Global Financial Crisis (Was: Subprime Meltdown)

[Fusion_power]

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who is part of the majority leadership team in the Senate, told ABC's "This Week" that an economic recovery package between $500 billion and $700 billion is needed and could be ready by the time Obama takes office on January 20.

"I think it has to be deep. In my view it has to be between five and seven hundred billion dollars," Schumer said.

Dig a hole, pour money in, eventually, the hole will get full. Why is it that all these politicians think we can spend our way out of the depression we are currently in? Don't get me wrong, there are things that can be done to ease the blow, but there is no way to spend enough money to avert the ongoing fiscal logjam.

The pump is broken, it does not need priming. It needs a new pump.

DarJones

[rogue]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who is part of the majority leadership team in the Senate, told ABC's "This Week" that an economic recovery package between $500 billion and $700 billion is needed and could be ready by the time Obama takes office on January 20.

"I think it has to be deep. In my view it has to be between five and seven hundred billion dollars," Schumer said.

Dig a hole, pour money in, eventually, the hole will get full. Why is it that all these politicians think we can spend our way out of the depression we are currently in? Don't get me wrong, there are things that can be done to ease the blow, but there is no way to spend enough money to avert the ongoing fiscal logjam.

The pump is broken, it does not need priming. It needs a new pump.

DarJones

The one thing I like about the package is that it isn't a "bail-out". If it is designed to employ companies and people to help fix the problems with the nation's infrastructure, then it will be a good use of the money. I'm concerned that it might not be wisely spent. For example, will it be used to build a bunch of "bridge to nowheres" just to employ people or will it be spent on worthwhile projects, such as replacing bridges and roads where needed.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

The pump is broken, it does not need priming. It needs a new pump.

Can you explain that in non-figurative terms, please?

[only_human]

A local search tells me that the Black-Scholes formula has not been mentioned on this forum. Because this forum has a strong mathematical orientation I felt that it this formula deserved brief mention in the role of a footnote. Keith Devlin's book "The Language of Mathematics." says:

The Black-Scholes formula provides a means for determining the price to put on a particular derivative. By turning what would otherwise be a guessing game into a mathematical science, the Black-Scholes formula made the derivatives market into the hugely lucrative industry it is today.

So revolutionary was the very idea that you could use mathematics to price derivatives that initially Black and Scholes had difficulty publishing their work. When they first tried in 1970, the University of Chicago's Journal of Political Economy and Hardvard's Review of Economics and Statistics both rejected the paper without even bothering to have it reviewed

So great was the role played by the Black-Scholes formula (and extensions due to Merton) in the growth of the new options market that, when the American stock market crashed in 1978, the influential business magazine Forbes put the blame squarely on that one formula. Scholes himself has said that it was not so much the formula that was to blame, but rather that marketeers had not grown sufficiently sophisticated in using it.

Looking around it seems that it is used primarily in options contract calculations but Google finds about 73,300 hits for "Black-Scholes" "Mortgage Backed Securities"

Whither Black-Scholes? is a commentary by a derivatives consultant that states that that the formula is not needed or used much and the volatility input into the formula is frequently "fudged."

[Fusion_power]

Ch,

Efforts so far have been to treat the financial market meltdown like a broken pump that needs to be re-primed to get it to function. My position is that markets expanded too much with CDS and MBS which destabilized the entire market. If they don't do something to repair the underlying market structure, no amount of credit extended to banks/brokerages will be enough to fix the problems. Very specifically, Credit Default Swaps must be dealt with along with shutting down most of the unregulated activities that sent the market out of control in the first place. I am not a proponent of market regulation, but the glaringly obvious conclusion is that some regulation was needed several years ago to forestall the current market going over a cliff.

DarJones

[ewmayer]

Citigroup Gets $306 Billion Shield From Losses, Capital After Stock Dive: Citigroup Inc. received a U.S. government rescue package that shields the bank from losses on toxic assets and injects $20 billion of capital, bolstering the stock after its 60 percent plunge last week.

As to the apparent double standard the government has with respect to bailout-money-for-banks versus bailout-money-for-everybody-else...

Why Citigroup got Detroit's money: The government wants the Big Three to prove they are worthy of a $25 billion loan but Citigroup didn't have to twist any arms to get another $20 billion.

Even though a collapse of one or more of the Big Three could have major negative implications on the economy, particularly the unemployment rate, he said preventing a Citigroup bankruptcy could forestall an even worse shock to the already fragile financial system.

"This is dramatically different. Essentially, what the government needed to do is under no circumstances allow Citigroup to fail. You can't have a financial world without the major banks," he said.

David Resler, chief economist with Nomura Securities International, added that he thinks bankruptcy could be an option for the Big Three whereas a bankruptcy for a bank would mean liquidation, similar to what happened with Lehman Brothers in September.

And that is not something he thinks the government would allow to happen.

"Citi stands at the center of the financial system. It's a huge company whose relations are intricately woven throughout the entire economy. The intent is shoring up the system in this near-term crisis, not necessarily one company," Resler said.

Sure, there are some who argue that bankruptcy for an automaker would also be its death knell. But even if one or more of the Big Three go away, some suggest that the government may allow this simply because the Big Three deserves to fail because of decades of mistakes.

My Comment: ...Unlike Citi and its fellow Big Finance brethren, who have been sterling corporate citizens all that time, and are helpless innocent victims of reckless "predatory borrowing" on the part of greedy homebuyers with poor credit scores. (Yes, irony is truly dead).


Fed Pledges Exceed $7.4 Trillion in Rescue of Companies With Frozen Credit: The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

[ewmayer]

Fed unveils $800 billion plan to bolster consumer lending, housing: Move aims to normalize rate spreads for asset-backed securities

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Reserve unveiled new steps Tuesday to lower borrowing costs for consumers and home buyers.

The Fed announced what it called a term asset-backed-securities loan facility, a plan under which it will lend up to $200 billion to support the issuance of debt backed by consumer and small-business debt, such as credit-card loans, student debt, auto loans and loans backed by the Small Business Administration.
In addition, the Fed said it would purchase up to $100 billion in direct debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks and up to $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities backed by Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie Mae.

In general terms, economists welcomed the new Fed actions, but some critics complained it did not make sense to encourage Americans to borrow more money.

The facility is designed to generate increased credit availability and to support economic activity by facilitating renewed issuance of consumer and small-business asset-backed securities at what the Fed called "more normal interest-rate spreads."

On Nov. 12, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson laid out some details for the next stage of the government's financial-market rescue package when he announced that he had shelved the original plan to buy troubled mortgage assets while turning his attention to nonbank financial institutions and consumer finance.
Some of the money saved from not buying mortgage assets would be used to shore up the market for credit-card receivables, auto loans and student loans, according to Paulson. "This market, which is vital for lending and growth, has for all practical purposes ground to a halt," he said.

As an example of the trouble consumer lenders are having, credit-card giant American Express Co. -- on the same day that Paulson said the Fed's latest plan was on the way -- sought government help to steer it through the financial crisis, and Capital One Financial Corp.[/url]: [i]received preliminary approval for $3.55 billion in U.S. investment.

U.S. government officials said the new ABS program is designed to go around banks to cash-strapped investors.

Brazil Caught by Credit Squeeze Forcing Farmers to Cut Coffee, Corn Yields: Coffee farmer Joao Carlos Terra says his trees will yield about a third less than planned next year because he can’t get a big enough loan to buy fertilizer and pesticide as the global credit crunch bites in Brazil.


BHP Billiton Withdraws $66 Billion Stock Offer for Rio Tinto, Cites Crisis: BHP Billiton Ltd. abandoned its year-long pursuit of Rio Tinto Group, blaming the rout in commodities prices and the credit-market squeeze for derailing the biggest hostile takeover.

Marius Kloppers, chief executive officer of the world’s largest mining company, said the combination of $40 billion in new debt and regulatory hurdles made the $66 billion bid too risky at a time when the slowing world economy reduced demand for raw materials. Rio plunged as much as 43 percent in London trading, while Melbourne-based BHP shares jumped 21 percent.

As recently as August, Kloppers was bullish on commodities and increasing demand from China justifying his bid. After spending $450 million on the bid, he’s confronting a 50 percent drop in copper prices and a 45 percent decline in oil as the world’s biggest economies face their first simultaneous recessions since World War II.

“The withdrawal of the bid paints a very gloomy picture,” Charles Cooper, an analyst at Evolution Securities Ltd. in London, wrote in a report. “The outlook for commodities is set to remain weak, inventories will build and prices will fall, adversely affecting company earnings and valuations.”

Goodwin's $140 Billion Binge May Doom RBS to U.K. Control After Stock Sale: During nine years at the helm of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Fred Goodwin excelled at beating his peers.

In 2000, he pulled in the richest paycheck among British bank chief executive officers. He carried out the world’s largest bank merger, making RBS Europe’s No. 1 lender as of June 2008, with assets of 1.73 trillion pounds. Goodwin even once bragged that the bank topped the corporate tax rolls, paying more to the Inland Revenue than any other U.K. firm.

Under Goodwin’s tutelage, RBS also became Europe’s biggest backer of leveraged buyouts. In November, RBS was about to chalk up one final superlative: It may become the recipient of the largest direct investment by a European government in a bank since the global financial crisis began last summer.

The U.K. was preparing to invest as much as 20 billion pounds ($30 billion) in RBS after the bank wrote down more than 7 billion pounds in bad loans and investments in the first 10 months of 2008 and may report its first-ever annual loss. RBS said in October that Goodwin, 50, would be stepping down the following month.

“It’s absolutely catastrophic,” Stephen Cockburn, managing director of London-based fund manager The Investment Company Plc, says of the bank’s decline. He has watched the RBS shares he bought for 366.5 pence each in March dwindle to 50.8 pence apiece on Nov. 24.

Cockburn blames the straits RBS is in on Goodwin’s breakneck expansion as CEO, which included $140 billion of takeovers, starting with the purchase of National Westminster Bank Plc in 2000. The most recent example was the 72 billion euro ($90 billion) purchase of ABN Amro Holding NV in 2007 with partners Banco Santander SA of Spain and Fortis of Belgium after a bidding war with Barclays Plc.

‘Folly’

“The folly was to go ahead with ABN Amro, to outbid Barclays and then, when the storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, to go ahead with it,” Cockburn says. “It was megalomania on the part of the management.”

AIG Freezes Executive Compensation, Says Chief Liddy Will Take $1 Salary: American International Group Inc., the insurer bailed out by the U.S., said its top seven leaders won’t receive salary increases or bonuses this year.

Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy will take a $1 salary this year and next, and another 50 executives will forego pay raises through 2009, the New York-based company said today in a statement.

My Comment: Ahem, I believe you mean the AIG execs will "forgo" their usual pay raises. To paraphrase the right reverend Dr. Bob Silverman, you can lead a spell checker to the font of all verbiage, but you can`t make it think. In this case, CEO Liddy really is getting a bit screwed, seeing as he only jopined AIG in September, post-bailout. Ah well, nothing a few company-sponsored executive retreats to cushy resorts won`t help assuage.


Volkswagen, Porsche Halt Production as Slump Hits Europe's Auto Heartland: Volkswagen AG and Porsche SE said they’ll suspend production at their hometown plants in coming weeks as the global recession reaches to the heart of the German automotive industry, Europe’s biggest.

VW will shutter its factory in Wolfsburg from Dec. 18 to Jan. 11, according to a company official who declined to be identified. Porsche will halt output in Stuttgart for seven days between now and the end of January. Each plant is its owner’s biggest and located at the global headquarters.

Volkswagen employs 44,000 people in Wolfsburg, a quarter of its 175,000-strong German workforce. Production is being cut after vehicle sales fell 5.1 percent last month, even with a lineup of models such as the Golf and Polo that is regarded as well-suited to customer requirements for smaller, less-costly and more fuel-efficient cars. Porsche suffered a 50 percent drop in deliveries in October, including a 40 percent decline in sales of its trademark 911 sports car.

“I don’t think that Porsche’s customers have suddenly fallen into poverty, but they’re reacting to the fact that it may be inappropriate to pull up in a new Porsche when their neighbor’s house is being foreclosed,” said Christoph Stuermer, an analyst at research firm IHS Global Insight in Frankfurt. For VW, the closure shows the new Golf “can’t defy gravity,” he said.

My Comment: BTW, it recently emerged who the biggest victim of the recent post-Porsche-takeover-announcement short squeeze in VW shares was. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of "Volks".

[Fusion_power]

Careful where you throw those spelling rocks Ewmayer, you "jopined" the volks needing a spellchecker.

DarJones

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Careful where you throw those spelling rocks Ewmayer, you "jopined" the volks needing a spellchecker.

DarJones

Foist by my own leotard, eh? Volks who live in straw huts shouldn't stow thrones, and all that.

[ewmayer]

UK | Brown's `Churchill' Moment Masks Failure of U.K. Bank Regulator He Created: Gordon Brown isn’t known for making quick decisions. He agonized for months over whether to call early elections after becoming U.K. prime minister in June 2007, before deciding against it.

Brown finds himself defending his own handiwork: the U.K.’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority. He created the FSA, which oversaw banks during the meltdown, in his first year as chancellor of the exchequer, in 1997. The agency is a proponent of “principles-based” regulation, which means it oversees the financial system via a set of 11 broad-based principles rather than the thousands of specific rules enforced by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Unlike the SEC, which regulates only the securities industry and mutual funds, the FSA is responsible for all financial institutions: insurance companies, mutual funds and commercial, mortgage and investment banks. It also regulates hedge fund managers.

For years, Brown held up principles-based regulation as a model. The first two principles are “a firm must conduct business with integrity” and “a firm must conduct its business with due skill, care and diligence.” One admirer was Paulson, who praised the British system.

‘Run on the Rock’

Then came Sept. 14, 2007, when thousands of depositors lined up at branches of Newcastle-based mortgage lender Northern Rock Plc demanding their money. It was the first run on a British bank in more than 140 years, and a subsequent Parliamentary probe blamed the FSA’s lack of oversight for the bank’s failure.

Limping under a mountain of debt, Northern Rock was taken over by the government in February. In the year after “the run on the Rock,” as it was called in the British press, HBOS, RBS and other British banks faced their own funding crises and agreed to a government bailout.

“The problem with Brown is that he’s an architect of a lot of this mess, so he has a certain credibility problem,” says David Green, who spent 30 years as a senior supervisor at the Bank of England and then six years heading international policy at the FSA.

Sales of New Houses in U.S. Fall to Lowest Level Since 1991 on Loan Freeze: New-home sales in the U.S. fell in October to the lowest level in 17 years as the credit crunch deprived potential buyers of needed financing.


Stocks in U.S. Climb as Technology Shares Gain on Valuations; Apple Rises: U.S. stocks gained for a fourth day as investors snapped up technology shares trading near their cheapest level on record, overpowering earlier declines spurred by economic data depicting a deepening recession.


Volcker Will Lead New White House Economic Panel Aimed at Reviving Growth: President-elect Barack Obama named former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head a new White House economic board that will propose ways to revive growth as the U.S. grapples with an “economic crisis of historic proportions.”


U.S. Durable-Goods Orders, Consumer Spending Tumble as Recession Deepens: U.S. business investment weakened last month and consumers are retrenching worldwide, reports today showed, heightening pressure on policy makers to take stronger steps to combat the credit squeeze.

Americans cut spending by 1 percent in October, the biggest drop since the last recession in 2001, while British households slashed expenditures last quarter by the most in 13 years, government agencies said today. A U.S. Commerce Department report showed orders for durable goods slumped twice as much as forecast as domestic and foreign demand dried up.

The intensifying global economic downturn spurred China's central bank to cut its benchmark interest rate by the most in 11 years today, while the European Union proposed $259 billion in stimulus measures. In the U.S., President-elect Barack Obama held his third press conference in as many days to name former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker as an economic adviser.

Geithner Struggled to Rally Action After Spotting Dangers of Default Swaps: Timothy Geithner was among the first policy makers to shine a light on the unregulated $47 trillion credit-default swap market back in 2005. The New York Federal Reserve president has struggled since then to get dealers to carry out reforms.

The industry has yet to launch a structure to safeguard against market-wide losses in case a dealer fails, though its leaders expect to get one off the ground by the end of the year. Geithner, selected yesterday by President-elect Barack Obama to be his Treasury secretary, has made clear that such a step is crucial to help contain the mushrooming credit crisis.

“In classic Tim and New York Fed style, the work has been done behind the scenes, among technocrats, largely by consensus,” said Adam Posen, a former Fed official who is now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “The downside is that it takes awhile to get consensus.”

Geithner may not have the luxury of time in his new job as he faces a credit crisis that has morphed into a global recession. As Obama’s chief economic spokesman, it will be up to Geithner to take the lead in quelling the turmoil in financial markets and turning the economy around.

My Comment: A promising sign - like the incoming president, the man likely to be the next Treasury Secretary actually gets it. One can only hope that his newfound bully pulpit will help speed the much-needed reforms he has been advocating for years.

[ewmayer]

Sign of the times - saw this list [for an updated and more-thoroughly-vetted list, see here] floating around the web:

Watch those store money cards, gift certificates gift cards, and credit slips!
Stores that informed the Security Exchange of closing plans between October 2008 and
January 2009. PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ALL YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

Circuit City stores... most recent (? how many)
Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide are to be shuttered
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug ,and Catherine's to close 150 store nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing down all stores
J. Jill closing all stores
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing down
Levitz closing remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January.
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.
Home Depot closing 15 stores 1 in NJ ( New Brunswick )
Macys to close 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley Closing all stores
Pacific Sunware closing stores
Pep Boys Closing 33 stores
Sprint/ Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.
Wilson Leather closing down all stores
Sharper Image closing down all stores
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Lowes to close down some stores
Dillard's to close some stores.

Several of us passengers on the Southbound #53 bus last night were giving directions to someone unfamiliar with the various bus routes who needed to hook up with another line. At one point the advice turned into something resembling the above list: "OK, you get off at Stevens Creek Blvd and catch the Eastbound #23. You`ll pass a Mervyn's with a giant GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE sign on its facade, and a couple miles later you`ll see a Circuit City store that`s going to close soon. That's where you get off to catch the #58..."


Citigroup Rescue: Paulson Proven Grossly Wrong Yet Again

Our Moron of the Week (and retroactively for the many weeks we have neglected to bestow the cherished MotWee) is multiple previous awardee, Hammerin` Hank Paulson:

Citigroup's $306 Billion Rescue Fueled by Domino's Pizza as Shares Crashed: The deal to rescue the world's best- known bank was pieced together by regulators over Domino's pizza in near-empty offices one block from the White House.

On Nov. 18, five days before he was forced to bail out Citigroup, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress he was handing over to President-elect Barack Obama ``a significantly more stable banking system where the failure of a systemically relevant institution is no longer a pressing concern rattling the markets.''


The next day, Citigroup shares fell 23 percent to their lowest since May 1995. The bank said it would wind down seven failed off-balance-sheet funds. That ended attempts by Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit, who announced two days earlier he was eliminating 52,000 jobs, to salvage the investments after at least $2.2 billion of writedowns this year.

Then things got even worse.

Citigroup declined 26 percent on Nov. 20 as investors became increasingly concerned that a U.S. recession would weaken banks further. Even a pledge that morning by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal to boost his stake in the New York-based bank from under 4 percent to 5 percent couldn't buoy the shares.

Pandit and Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden held a worldwide conference call the next morning to reassure employees, said two people who listened to it. Pandit said he didn't plan to sell the Smith Barney brokerage unit or to disassemble the company, according to the people.

The call came as the board, led by Chairman Win Bischoff and independent director Richard Parsons, prepared to meet the same day at bank headquarters.

`No Real Plan'

Citigroup shares fell 20 percent more, prompting analysts and investors to predict that the U.S. government would rescue the bank while corporate-governance critics blamed directors for the company's predicament.

My Comment: Paulson should just STFU at this point, try not to screw things up even more than they already are, are slink away with his tail between his legs like our current president will soon be doing.

But enough gloom and doom for now - Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers!