It's different this time: this ship is unsinkable! Full speed ahead I say!"
Posted on 03/23/2008 5:49:23 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
We may never know for sure whether the Federal Reserve's rescue of Bear Stearns averted a seizure of the $516 trillion derivatives system, the ultimate Chernobyl for global finance.
"If the Fed had not stepped in, we would have had pandemonium," said James Melcher, president of the New York hedge fund Balestra Capital.
"There was the risk of a total meltdown at the beginning of last week. I don't think most people have any idea how bad this chain could have been, and I am still not sure the Fed can maintain the solvency of the US banking system."
All through early March the frontline players had watched in horror as Bear Stearns came under assault and then shrivelled into nothing as its $17bn reserve cushion vanished.
Melcher was already prepared - true to form for a man who made a fabulous return last year betting on the collapse of US mortgage securities. He is now turning his sights on Eastern Europe, the next shoe to drop.
"We've been worried for a long time there would be nobody to pay on the other side of our contracts, so we took profits early and got out of everything. The Greenspan policies that led to this have been the most irresponsible episode the world has ever seen," he said.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has moved with breathtaking speed to contain the crisis. Last Sunday night, he resorted to the "nuclear option", invoking a Depression-era clause - Article 13 (3) of the Federal Reserve Act - to be used in "unusual and exigent circumstances".
The emergency vote by five governors allows the Fed to shoulder $30bn of direct credit risk from the Bear Stearns carcass. By taking this course, the Fed has crossed the Rubicon of central banking.
To understand why it has torn up the rule book, take a look at the latest Security and Exchange Commission filing by Bear Stearns. It contains a short table listing the broker's holding of derivatives contracts as of November 30 2007.
Bear Stearns had total positions of $13.4 trillion. This is greater than the US national income, or equal to a quarter of world GDP - at least in "notional" terms. The contracts were described as "swaps", "swaptions", "caps", "collars" and "floors". This heady edifice of new-fangled instruments was built on an asset base of $80bn at best.
On the other side of these contracts are banks, brokers, and hedge funds, linked in destiny by a nexus of interlocking claims. This is counterparty spaghetti. To make matters worse, Lehman Brothers, UBS, and Citigroup were all wobbling on the back foot as the hurricane hit.
"Twenty years ago the Fed would have let Bear Stearns go bust," said Willem Sels, a credit specialist at Dresdner Kleinwort. "Now it is too interlinked to fail."
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association says the vast headline figures in the contracts are meaningless. Positions are off-setting. The actual risk is magnitudes lower.
The Bank for International Settlements uses a concept of "gross market value" to weight the real exposure. This is roughly 2 per cent of the notional level. For Bear Stearns this would be $270bn, or so.
"There is no real way to gauge the market risk," said an official
"We don't know how much is backed by collateral. We don't know what would happen in a crisis, and if we don't know, nobody does," he said.
Under the rescue deal, JP Morgan Chase will take over Bear Stearns' $13.4 trillion contracts - lock, stock, and barrel.
But JP Morgan is already up to its neck in this soup, with $77 trillion of contracts. It will now have $90 trillion on its books, a sixth of the global market.
Risk is being concentrated further. There are echoes of the old reinsurance chains at Lloyd's, but on a vaster scale.
The most neuralgic niche is the $45 trillion market for credit default swaps (CDS). These CDS swaps are a way of betting on the credit quality of companies without having to buy the underlying bonds, which are less liquid. They have long been the bête noire of New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner, alarmed that 10 banks make up 89 per cent of the contracts.
"The same names show up in multiple types of positions. These create the potential for squeezes in cash markets, magnifying the risk of adverse dynamics," he said.
"They could increase systemic risk, by amplifying rather than dampening the movement in asset prices," he said.
This is what happened as the banking crisis gathered pace. The CDS spreads measuring default risk on Bear Stearns debt rocketed from 246 to 792 in a single day on March 13 amid - untrue - rumours that the broker was preparing to invoke bankruptcy protection.
Was it the spike in spreads that set off the panic run on Bear Stearns by New York insiders? Or are the CDS spreads merely serving as a barometer?
In the old days it was hard for speculators to take "short" bets on bonds. Credit derivatives open up a whole new game.
"It is now much easier to short credit, " said James Batterman, a derivatives expert at Fitch Ratings in New York. "CDS swaps can be used for speculation, and that can cause skittish markets to overshoot," he said.
For now the meltdown panic has subsided. Yet the hottest document flying around the City last week was a paper by Barclays Capital probing what might happen in a counterparty default.
It is not for bedtime reading. Direct losses from a CDS breakdown alone could be $80bn, but the potential risks are much greater.
In theory, the contracts are matching. One sides loses, the other gains, operating through a neutral counterparty (ie Bear Stearns). But if the system seizes up, the mechanism is not neutral at all. It becomes viciously one-sided.
"Upon the default of the counterparty, [traded] derivatives would be immediately repriced, with spreads widening dramatically," said the Barclays report.
This is "gap risk", the stuff of trading nightmares. Fortunes can vanish in a moment.
One side would suddenly be trapped with staggering losses on their books. Yet the winners would be unable to collect their prize from the insolvent bank in the middle. It would take years to unravel all the claims in court. By then the financial landscape would be a scene of carnage.
Warren Buffett famously described derivatives as "weapons of mass financial destruction". The analogy is suspect, of course. Allied troops never found the alleged weapons in Iraq.
This time, Washington's pre-emptive shock and awe may have been well-advised.
Check out this thread. Especially post #64 and #157.
Market for derivatives grows at fastest pace in nine years, to $516 trillion
Let me know if you have any other questions.
From the Financial Times, via Mish Shedlock:
Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic are actively engaged in discussions about the feasibility of mass purchases of mortgage-backed securities as a possible solution to the credit crisis.
Such a move would involve the use of public funds to shore up the market in a key financial instrument and restore confidence by ending the current vicious circle of forced sales, falling prices and weakening balance sheets.
The Bank of England appears most enthusiastic to explore the idea. The Federal Reserve is open in principle to the possibility that intervention in the MBS market might be justified in certain scenarios, but only as a last resort. The European Central Bank appears least enthusiastic.
Any move to buy mortgage-backed securities would require government involvement because taxpayers would be assuming credit risk. There is no indication as yet that the US administration would favour such moves. In the eurozone it would require agreement from 15 separate governments.
One argument among policymakers and bankers has been that new international rules have exacerbated the credit squeeze by requiring assets to be valued at their current record lows rather than at face value.
Fed officials are monitoring the impact of the latest barrage of Fed liquidity moves and interest rate cuts. They also believe the US has not exhausted all the options short of wholesale public intervention and further intermediate steps are available to them.
These could include still more aggressive use of the Fed’s own balance sheet to boost liquidity in the markets.
Analysts say the US government also has plenty of scope to boost support for the markets indirectly through the Federal Housing Administration or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The UK lacks these institutions, which could be one reason why the Bank of England is keenest to explore outright intervention. The UK government has already become heavily involved in buying mortgages since September with the recent nationalisation of Northern Rock, the mortgage lender.
A perfect definition of Crony Capitalism.
I definitely get the feeling that these financial “genuises” has so goobered up the system with these incomprehensible instruments that no one knows what anything is worth anymore. People can understand a share of stock in a real company and a mortgage on a real house. What they can’t understand (or value) is what happens when you lump all these things together every which way. At its core, this is really scary stuff because these derivatives have so permeated our financial system.
And yes, it will keep happening again and again until they are outlawed. This is one huge mess.
It's different this time: this ship is unsinkable! Full speed ahead I say!"
But the notional amounts are great press. Especially for the gold bug doom crowd.
I was reading this and was concerned that it might be a reasoned argument...until the above quote was placed in the article...
The author may be right, but it does seem like he has a bone to pick outside of his discussion of 'economics'.
Tim Bond, head of asset allocation at Barclays Capital, said that U.K. policy makers should copy the Fed's program to inject liquidity into financial markets.
``The Bank of England does not provide the same comprehensive liquidity framework that the Fed has just put in place and such as exists already at the ECB,'' Bond told journalists in London on March 20. ``We need them to provide liquidity to any duration. It would deter the raiders.''
The Fed slashed its benchmark lending rate three-quarters of a point to 2.25 percent on March 18 and implemented a program to swap $200 billion in Treasuries for mortgage-backed securities. The ECB loaned 15 billion euros ($23.2 billion) of funds to meet demand for more cash before the Easter weekend.
The Bank of England lowered its benchmark rate a quarter point in February to 5.25 percent, the second cut of that size in three months.
That's funny. And wrong.
Is that like with the CEO of Goldman Sachs becomes Secy of the Treasury?
What happens when one of the counterparties is insolvent, and can't pay? One of the big 3 monoline insurers, say? How are the positions off-set then?
When an OTC derivative fails to perform, notional value becomes real value.
How is he wrong?
Hey TP, I’m glad you’re finally admitting that the new billions are pulled out of thin air. That’s real progress.
Ok Einstein can you tell us how to price the assets.
Not even the originators can tell you the values.
The fed should have kept out of it and let all the greedy slobs go down along with their greedy customers.
I would call it “defensive capitalism”. Most likely the data is arcane enough so that it would be distorted in publication. Speculators would be all over it, hoping to create a panic.
Ordinarily, that data would be very proprietary. This demand by the government should be no different than an audit. If and when it is released, it should be released with explanation, and if it is bad, what is being to to retain confidence in the market.
That seems to be a rampant phenomenon in every finance discussion I see here, too.
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