The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Financial Crisis

IMF Now Estimates Losses To Grow To 4 Trillion

The odd thing about this is that 4 trillion is the number I’ve been hearing as the banks own estimate of their losses for a few months now, I even mentioned it back in February.

If the banks think their losses are 4 trillion, that means the total losses are higher, and the worldwide losses are much, much higher.

Numbers are still being lowballed.  Now that doesn’t mean that 4 trillion will necessarily have to be spent by the federal government, the move to mark-for-market accounting, which allows banks to keep assets on their books until marutity at calculated prices, for example, will reduce how much money the government has to spend to keep banks from actually going under.  The Geithner plan, if it works, is likewise intended to inflate asset prices through the miracle of leverage, and that will reduce perceived losses.  If lucky, it might even reduce eventual nominal losses, by holding the assets to maturity and praying really hard that they don’t default, and that by maturity the market and economy are a lot stronger.

Still, all in all, my guess is that the IMF is still underestimating the issue.  In fact, it’s not even clear if there’s enough free money in the world to absorb all the real losses, but I suppose if everyone keeps printing enough money, we can get there.

Calculated Risk via Atrios

I’m Sure There’s a Difference Between the Bush/Paulson, Obama/Geithner Approaches to Bailouts

I’m just not sure what:

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

At this point in time, there seems to be no significant functional difference between Paulson/Bush and Geithner/Obama.  Both intended to give a ton of money to financial firms, either directly or by buying up crap at prices higher than justified.  Both opposed any meaningful restrictions on how they spent the money or who they gave it to.

Actually, I take it back, one difference is that when Paulson wanted 700 billion, he went to Congress.  When Geithner made up his plan he just had the FDIC and the FED pony up most of the money, because he knew Congress wouldn’t give him the money.

Some wonder if this is legal:

Although some experts are questioning the legality of this strategy, the officials said it gives them latitude to determine whether firms should be subject to the congressional restrictions, which would require recipients to turn over ownership stakes to the government, as well as curb executive pay.

Me, I don’t know if it’s legal.  What I do know is that they plan on giving money away in a manner which clearly intends to end-run Congress’s clearly legislated mandate for how it be given away.  What I know is that they are bypassing Congress when they can, because they know that the elected body which is the only one supposed to be able to pass spending bills wouldn’t give them all the money they want to spend and won’t let them spend what money it does give as freely as they want to.

Of course, that money will still have to be paid back by taxpayers, even if Congress never approved the spending.

But back to the TARP restrictions:

Congress drafted the restrictions amid its highly contentious consideration of the $700 billion rescue legislation last fall. At the time, lawmakers were aiming to reform the lavish pay practices on Wall Street. Congress also wanted the government to gain the right to buy stock in companies so that taxpayers would benefit if the firms recovered.

The requirements were honored in an initial program injecting public money directly into banks. That effort was developed by the Bush administration and continued by Obama’s team. The initiative is on track to account for the bulk of the money spent from the rescue package. All the major banks already submit to executive-compensation provisions and have surrendered ownership stakes as part of this program.

Yet as the Treasury has readied other programs, it has increasingly turned to creating the special entities. Legal experts said the Treasury’s plan to bypass the restrictions may be unlawful.

The problem is that while Geithner’s plan takes money from the FDIC and the Fed, it still uses some TARP money as seed money, and that money carries the restrictions.

I thought it wasn’t the executive’s job to decide that Congress is wrong and then deliberately end-run it.  I thought we had an election to stop this sort of thing.

This is one of the things we spent the last 8 years blasting Bush for doing. But in this particular case, the new administration is being less compliant with Congress’s will than the Bush administration was!

Less!

I don’t know whether to spit or cry.  I’ve always had my doubts about Obama, but in my worst dreams I didn’t think he’d try and end run Congress even more blatantly than Bush, in order to give even more money away to the richest Americans with even fewer restrictions and less protection from the taxpayer in terms of ownership stakes.

It’s going to be a long 4 years.

More Details On Geithner’s Plan

US Gold Coin

US Gold Coin

Bloomberg’s has more highlights of Obama’s plan for toxic assets that will be unveiled Monday by Treasury Secretary Geithner.  Newer details include:

  1. Geithner will ask Congress to give the Treasury and FDIC more powers: to guarantee more types of debt, limit payments to creditors,  and break executive compensation contracts.
  2. The Federal Reserves Term Asset Loan Facility program (TALF) will expand to riskier assets. Financing will be 1:1, and will apparently include private partners (in a way similar to the Treasury fund) who will make the investment decisions.  Profits and losses will be shared between the government and the private sector.

I still don’t like the FDIC funding plan, because the public component is up to 97%, but the Fed TALF plan makes a lot more sense.  Doing the funding 50% public, 50% private is much more fair, is not nearly as heavily leveraged (although leverage can be applied in other ways) and losses are shared much more equally, assuming these are not non-recourse loans (which they appear not to be, though that’s not certain.)

The additional powers Geithenr is asking for are acceptable, except for the ability to guarantee more types of debt.  The FDIC is already guaranteeing many bank assets: the idea of them guaranteeing even riskier classes only serves to set up  taxpayers to shoulder even more losses from the private sector’s.

Many of these concerns would be moot if the administration would just nationalize firms which are effectively insolvent. But, given that the administration won’t nationalize the banks, at least parts of this plan are not completely stupid.

The plan does however appear to perpetuate the trend of taking on private losses and putting taxpayers at risk for most of them.

Why Financial Crises Will Keep Happening

American dollar toilet paper roll

American dollar toilet paper roll

The financial crisis currently unfolding before our eyes in slow motion was inevitable and predictable. I say this because it was predicted by numbers of people. It was obvious; anyone with sense knew it was coming (a group which apparently includes very few people); and despite the fact that we’ve known for years it was going to happen, it happened anyway.

The same was true of the dot-com bubble. The inevitability of the dot-com collapse was obvious, at least as far back as 1996/1997. Everyone knew it who wasn’t paid not to know it, and it happened anyway and burst anyway.

Both of these foreseeable collapses raises the question of deliberate government policy—both bubbles were fostered and grown from tiny soap-suds with the aid of Alan Greenspan’s Fed and various other government and private and semi-private actors (in the case of the current collapse, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

Creating the bubble behind the current financial crisis took the cooperation and encouragement of a lot of people beyond the government, people who benefited a great deal from it. Let’s take Chuck Prince, the ex-CEO of Citigroup. Prince walked away from his near-destruction of Citigroup with about $41.5 million, including a $12 million bonus for his performance. The moral of the story is: drive the place into the ground, get paid well. Then there’s Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal who walked away with $160 million.

Nice work if you can get it.

But if the rot was limited to the top, it wouldn’t be nearly as big a problem.

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