recent inexorable decline from merely a successful rider of the biggest cheap credit bubble in history to a captured puppet of Wall Street courtesy of his tens of billions of Wall Street-related investments, little has been said about his even older, and apparently even more affected by the unpleasant side-effects of a public televised senescence, sidekick, Charlie Munger. Luckily, courtesy of Bloomberg we now know just how deep the rot runs in the Berkshire family. During a discussion at the Universtiy fo Michigan, the 86 year old told the 25 million of Americans who comprise the 16.7% of the underemployed population in the country, to "suck it in and cope." Not only that, but apparently, all those who have been without a job for 99 weeks and more and no longer have recourse to insurance benefits, should "thank God for bank bailouts." Why of course he would say that: after all $26 billion worth of direct BRK investments were the recipient of over $95 billion in bailouts. So when it comes to him, thank god for the bailout indeed... But when it comes to the little man, old Charlie is all about doing the right thing.