Debt Becomes Death, the Destroyer of Worlds

The chain reaction was initiated by a simple spark igniting high-explosive charges designed to compress the uranium or plutonium core upon detonation. The compressed core goes critical, initiating a chain reaction that persists until the fuel is consumed...

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed... A few people cried... Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form, and says, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

Without the radioactive core and nuclear fuel, many would-be weapons of mass destruction are merely large conventional explosions: powerful, but not widely devastating.

The analogy is that the subprime mortgage failure is the spark, a recessionary downturn and credit crunch is the conventional explosion, and the credit derivatives, particularly the credit default swaps, are the nuclear core that amplifies the original misjudgement to massively devastating proportions.

It is hard to believe that something this complex and obviously dangerous was built up over such a long period of time without a few economists noticing it. It is an obvious Ponzi scheme at its simplest. At its most complex, the pointless size and interconnectedness of the Credit Default swaps is almost diabolical. Companies with no substantial ties to the debt of third parties placing enormous wagers on their default that are up to an order of magnitude greater than the total debt involved. Pure, unadulterated, and highly lethal speculation.

Ironically the protective shielding in this case will not be lead and concrete and earth, but gold and silver and other commodities that will endure the coming inferno of paper.

Future generations will ask: what were they thinking?

Indeed.

Bankruptcies in America
Waiting for Armageddon
Mar 27th 2008
The Economist

The recent rise in corporate bankruptcies in America may well be a sign of much worse to come

...If the debt markets are to be believed, companies could be in at least as much trouble as they were in the previous two downturns, in the early 1990s and at the start of this decade, after the dotcom bubble burst. A leading indicator is the spread between yields on speculative “junk” bonds and American Treasury bonds. A year ago, the spread was only about 280 basis points; the long-term average is around 500 points. This month the spread exceeded 800 points for the first time since March 2003, reaching 862 on March 17th.

The bankruptcy rate (in the previous 12 months) for high-yielding bonds has so far edged only modestly higher, to 1.28% from a record low of 0.87% in November. But most forecasters expect it to rise sharply over the coming months. For instance, Moody's, a ratings agency, predicts that the default rate will rise to 5.4% by the end of this year, mostly due to problems in America. (Moody's also expects a rise in European bankruptcies this year, but only to 3.4%, thanks to lower levels of borrowing and less exposure to economic weakness.)

That is a relatively optimistic prediction, for it would merely return the bankruptcy rate close to its long-term average after an abnormally trouble-free period, and it assumes only a mild recession in America. But if there is a severe recession, the default rate “could go to double figures,” admits Kenneth Emery, head of corporate-default research at Moody's.

Other forecasters are much gloomier. FridsonVision, a research firm, publishes a default-rate predictor based on the percentage of bonds trading with a spread of at least 1,000 basis points. On March 19th this was forecasting a default rate on high-yielding American corporate bonds of 8.55% by the end of February 2009, compared with Moody's forecast for American bonds of 6.8% for that date....

A look at the firms with distressed debt shows that problems are rapidly moving beyond the long-term sick (airlines, cars) and the industries immediately affected by the crisis (home builders, mortgage lenders, monoline insurers). Craig Deane of AEG Partners, a restructuring-advisory firm, says he is now seeing troubled companies in retailing, restaurants, manufacturing and food processing...

But perhaps the biggest difference this time will be the effects of the huge market for credit derivatives and other credit-related securities, which often dwarf the amount of debt that a firm has issued, says Henry Owsley of Gordion, another restructuring adviser. The interaction between underlying debt and credit derivatives will complicate bankruptcy and near-bankruptcy no end, he says.

A big concern for company bosses will be the role of speculative investors, especially hedge funds. They can use derivatives to pursue complex strategies that may not be in the best interests of the firm that has issued the underlying debt, says Henry Hu, a law professor at the University of Texas, Austin. In a bankruptcy, a hedge fund could use the voting rights attached to different securities to maximise the overall value of its holdings in the firm at the expense of other investors.

Imagine, for instance, a hedge fund that owns debt secured against a company asset. It may prefer to force the firm into liquidation in order to win that asset rather than engage in a restructuring negotiation that will keep the firm alive. Meanwhile, it can boost its returns by short selling its unsecured debt and its equity. Or suppose that a hedge fund owns credit-default swaps as well as a firm's debt. If the fund makes enough money from the pay-out of the credit-default swaps, it may prefer to use the voting rights on its debt to ensure that the firm goes bust rather than negotiate a way to avoid bankruptcy...

Bankruptcies in America - The Economist

Bush Administration Proposal Would Concentrate Regulatory Power with the Fed

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains
seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all
must be most aware of change in the air - however slight -
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

It is most likely that this proposal from the Bush Administration is a 'red herring' to try and channel the outrage of the public into ineffective remedies and to confuse and delay the genuine reforms until well after this Adminstration leaves town.

March 29, 2008
Treasury Dept. Plan Would Give Fed Wide New Power
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation’s hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades. (the Fed played a critical, pivotal role in permitting if not encouraging the excesses, moreso than any other agency - Jesse)

Democratic lawmakers are all but certain to say the proposal does not go far enough in restricting the kinds of practices that caused the financial crisis. Many of the proposals, like those that would consolidate regulatory agencies, have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial markets. And some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation.

According to a summary provided by the administration, the plan would consolidate an alphabet soup of banking and securities regulators into a powerful trio of overseers responsible for everything from banks and brokerage firms to hedge funds and private equity firms.

While the plan could expose Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds to greater scrutiny, it carefully avoids a call for tighter regulation.

The plan would not rein in practices that have been linked to the housing and mortgage crisis, like packaging risky subprime mortgages into securities carrying the highest ratings.

The plan would give the Fed some authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank’s practices threatened the entire financial system.

And the plan does not recommend tighter rules over the vast and largely unregulated markets for risk sharing and hedging, like credit default swaps, which are supposed to insure lenders against loss but became a speculative instrument themselves and gave many institutions a false sense of security.

Parts of the plan could reduce the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is charged with maintaining orderly stock and bond markets and protecting investors. The plan would merge the S.E.C. with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates exchange-traded futures for oil, grains, currencies and the like. (Separately they are both nearly useless. This just makes them completely useless - Jesse)

The blueprint also suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a lighter approach to its oversight. Among them are allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves and streamlining the approval of new products, even allowing automatic approval of securities products that are being traded in foreign markets.

The proposal began last year as an effort by Henry M. Paulson Jr., secretary of the Treasury, to make American financial markets more competitive against overseas markets by modernizing a creaky regulatory system.

His goal was to streamline the different and sometimes clashing rules for commercial banks, savings and loans and nonbank mortgage lenders.

“I am not suggesting that more regulation is the answer, or even that more effective regulation can prevent the periods of financial market stress that seem to occur every 5 to 10 years,” Mr. Paulson will say in a speech on Monday, according to a draft. “I am suggesting that we should and can have a structure that is designed for the world we live in, one that is more flexible.”

Congress would have to approve almost every element of the proposal, and Democratic leaders are already drafting their own bills to impose tougher supervision over Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and the fast-growing market in derivatives like credit default swaps.

But Mr. Paulson’s proposal for the Fed echoes ideas championed by Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Both see the Fed overseeing risk across the entire financial spectrum, but Mr. Frank is likely to favor a stronger Fed role and to subject investment banks to the same rules that commercial banks now must follow, especially for capital reserves.

The Treasury plan would let Fed officials examine the practices and even the internal bookkeeping of brokerage firms, hedge funds, commodity-trading exchanges and any other institution that might pose a risk to the overall financial system. (Where was the Fed's ability to examine the off balance sheet abuses of Citigroup while they were most definitely under the Fed's purview for example? - Jesse)

That would be a significant expansion of the central bank’s regulatory mission. (and where does the considerable increase in funding come for this? - Jesse)

When Fed officials agreed this month to rescue Bear Stearns, once the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank, they pointedly noted that the Fed never had the authority to monitor its financial condition or order it to bolster its protections against a collapse.

In two unprecedented moves, the Fed engineered a marriage between JPMorgan Chase and Bear Stearns, lending $29 billion to JPMorgan to prevent a Bear bankruptcy and a chain of defaults that might have felled much of the financial system.

For the first time since the 1930s, the Fed also agreed to let investment banks borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from its discount window, an emergency lending program reserved for commercial banks and other depository institutions. (the difference is that in the 1930s these actions were precipitated by the action of the President and the Congress - Jesse)

But Mr. Paulson’s proposal would fall well short of the kind of regulation that Democrats have been proposing. Mr. Frank and other senior Democrats have argued that investment banks and other lightly regulated institutions now compete with commercial banks and should be subject to similar regulation, including examiners who regularly pore over their books and quietly demand changes in their practices.

In a recent interview, Mr. Frank said he realized the need for tighter regulation of Wall Street firms after a meeting with Charles O. Prince III, then chairman of Citigroup.

When Mr. Frank asked why Citigroup had kept billions of dollars in “structured investment vehicles” off the firm’s balance sheet, he recalled, Mr. Prince responded that Citigroup, as a bank holding company, would have been at a disadvantage because investment firms can operate with higher debt and lower capital reserves. (only in so far as they were to take advanage of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, an effort led by their former Chairman Sandy Weill, and utilize government guaranteed depositor's money to personally finance their speculation - Jesse)

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has taken a similar stance.

“Commercial banks continue to be supervised closely, and are subject to a host of rules meant to limit systemic risk,” Mr. Schumer wrote in an op-ed article on Friday in The Wall Street Journal. “But many other financial institutions, including investment banks and hedge funds, are regulated lightly, if at all, even though they act in many ways like banks.” (Precisely. They ought not to be banks and ought not to have impacted banks IF Glass-Steagall had been in place - Jesse)

Mr. Paulson’s proposal is likely to provoke bruising turf battles in Congress among agencies and rival industry groups that benefit from the current regulations.

Administration officials acknowledged on Friday that they did not expect the proposal to become law this year, but said they hoped it would help frame a policy debate that would extend well after the elections in November. (Prediction - It will go nowhere but will help to confuse and blunt and delay the necessary effective reforms and laws to allow further looting of the Treasury while this Administration leaves town - Jesse)

In a nod to the debacle in mortgage lending, the administration proposed a Mortgage Origination Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of state governments in regulating mortgage brokers and protecting consumers. (LOL. - Jesse)

The bulk of the proposal, however, was developed before soaring mortgage defaults set off a much broader credit crisis, and most of the proposals are geared to streamlining regulation.

This plan would consolidate a large number of regulators into roughly three big new agencies.

Bank supervision, now divided among five federal agencies, would be led by a Prudential Financial Regulator, which could send examiners into any bank or depository institution that is protected by either federal deposit insurance or other federal backstops. It would eliminate the distinction between “banks” and “thrift institutions,” which are already indistinguishable to most consumers, and shut down the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Any effort to merge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the S.E.C. is likely to provoke battles.

Yet another proposal would, for the first time, create a national regulator for insurance companies, an industry that state governments now oversee.

Administration officials argue that a national system would eliminate the inefficiencies of having 50 different state regulators, who have jealously guarded their powers and are likely to fight any federal encroachment.

Arthur Levitt, a former S.E.C. chairman who has long pushed for stronger investor protection, said his first impression of the plan was positive. Even though the S.E.C.’s powers might be reduced, Mr. Levitt said, the plan would create a broader agency to regulate business conduct in all financial services. (Levitt was a part of the problem himself - Jesse)

“It’s a thoughtful document,” he said. “I’m intrigued by the fact that it puts an emphasis on investor protection, and that it establishes an agency specifically for that purpose, which would operate across all markets. I think that’s a very constructive first step.”

As a reminder, the Federal Reserve is not elected by the people, is not one of the three branches of our government, is not part of the Civil Service, and is not subject to the kinds of congressional oversight generally available to the Congress over such agencies as the SEC.

SP 500 Bear Market Update - March 28

BSC Says CEO James Cayne Sold ALL His Shares at $10.84

BSC SEC Filing Says James Cayne Sold All His Remaining Shares in His Company

NEW YORK, Mar 28, 2008 NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Just a day after JPMorgan Chase quintupled its bid for Bear Stearns, James Cayne, the chairman of the troubled investment bank, dumped his entire stake in the firm, selling more than $60 million worth of company stock he owned.

Cayne, who also served as Bear Stearns' chief executive before stepping down in January of this year, sold over 5.6 million shares of company stock Tuesday at $10.82 a share, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) shares closed at $11.23 apiece in Thursday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The deal, which was first announced by JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) on the evening of March 16, initially valued the troubled investment bank at $2 a share, a 93% discount from its closing price on March 14.