The Worst Is Yet To Come in the US Financial Crisis

Large U.S. Banks May Fail Amid Recession, Rogoff Says
By Shamim Adam

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Credit market turmoil has driven the U.S. into a recession and may topple some of the nation's biggest banks, said Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

``The worst is yet to come in the U.S.,'' Rogoff said in an interview in Singapore today. ``The financial sector needs to shrink; I don't think simply having a couple of medium-sized banks and a couple of small banks going under is going to do the job.''

The U.S. housing slump has triggered more than $500 billion of credit market losses for banks globally and led to the collapse and sale of Bear Stearns Cos., the fifth-largest U.S. securities firm. Rogoff said the government should nationalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation's biggest mortgage-finance companies, which have lost more than 80 percent of market value this year.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ``should have been closed down 10 years ago,'' he said. ``They need to be nationalized, the equity holders should lose all their money. Probably we need to guarantee the bonds, simply because the U.S. has led everyone into believing they would guarantee the bonds.''

...``The only way to put discipline into the system is to allow some companies to go bust,'' Rogoff said. ``You can't just have an industry where they make giant profits or they get bailed out.''

The world's largest economy is already in a recession, and the housing market will continue to deteriorate, Rogoff said. The U.S. slowdown will last into the second half of next year, he said, predicting a faster recovery in Europe and Asia.

The Federal Reserve, which has left its key interest rate at 2 percent after the most aggressive series of rate reductions in two decades, risks raising inflationary pressures, he said.

``Rates are too low,'' Rogoff said. ``They must realize we're going to get inflation if things stay where they are. They need to raise rates but I don't think they are going to because they're way too nervous.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Shamim Adam in Singapore at sadam2@bloomberg.net.

Bravo Roubini!

Nouriel Roubini is an original thinker, a forward thinking economist, and importantly is not swayed by a policy bias or political loyalies as so many other popular economists seem to be. Roubini pursues the outcome of his data, which is broadly based and insightfully examined.

The scandal is that so many other economists seemingly missed such an obvious set of conclusions by such a huge margin. Sometimes market action and peer pressure can be overwhelming.

Anyone can be mistaken. But we saw too many instances of 'financial leaders' who were willfully wrong, dismissive, censorious, and driven by things other than a stewardship of knowledge it appears.

Bravo Roubini! Ringraziamo il Dottore per il coraggio del suo lavoro.


Nouriel Roubini Gets a Medal
Brad Setser
Sunday, August 17th, 2008

A well-deserved one too. Nouriel stuck to his core views — housing was massively over-valued, the financial system was heavily exposed to a fall in home prices and the fall out from a fall in US home prices wouldn’t be contained either nationally or globally – when those views were decidedly unpopular.

Back in early 2007, there was a great deal of complacency among America’s financial leadership. Many thought macroeconomic volatility had been vanquished, and as a result financial volatility was justly low. High levels of leverage consequently made sense — and a range of asset market prices reflected this. In the language of the time: credit markets weren’t over-valued, equity markets were under-valued. Recessions - or at least severe recessions and financial crises – were things that happened to other countries, not the US. The US had survived the .com bubble with only a shallow downturn. The 2003-2006 rise oil prices hadn’t put a big dent in the US economy. The large US current account deficit reflected high savings abroad and the attractiveness of the US financial assets; the US, after all, had a comparative advantage in financial-engineering. The IMF wrote that “innovative US fixed income markets [provided] many assets which simply aren’t available elsewhere” (see p. 12). There wasn’t much too worry about.

Read Michael Lewis’ argument that Davos man spent too much time worrying. He wrote in 2007:

Oil prices double, the U.S. housing market tanks — no matter what happens, financial markets adjust quickly and without hysteria. There are obviously a few things to worry about just now in the world, but the inability of traders to find a sensible price for the spread between European junk and European Treasuries isn’t one of them. So why do these people waste so much of their breath and, presumably, thought, with their elaborate expressions of concern?

Even the IMF – which is paid to worry – was tired of worrying. In late January of 2007, Chris Giles of the FT ran an article, based on an interview with the IMF’s Deputy Managing Director, that was titled “Big risks to global economy receding.” I thought that captured the mood of those times well.

Nouriel didn’t waver then. Others (myself included) did. Standing apart from the herd can be hard.

Over time, the focus of Nouriel’s concerns has shifted over time from the United States’ external deficit to the housing market and the financial system. But there has been a core consistency to his views: he never thought that it was healthy for the US to borrow heavily from the rest of the world to finance large fiscal deficits, high levels of consumption and lots of investment in suburban housing. And he thought this borrowing binge would end badly. Very badly.

...Yale’s Shiller notes that Nouriel’s greatest strength his capacity to synthesize an enormous amount of information: “Nouriel has a different way of seeing things than most economists: he gets into everything.” I wrote Bailouts and Bail-ins with Nouriel and I then worked for Nouriel at RGEMonitor – and I fully agree. The breadth of Nouriel’s interests — and his ability to synthesize information from multiple sources — is extraordinary.

I wouldn’t mind if Dr. Roubini was proved to be a bit too pessimistic, and not all the near-term risks he sees come to pass. But I also think it would be a mistake to base policy on the assumption that the worst of the credit crisis is over.

Once Again to the Brink for Lehman?

Lehman Faces Another Loss, Adding Salt To Its Wounds
By RANDALL SMITH and SUSANNE CRAIG
August 18, 2008;
The Wall Street Journal

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has been taking its time as it wrestles with how to escape the problems haunting the investment bank. It probably can't wait much longer.

With the end of the New York company's fiscal third quarter less than two weeks away, some analysts are girding for a loss of $1.8 billion or more, instead of the modest profit they previously expected. If the dour projections come true, Lehman's losses since the start of March would total at least $4.5 billion -- or more than the firm churned out in profit during fiscal 2007.

The likelihood of back-to-back quarterly losses, fueled by widely anticipated write-downs in a portfolio saddled with more than $50 billion in risky real-estate and mortgage assets, puts even more pressure on Lehman Chairman and Chief Executive Richard S. Fuld Jr. to show that the losses won't keep piling up. If they do, Lehman could need to raise additional capital beyond the $6 billion it got in June.

In the past few months, Lehman officials have examined an array of options to bolster the company's financial position, ranging from selling troubled real-estate assets at a discount to divesting a piece of profitable asset-management unit Neuberger Berman, according to people familiar with the matter.

Another stock offering would be hard to pull off without angering existing shareholders, largely because the tidal wave of common shares floated in June has since plunged in value by 42%....

The Case for the Gold Bull Market

We are experiencing a correction in the gold bull market that is within the bounds of our past experience. In 2006 gold had a correction of -22+% in a breathtakingly short period of time, and then consolidated and retested and starting moving higher to the new highs in 2007.

The correction in 2008 while uncomfortable is still very much in line with this bull market. We seem to have violent corrections every few years with major bottoms reached after capitulation lows. More often we experience lesser corrections of 10%.

One possible concern is that this correction will be a sustained central bank intervention, with all the stops out as a move in desperation. Even it is is, it will fail.

This is a possible caution for short term trading, make no mistake. Nothing is certain. But it is just another point along the way for serious long term investors looking for a hedge for their wealth, buying physical metal without significant leverage.

For aggressive traders, we need to be aware of a major opportunity in buying more short term positions in the miners and funds, although this is for the experienced with deep pockets and strong stomachs. A market decline may sink many boats. Deleveraging is still the major market trend.

We can expect violent price swings including moves of even $100 up in less than a few days as the collapse of the dollar hegemony causes a seismic shift as major political constituents migrate to different standards of global valuation.

Here is an essay from Seeking Alpha that contains some interesting charts and data that is useful to review.

The Bedrock Case for the Return of the Gold Bull