This posting is dedicated to all the men and women serving America abroad. Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, Navy, State Dept. and anyone else out there who is working to protect our freedom and interests. Thank You Very Very Much!!!


The week before Christmas 2008
(for Detroit and D. C.)

T'was the week before Christmas and all through the plants,
not a creature was stirring, not even the ants.
The assembly lines were shut down with great care
In hopes that Uncle Sam would soon bring repair.

From politicos in D. C. there rose such a chatter,
"We cannot allow Detroit's factories to be battered!!!"
The Motor City Magi hopped in their private jets
and flew to D. C. to beg for as much money as they could get.

They went to Congress with visions of C-notes in their heads
but were admonished "you should have driven instead!!!"
Back to the Motor City the Magi's chariot's did fly,
all so heartbroken they could have cried.

"Who are these wise-arses to treat us in this manner?
Fannie and Freddie prove us managers much better.
If we could only get back our campaign contributions
that would give us true problem resolution!"

The magi gave a collective shrug and dejectedly sighed
"It's back to D. C. we all must fly.. make that drive!!!"
They ordered their lackeys to acquire them good wheels.

"Get a Ford!! Get a Chevy!!!
Get a Chrysler! Get a Buick!!
No Navigators! no Suburbans!
No Vipers! No Vettes!!!
especially no Camry or Civic!"

The Magi dashed landward to the East this time
Hoping their gestures would work just fine.
Democrats vowed taxpayers they would protect
and still save the industry from its own neglect.

Republicans responded with "wait just a minute,
we can't protect taxpayers without taxation limits!!
We're not Santa Claus, nor the Easter Bunny
The taxpayers just don't have that much money!!"

This put the hot potato in the President's lap
He told the magi" this is the time to act.
I will authorize $14 billion to you.
In return this is what you need to do."

"By march 31 2009 you will have a plan in place
to reverse 30 years losses in the market share race
You must get all your stakeholders to work together
to make your companies a whole lot better."

The magi did thank him for the multitude of bucks
"It's nothing" he said "as Pres I'm just a lame duck.
This time next month you'll deal with a new president
who wants to spread the wealth to all US residents."

This thought made Mr. Bush look forward to Texas
and getting away from the city of taxes.
He was overcome by a flood of so much good cheer
He proclaimed "Merry Christmas and a happy new year!!"

The End (finally)

Why a car czar creeps me out.

During the oil embargo of the early 1970s, President Nixon appointed James Love as Energy Czar to head the newly formed Federal Energy Administration. Now we are stuck with a cabinet level agency, the Department of Energy in its place. Did we really need another bureaucracy in the first place? I don't think so.

My concern is a Car Czar will transform itself into another large bureaucracy. Thank goodness President Bush did not appoint a Czar for 31 days, he just left the responsibility with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The Treasury Dept. is funding the auto bailout so they should oversee the use of the funds.

My advice for President Elect Obama is this. Make a list of all the government agencies that GM Ford and Chrysler have to deal with now. I'll get you started with the obvious, departments of Labor, Commerce, Transportation, EPA. These are just a few cabinet level federal agencies. Don't forget the various and sundry state and municipal governmental entities they deal with. Is another large bureaucracy going to make the Big 3 manufacturers into instant turnarounds? No, it will only strain their ability to turn a profit, the basic ingredient of a viable recovery.

abra cadabra.. poof!!!! WM becomes JPM!

Wow!! The FDIC did not even wait until the weekend to seize Washington Mutual(WM), the nation's largest savings bank and sell it to JP Morgan Chase (JPM). This will spare the taxpayers another bailout at the cost of shareholders and bond holders of WM. Hey!!! the people who took on more risk for more reward are left holding the bag, not the taxpayers and responsible mortgage holders!!! This is an event that should become a trend.
Just remember one thing. The root cause of this sub-prime lending crisis is the government's extension of credit (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to mortgage borrowers who could not handle the mortgage they were receiving. When Bill Clinton told Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lend money to people who could not handle the debt, that started the current sub-prime lending crisis. This occurred in 1995. In 1996 Bill Clinton became the first Democrat to be re-elected as President of the USA since FDR.
HHHMMMMMM!!!!
More to come.

deja vu: another weekend another bailout act 3

Good Grief!!! The feds are getting more done on the weekend than they do during the week. This weekend they drafted a 3 page bill requesting congressional approval of a $700 billion bailout fund to buy the bad debts that banks & insurance companies are carrying on their books. The goal is to get financial institutions to stop hoarding cash and increase the liquidity of the short term credit markets. The fear is that without increased liquidity soon, there will be an economic meltdown and collapse similar to the Great Depression. My hope is this will be the last bailout needed. Altogether this bailout is pushing the $1 trillion mark, which is a high price to pay for a soft landing. I also hope that this turns the tide on large companies expecting the taxpayers to bail them out every time their business cycle enters the slump phase.
On another front of this bailout war, the Federal Reserve gave the last 2 major US investment banks permission to change their status to bank holding companies. On Sunday Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley received the Fed's blessing to buy a commercial bank. The goal here is to give these investment banks access to commercial banks' deposits for the short term loans that are the lifeblood of investment banks. Hours after this permission was granted, Morgan Stanley signed a nonbinding letter of intent for Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to buy 20% of Morgan Stanley. Alas, a wall street company trying to rise from the ashes without 100% assistance from the Feds!! Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel?

Warning!! Another wild and wooly weekend ahead!!!

The Feds have announced plans for more intervention in the credit markets to prevent more chaos and disruption to the markets. President Bush authorized the Treasury dept to use $50 Billion from the exchange stabilization fund to guarantee money market mutual funds. These funds have been hurt by high redemption rates recently. The straw that broke the camel's back was when Putnam Investments Primary Fund was hammered by high redemptions to the point where the funds shares dipped below the $1.00 share price to $0.97. Since money market funds inception in 1970, this has been only the second "breaking the buck" incident. According to imoneynet, $169 billion was redeemed from money market mutual funds from Sept. 10 to Sept. 17. That decreased the funds total assets almost 5% in one week!! On sept 17 total money market mutual fund assets were around $3.4 trillion. Once again the phrase "too big to fail" occurred.
Good news for the taxpayers is the transfer of these redemptions to more liquid and more stable debts, mainly government debt. In effect, the redemptions are given to the government & the government uses the funds to keep the redemptions from destabilizing the money market funds. Talk about working miracles in strange ways!!!
The Treasury Dept and the Federal Reserve Board announced plans to work with Congress throughout the weekend to set up a comprehensive plan to buy out the "toxic debt" that is plaguing the credit markets. When I review the results of the government's work on market stabilization the last two weekends, Monday should prove very interesting.

P. S. The Exchange Stabilization fund was started back in the 1930s to provide emergency funds to help stabilize the US Dollar.

Time to sound the Tocsin?? revisited

See the post for 9/9/08, time to sound the tocsin. I have been pondering that quote for a week now and I realize that Director Lockhart may have meant that investors are only buying higher quality mortgage backed security portfolios, especially those with low or no exposure to sub-prime mortgages. Of course the higher quality MBS command a higher price than those with riskier mortgages in them. If you have an opinion on this please express it in the comments section.

Another day another line in the sand drawn

The Federal Reserve Board announced an $85 billion loan to AIG in exchange for a 79.9% equity stake in the company. The Fed, along with the US Treasury, consider AIG too big, too interconnected to fail. The good news is the Fed might actually turn a profit on the deal. The Fed's hope is that AIG will be able to ride out the current storm in the credit markets and get back on its feet again. When that occurs, the Fed will cash in their equity stake and pay back the loan. Let's hope this works.
Apparently the "line in the sand" the Fed drew with Lehman Brothers can shift. It seems that sand line is actually calculated on a case by case basis. The criteria being how big the company is and what impact its failure will be on the US and world economy. Lehman Brothers just didn't qualify for a direct bailout. A year ago LEH's market capitalization was $33 billion, now it's in bankruptcy proceedings and selling off its assets at bargain basement prices. Barclays bank is offering $250 million for LEH's North American investment banking and trading operations. Barclays is also paying $1.5 billion for the LEH New York headquarters and 2 New Jersey data centers. The deal is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court. The deal would save almost 10,000 LEH employees from job loss. This makes me believe the court will have no problems with it, unless it considers the price way,way,way too low.
Here's another interesting development in the LEH bankruptcy, JPMorgan Chase (JPM)advanced LEH $87 million Monday morning to allow LEH to continue its trading operations and avoid disruptions to financial markets. The New York Federal Reserve Board reimbursed JPM for this. Apparently the treasury secretary's refusal to bail out LEH did not apply to loans made after no deal was reached and LEH decided to file chapter 11 bankruptcy. On Tuesday, JPM advanced LEH another $51 million. The bankruptcy court judge also appointed JPM as LEH's clearing house for its trading operation during the proceeding. This means that JPM has put $138 million into LEH to fund its trading operations in 2 days. This is over 50% of Barc's offer of $250 million for trading and investment banking operations. What this means is beyond me, if anyone out there has any knowledge on this please share it in the comments section.

Another day another sunrise!!

Good Morning from Mt. Washington everyone!! Despite all the bad news from the world's stock markets, the Sun is rising today. Another ray of hope, the UK based Barclays (barc) bank is negotiating with Lehman Brothers to buy some units of LEH's business, just not asset and wealth management. Barc backed out of a purchase deal when the US Treasury would not guarantee LEH's future trading obligations. Barclays is interested in LEH's core broker dealer businesses. There is an urgency to the deal because Barc wants to close before LEH loses staff and clients, which would diminish the value of the purchase and make resumption of operations more difficult. Another concern is Barc's shareholders who will want to see a very low price as reward for the risk of investing in a bankrupt company.

Praise for The Feds!!!

Here in Mt. Washington, It is Monday morning and the Federal Reserve Board's meeting failed to arrange a buyer for Lehman Brothers(LEH). The Feds refused to provide any funding or guarantees for a buyer of LEH so no one offered to buy it. Bank of America, one of the potential buyers of LEH did buy Merrill Lynch(MER)for $50 billion. LEH will file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
I am very pleased with the feds decision not to fund the purchase of LEH. The American taxpayers have already bailed out too many companies. We cannot afford to keep protecting investors from the risks they took on when they invested in subprime real estate. The credit markets need a correction and the sooner it starts the sooner the markets will recover. In my opinion, the bailout of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac was good money after bad. Hopefully I am wrong and the Fannie/Freddie buyout will help stabilize the market in the long term. Today and this week will be an interesting one for Wall Street and the financial services sector of our economy.

P.S. Remember yesterday's post saying that LEH was the most urgent concern? The meeting also was concerned about other financial services firms in dire straits. Two of the other firms on the short list of troubled companies are Washington Mutual, the largest savings bank in America and American International Group(AIG), one of the world's largest insurance companies. More to come on these companies soon.

Another weekend another bailout!!

As if Mondays aren't inherently bad already, The New York Federal Reserve board convened a meeting between federal finance officials and executives of major banks, thrifts and investment firms Friday night. Lehman Brothers (LEH), the USA's 4th largest investment firm was the major and most urgent reason for the meeting. On Wednesday, Sept 10, LEH CEO Richard S. Fuld announced a plan to sell the company. He proposed taking the real estate holding which are dragging LEH's stock value down and transferring them to a separately held and traded new company. Then majority shares of the remaining institutional and personal money management units would be sold to raise much needed cash. Bloomberg news reported that LEH received bids for these units for approximately $5 Billion. Fuld proposed the sale after negotiations for a capital investment from the Korea Development Bank stopped without an infusion for LEH.
Apparently this was not good enough or fast enough for the Feds. Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal reserve board started the meeting Friday night by advising the executives present to come up with a bailout plan or run the risk of being the next company to face liquidation, bankruptcy or takeover. Meetings continued Saturday and are expected to continue on Sunday as well. LEH share price closed Friday (9/12/08) at $3.65,the trading range on Friday was $3.17 - $4.22, the 52 week range was $3.17-$67.73. This makes Friday's close a loss of over 90% from the 52 week high. No wonder the feds are acting so quickly.
Another reason the Fed is acting quickly is to reassure Foreign Banks that their holdings of LEH and other US financial services companies bonds will not suffer sudden losses. This weekend European Union finance ministers met in Nice, France to discuss the economic downturn started by the decline of the US sub-prime market. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told reporters that "The news from the United States is bad." He also expressed hope that the LEH situation would be resolved before Monday's Asian Markets opened for trading. How did the US ever get to the point where we have to reassure the world of our ability to withstand market corrections?? Maybe it's time to let LEH fail and spare the US treasury and its financiers, the American taxpayers another expensive bailout. Who knows??
To the government's credit, treasury secretary Henry Paulson is insistent that there will be no cash bailout from the US treasury this time. Most of the banks that are considering buying LEH want the US to inject some cash into the deal a la Bear Sterns in March 2008. Hang in there Hank, we're counting on you.

Time to sound the Tocsin??

So far, the goal of these rants has been to reveal that the socalled subprime mortgage crisis is not so much of a crisis as a regular part of the business cycle. (feast then famine then back to feast again in 25 words or less) This "crisis" is actually a correction. Mortgage lenders went overboard in the subprime lending area and eventually got burned. Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac the most prominent examples. Each required bailout by the Feds because they were too big to fail. Same old, same old.
On Sunday, 9/7/2008, the director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, soon to become the Federal housing finance agency, James B. Lockhart, issued a statement on the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I will quote paragraph 5 here:

"Key events over the past six months have demonstrated the increasing challenge faced by the companies in striving to balance mission and safety and soundness, and the ultimate disruption of that balance that led to today's announcements. In the first few months of this year, the secondary market showed significant deterioration, with buyers demanding much higher prices for mortgage backed securities."

Please read the last sentence, this is disturbing to me. Remember, the goal of Federal Agencies such as the FRB, FHFA, OFHEO.. etc is to help maintain orderly, efficient and effective markets. Director Lockhart seems to be saying that buyers are demanding higher prices for mortgage backed securities. Since when did the buyers demand higher prices?? Most markets, orderly, efficient, effective or otherwise have the sellers demanding higher prices and the buyers demanding lower prices. Has anyone ever gone into a grocery store and said" This chicken is worth lots more than $2.00 a pound, charge me $4.00 or I'm taking my business elsewhere, and asking everyone I know to do the same!! " If that person continued to demand higher prices one of 2 things would happen. A store employee would charge the extra money and pocket the excess for her/himself or the police would be summoned and commitment proceeding would start. (in most cases, the latter. I have an optimistic opinion for my fellow human beings.)
If the buyers are demanding higher prices, maybe I am wrong and this is a true crisis. Hopefully, there is another more reasonable explanation for buyers wanting to pay more for their purchases.
You can read the Director's statement about Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac's takeover at visit FHFA newsroom. Choose Statement of FHFA Director James B Lockhart dated 09/07/2008 when you get to the newsroom.

Feds seize Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

WooooHoooo!!! The Federal Government put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in Conservatorship to prevent further economic losses from the deteriorating home mortgage market. These 2 quasi-government agencies hold nearly 50% of the USA's home mortgage debt. Who created this gross violation of the investor's risk management rule of not putting too many eggs in one basket?? The Federal Government of course. This reminds me of the farmer jokes about the fox guarding the chicken coop from the weasels. Fortunately, The Feds are bringing in retired banking executives to guide the "Enterprises" through the conversatorship. David Moffett, former vice chairman and CFO of US Bancorp, will head Freddie Mac. Herb Allison, former vice chairman of Merrill Lynch, will head Fannie Mae. This gives me hope that this conversatorship will eventually work to the benefit of the American taxpayers, not the shareholders who are supposed to deal with both the risks and rewards.
What exactly is a conversatorship?? When a company is in dire straits and facing failure, it can be put in a conversatorship. The goal of conversatorship is to turn a company around, stabilize it and let it go back to business as usual. Oftten when a company is bailed out by the government, the phrase too big to fail becomes all too commonplace. Liquidation of the company is not a goal, in fact, it is considered an option of last resort.
Another ray of hope for the success of the conversatorship are the presidential candidates responses to the takeover. Republican John McCain supports the conversatorship but wants the "enterprises" to be privatized once they are out of the conversatorship and taken off the backs of the American taxpayers. Barack Obama wants "clarification of the private and public nature of our housing policies." He also does not want shareholders to be protected from the risk inherent in mortgage investing by the American taxpayers. For once they both agree on the right way to handle one of our nation's problems. Wow! Sept. 7, 2008 should be a red letter day in history.

Speaking of history, let's add a historical perspective to this event. So far in 2008 11 banks have failed and required bailout by the Feds. In 1988, over 200 banks failed. During the 1980s over 800 banks and 500 savings and loan associations failed. That is 1300 financial institutions in a 10 year period. Do the math and you will discover that is 130 failures a year or over 10 failures a month for 120 months. Yikes!! History does repeat itself from time to time and those who do not learn from past mistakes are bound to commit them again and again.

A look at the historical price of gasoline.

Today I will examine a major contributor to the subprime mortgage crisis. It has nothing to do directly with mortgages unless you consider the ability to pay your mortgage important. I'm sure you've heard the saying a picture is worth a 1000 words. Look at this chart of the historical cost of gasoline courtesy of Inflationdata.com. It is worth 10 fold a picture. Notice that the annual average cost of gasoline in 2002 when many of these subprime adjustable rate mortgages were written was less than $1.50 a gallon!! By 2006 when these subprime mortgages had to be renewed the price was $2.50 a gallon, an increase of 66%. In 2007 the price increased to $2.75, that's 10% in 1 year!! Even if mortgage prices remained stable or even decreased 2%-5% these increases in gasoline would challenge most people's budgets.
Another interesting fact is gas prices ranged between $1.00 and $1.25 throughout the '90s. During this same period SUVs, few of which got better than 15 mpg, were selling like hotcakes. The Lincoln Navigator, one of the biggest pieces of automotive metal available to consumers, gets 12 mpg city 18 mpg highway. This behomoth was developed during the 90s and first produced in 1998. Does the price of gasoline affect car buying decisions? you bet it does!!

P. S. I definitely recommend you visit inflationdata.com. It has charts on historical costs of many items such as oil and gasoline. It is an eyeopening experience to behold. It also has tutorials on subjects to give us a perspective on inflation and money. If you don't want to live a hand to mouth existence until the day you die, this website will help you avoid this.

Just another primer on subprime lending

For the last couple of years there have been lots and lots of articles on the (alleged) subprime mortgage crisis. I disagree with about 98% of these articles which can only mean 1 thing. 98% of the articles have it wrong. So I have decided to put my thoughts on this crisis into the blogosphere to try and lower the error rate on this subject.

The first issue I have with subprime lending is the misconception that it is the major cause of rising foreclosure rate. These mortgages are 3-5 year adjustable rate mortgages (arms) with a lower "teaser " rate designed for people who otherwise could not get a mortgage. When the 3-5 year period for this teaser rate expired, the arm would be readjusted to reflect prevailing interest rates. If % rates are lower, the borrowers get the same payments or even a lower one. If interest rates are higher, the new payments are higher. This oversimplified explanation is partially due to journalism's need for a brief attention getting headline to grab people's attention. The real cause of the increase in foreclosures is a confluence of several changes in the american economy. No editor would ever allow a headline which read "Foreclosures on the rise due to subprime mortgage's expiration of "teaser" starter rates when interest rates are increasing along with overall increase in the inflation rate, especially food and energy." Do you think all of these mortgages would be at risk of foreclosure if gasoline costs were lower when these mortgages had to be renewed? What if interest rates had stayed the same or food costs had lowered? Do you see my point here? Good, I'll expand on this as well as other misconceptions about this crisis in future posts.